sink your tooth into this!

happy cake story alert!

this story starts like all good stories typically do: "so, this woman slips on a board..."

that woman? my mom. let's face it. i must have gotten my graceful, gazelle-like elegance from somewhere right? well, one day, not so long ago, my mom was walking in flip-flops on a near-by job site, going to visit my brother whist at work and took a step over a rock, stepped on a slippery piece of wood, fell on a garbage can and somehow fell teeth-first into the gravel. you know, true-blue family grace here! well, to the horror of my brother, blinking, looking up from the ground was a bloody, toothless mom. panic sets in, etc, etc. "where are my two front teeth?" "what about my reunion in two days??!" "mommy, what?! are you okay?" *tears* ...

see? isn't this an exciting cake story??

well anyway, that's the inspiration for this cake! see, in a panic, and luckily hardly in any pain at all, she calls her dentist who opened up his office one evening after hours and spent three hours with her, fixed her face, and sent her home, with little more than a scraped lip and a bruised ego.

my mom approached me a few days after her reunion and said "i'd like you to make my dentist a cake! a thank you cake! he really saved me the other day!"

she told me i can do whatever i want, but she's thinking a giant tooth! say no more! giant tooth it is!! i had never made a tooth before! how exciting!

i made a two-layer, red velvet cake, filled with a gorgeous cream cheese, iced in my italian meringue (nope, never gets old for me! :o) - i covered the whole thing in a vanilla fondant and got to work making all the details. i gave him a polka dotted bow-tie, a tooth brush, complete with some toothpaste, some bubbles cause he's gotta be squeaky clean. and even painted his pearly whites a sparkly white! i LOVED his nose by the way. i don't know why, but i couldn't stop photographing it!!

both the dentist, as well as all of his office staff loved the cake! and the best part? my mom is all healed and has put her flip-flopping nightmare behind her! :o) yay for cake that saves the day!

PINK! PINK! PINK! with a cherry on top!

one of the coolest things about having a website are the people you "meet" via the internet. a very sweet woman contacted me asking if i could make a cake for her daughter's birthday. what i LOVED about this was that she knew exactly what she wanted and it was a cool, new cake that i hadn't made before. it was all... mandy, meet "pinkalicious"...i LOVE knew things!

now, i don't know much about this whole "pinkalicious" thing, except that it's PINK. it's all about pink. and it's SO adorable, and pink and girly!

i sketched up a few different designs for her and her daughter picked the final cake! here's her choice:

(having the little birthday girl pick my cake? i secretly think that is SO exciting, because that makes making cake SO much more of a challenge, knowing there is a little girl waiting to see her cake and you KNOW she was going to want it to be perfect!)

anyway, the cake was a triple layer white vanilla cake, filled with a really amazing banana custard. it was iced in vanilla italian meringue butter cream). i then decorated it with tinted vanilla fondant. i also included an edible image of the "pinkalicious" character. i topped the whole thing with a giant cupcake (which also had filling inside) and my FAVORITE thing ever!! the cherry!!!!!!! SO CUTE!

here are some pics:

you KNOW i love feedback!! here it is!!:

"Mandy!!! The cake looked amazing!!!!!!!!! No that's an understatement!! It was spectacular. K was in love with it. I can't lie, we were sad to cut it but the moment we did and took the first bite it melted in our mouths delicious!!!!

Thank you so much for helping me give my little K the cake of her dreams!!!

She will never forget this cake and neither will I!!

Much luck with all your future orders!! Thanks Cheeky..lol"

as usual, it really doesn't get any better than that for me! thanks for letting me be a part of your family's special celebration!

ps- my two FAVORITE pictures:

*sigh*... sometimes, the photographer in me just LOVES me soooo much! :o)

chocolate cake for a chocolate lover... that's not so chocolatey?.... huh?

happy birthday to my mom! :o)

my mom's birthday is just another cake i was dying to make. she LOVES chocolate, but can't eat much of it because it tends to give her a headache, so how do you make a chocolate cake without giving your mom a giant headache? uhhh, trick her! duh! :o) what do i mean? well, one of the things i LOVE LOVE LOVE about my mom is that all you have to do is say the word "chocolate" and her eyes glaze over and she can smell it and she starts to smile the smile that only a passionate lover of chocolate can make.

see how much i like to challenge myself? the cake i designed had to look like a chocolate dream, but couldn't give her a headache...what to do? what to do?

well i first start with my sketches...

the design: a stacked cake. the bottom tier i decided to make her a giant rectangular cake that looked like a hershey's bar, only instead it would say "linda's." on top of that one, i put a super ginormous hunk of chocolate cake, just like nana used to make, and put an oversized sugar paste candle with a sugary flame.

inside the cake was a white vanilla, filled with a rich oreo butter cream. i then iced the whole thing with my italian meringue butter cream. I covered it all with a tinted vanilla fondant - by tinted, i mean tinted to a chocolately brown. i did some royal icing piping, stamped her name over and over into little rectangles and hand-painted the hunk of cake to look like a filled, old-school cake.

i surprised her with her cake and her reaction was priceless. her reaction is WHY i love cake!

my favorite part? she smells it and says "Oh my god! I can't wait to eat it! It smells like a giant Hershey's bar!!" and later, upon eating it exclaims, "it tastes so chocolatey!" ... (to which i scratch my head and tell her there's no chocolate in the fondant)... we laugh. gotta love a chocoholic! :o)

here are some more pics:

..."hugs and stitches" cookie pops ...

a coworker/friend of my husband's approached me (via my husband) to see if i'd be able to make some cookie pops for their daughter's first birthday. the bakery they approached prior to me told them that it was "impossible"... i'm thinking the bakery meant it was "impossible to make it profitable..." that's one of the reasons why i love the whole "word-of-mouth" baker wannabe biz. i get to make cute stuff and make people happy in the process. :o)

SO, armed with a napkin (for the colors and deco-theme) i created 25 pink and purple cookies to match their party. a former coworker of mine gifted me an amazing (AMAZING) sugar cookie recipe, for which i am eternally grateful!!! and with that...i got to work.

these were 4" diameter, beautifully thick, crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, perfectly golden cookies, decorated with royal icing and finished up with royal icing stitches and a sparkly, fondant button. they are SO cute, i almost can't stand it! and i absolutely LOVE how her centerpieces turned out. she was also kind enough to send along a little email with her pictures - i LOVE reviews and she sent such a sweet note, i have to share it!! :

"Thank you so much for doing such an awesome job on the lollipop flower cookies! We knew they would be awesome when we ordered them just from talking with you but the outcome far exceeded our expectations!! The cookies matched our color theme and decorations perfectly and they were just right for arranging them as centerpieces. Everyone commented on how beautiful and adorable they were...and how delicious too! B, J and I couldn't agree more!! We look forward to working with you in the future and we recommend you to all our friends and family!!

Sincerely,

L, B and J"

Anyway, i LOVE feedback and am really happy that they enjoyed them so much! the pictures they sent are SO cute! i can't WAIT to make more of these!!

mandy *hearts* cookies!

...tool belt cake...

okay, so first let me say i absolutely reject the term 'tomboy'... having been called a "tomboy" for most of my life, growing up with a carpenter grandfather, construction/painting biz father, and stemming from a long line of very strong, capable women... i prefer "strong, capable, tool-wielding woman" :o) and with that, i present my version of a 'tool belt cake'...

a friend wanted a small birthday cake themed around a tool belt, a black sharpie, some red paint and oreo butter cream. by far a very rich choice, but if eaten in small doses, totally yummy.

i designed this cute little cake with sugar paste tools: a purple handled hammer (because her husband likes purple), a paint brush dripping red paint (because the red paint represented some sort of inside joke between the two of them...and i LOVE inside jokes...and the opportunity to drip sugar "paint" all over a cake) and finally a cap-less, black sharpie (because this is apparently her husband's signature trademark item).

The cake was a triple layer white vanilla cake, layered with a rich oreo butter cream, iced in a vanilla butter cream, and covered in white fondant, with a wood grain brown fondant.