Michigan State

My aunt and her family traveled all the way from Michigan to spend New Years Eve with us. We all love when when we get to see her, my uncle, and my cousins.

My aunt thought it would be nice for me to make a Michigan State University cake. My cousin currently attends there and my uncle is a big fan ;-). It ended up being really fun to make.

Anyway, here is the cake! Chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling, iced with vanilla buttercream and decorated with fondant accents. My aunt LOVES chocolate.

Spanish cake

I was asked if I could make a birthday cake with a Spanish message rather than the usual English "Happy Birthday." I sure can!

This cake was a red velvet cake filled with a whipped cream cheese mousse. I also got the opportunity to practice my ribbon roses made with fondant.

What do you all think?

Merry Christmas!

The weeks leading up to Christmas have always been my favorite time of year. I love to get my tree up, shop for gifts, and bake goodies for my friends and family.

Every year, we alternate who throws our big family party. This year it was at my cousin's house and my contribution was cake, of course! I figured it would be fun to make a christmas theme cake so I began experimenting with a few ideas. Ultimately, I decided to make a frosty the snowman cake since he's my mom's favorite.

I decide on a chocolate cake with a peanut butter mousse filling. The cake is iced in buttercream with fondant accents. Everything on it is completely edible!

Here's Frosty!

Yumminess from my oven!

My husband is borderline obsessed with banana bread so when we got married, I was on a quest for the perfect banana bread recipe. Over the years I tried multiple recipes but none of them were winners.

I am happy to announce that 6 1/2 years into our marriage, I've found it. A banana bread that rendered him speechless.....or maybe he was speechless because he was busy eating. At any rate, once he spoke again, I caught the words "amazing" and "best banana bread ever." Ha! He sure knows what to say when taste testing one of my recipes!



Care to see the finished product?

Bake-off's

I usually don't like competitions and contests, I'm just not a competitive person. For the almost 7 years that I have worked for my school, I have never entered our annual bake-off until this year. I decided to make red velvet cupcakes until I found out that there were 200 people expected. That's a lot of cupcakes! Due to the amount of participants, I figured that mini red velvet cupcakes would be a better idea.

I spent the day before baking and icing over 100 mini cupcakes and everything thankfully went well. Getting downtown via public transportation, however, was a different story! A train and a bus during rush hour in Chicago is not a friendly cupcake environment. We'll leave it at that. ;-)

The good news is, they arrived in one piece and were enjoyed by many! Unfortunately, I didn't win 1st place, but I did win 3rd!

And more!

The Sweet Life- Cakes and more....... more often than not, whoever I am speaking to about The Sweet Life asks me what the "and more" signifies. I'm here to answer! It encompasses lots of baked goods. Pies, cookies, cheesecakes, various types of breads, brownies, blondies.... you name it, most likely I can do it! What can I say, I just LOVE to bake. Cakes are what I enjoy the most though since it allows me the chance to be as creative as I want to be.

Want to see an example of the "and more"? One of my most popular items, that never seems to be around long enough to be photographed, are cinnamon coconut macaroons! Fun and yummy. I'll try to get some pics up of some of the other items.

So here they are-

I usually put them in a fancy tin for those who order-

Fancy red velvet!

I've never been a fan of red velvet cake... in fact, I strongly disliked it and often wondered why anyone would choose to eat it. That was the case until my co-workers got me cupcakes for my birthday back in September! There was a variety box of twelve that we all shared. The next day, the lone ranger in the box was... you guessed it... a red velvet cupcake.

I ate it after my lunch that day. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it! Apparently I had been eating bad red velvet cake all these years! I set out to find the perfect recipe and I'm happy to annouce that I've found it!

The cupcakes below were made for a friend's birthday this past weekend. Red velvet with cream cheese buttercream frosting. YUM! I liked them so much that I made an extra batch for me and my co-workers!

Don't they look fancy?

And a close-up!

Elmo returns... and this time, he brought Cookie Monster and Big Bird along for the ride!

A few months ago, my baby brother asked me if I would make a birthday cake for my nephew's first birthday party. We talked about a theme and after throwing out a few ideas, he landed on wanting an Elmo birthday party. ELMO, AGAIN! That little guy sure is popular!

I prefer not to make the same cake twice, so it was back to the drawing board on what it would look like. I ended up helping out by picking and purchasing the invites. They ended up being great inspiration for my cake!

I thought it would be fun if I made 3D figures of the sesame street characters this time. I started making the character cake toppers a week before and than goodness I did! Those suckers were quite time consuming! They were all made out of a fondant/gumpaste mixture. Here's a close up of Elmo and Cookie Monster.... I LOVED how Cookie Monster was holding on to his very own fondant cookie! Also, notice how they are all wearing diapers! I LOVE IT!

Moving on... I drew up a sketch of what I wanted to do to make sure that what I was thinking of wasn't to outrageous and out of reach. It didn't seem like it was. My brother asked for chocolate cake so I made the top and bottom tiers triple chocolate cake and made the middle french vanilla for the non-chocolate lovers. The top tier was filled with chocolate ganache, the middle tier was filled with strawberry, and the bottom was a banana cream filling. YUM! Here was the end result.....

And a view of the Big Bird side of the cake.... poor guy was not the shining star of the evening....

My brother also wanted me to make my nephew his own little smash cake. Rather than make him his own little cake, I figured, what could be more fun than cupcakes?!

Don't tell me these aren't fun...

The cupcakes were confetti with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents. These may have been the cause of a few gray hairs that mysteriously appeared after I completed them! I loved making them anyway!
Anyway, it was all worth it to see how happy my nephew was on his 1st birthday. Happy Birthday Jadon! Your Aunt Michelle loves you so much!!!

Thanks for looking everyone!

The journey begins into fondant and gumpaste flowers

One of my cousin's is celebrating her birthday this weekend and asked me if I would make her a cake. She didn't really have any specific guidelines of what she wanted, she just told me that she wanted it to be more traditional since she doesn't like the modern cake look. I got to work!

She chose a white almond cake with chocolate ganache filling. YUM! The best part of someone choosing chocolate ganache as their filling are the leftovers!!!


Anyway, her and I are eerily similar in our interests and likes/dislikes. I LOVE calla lillies so I was pretty sure that she would like them too. I checked with her sister first who gave me the green light! I made the flowers over the course of three days since you need to let each layer dry on it's own. It was lots of fun so I am looking forward to making different all different kinds in the future.


Here is her cake:




This pic allows you to see the fondant ball border better.

Happy Birthday Kristina! I hope you enjoy your cake as much as I enjoyed making it for you!

Minnie Mouse

My neighbors say they are tortured by seeing me carry all these cakes out my door and never being able to have a taste of any of them. To solve the problem, they ordered a cake for their daughter's 3rd birthday.

She just told me that they were having a minnie birthday and to make a cake that would fit in with that theme. So this is what I was able to do for them.

This cake was a french vanilla with 1/2 strawberry and 1/2 banana filling. The frosting around the base was whipped cream and the polka dots, 3, ears, and bow were made of fondant. I hear the birthday girl really enjoyed it! Happy Birthday, Emma!

Elmo!

The daughter of my best friend had her first birthday party this weekend. Naturally I said yes when my bff asked me to make her daughter's birthday cake. Once she told me that she had decided on an Elmo theme, I spent an obscene amount of time online searching for some inspirational photos on what to make. I finally decided to purchase an Elmo pan from Wilton and put it on a sheet cake to make sure that it would feed everyone at the party.

For weeks I was so excited about making this cake- I couldn't wait to get started! I wanted to make sure that everything would be perfect. That turned out to be much harder than I thought since I hurt my left hand (I'm left handed) the weekend before the party.

The entire week before the party I worried about how I would decorate these cakes with a left hand that I could hardly move and that was very swollen. What did I do to it? Who knows! When I realized that I couldn't hold my coffee mug, I began to wonder if I had broken it! I iced it practically every second of the day in hopes that the pain would just magically go away before I started baking. Wishful thinking that unfortunately didn't work!

I finally decided to just start baking when I realized that my hand wasn't going to get much better. Needless to say, piping individual starts to color in Elmo's face was torture! I finally got it done in an amount of time that I am embarrassed to even type out. The sheet cake was a lot better since there wasn't too much detail that I was planning on adding.... although it still took me longer than expected.

The day of the party finally arrived and I was excited to have finished the cake! I drove into the city and the terror started. You don't realize how badly city drivers are until you have a stacked cake and cupcakes in your trunk! Thankfully, the cake and I made it to the party in one piece, but we had a few close calls and a few choice words on my part along the way!

So here is the cake! Elmo was a confetti cake iced in a vanilla buttercream. The sheet cake underneath was a triple chocolate chocolate chip (chocolate overload? ;-)) filled with banana filling on one half and strawberry whipped cream on the other.

I also made smores cupcakes. The elmo head on top was candy.


And in case you are interested, I sit here typing this post out one handed with my right hand while the other is still wrapped and under ice :-(

My first wedding cake!

Wow. What a weekend it's been! A few weeks ago, one of my close friends, Beatriz, told me that she was getting married and asked me if I would make their wedding cake! Of course I accepted. The bride had too much going on with the planning so she said I could make whatever I wanted which really stressed me out. I wanted her to LOVE it and was nervous about not having much direction.

Anyway, I found a few inspirational photo's with one specifically that she liked. I was excited to finally have something to go off of. I chose to make a white almond cake and have different fillings in each layer. The top layer was filled with chocolate ganache, the middle layer had a strawberry filling, and the bottom layer was filled with a banana custard.

I was so confident until I was about half way through. I filled the bottom layer with too much of the banana custard and it started sliding on me! Talk about stressful! This was especially nervewracking because the bottom layer needs to support the rest of the cake! After having a mini meltdown, and wondering if I should ever attempt another wedding cake, I felt better and got back to work.


The second meltdown came the morning of the wedding when we were driving to the ceremony. It seemed like we were hitting every pothole in the Chicagoland area! My poor husband had to deal with me yelling at him to slow down the entire way! After what felt like forever, we finally got there with the cake still in one piece! Yay!


It took quite a bit of time, but it all came together in the end!

Here are some pics of the finished product!


Congratulations Beatriz and Tony! Thank you for allowing me to add to your special day!!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Our family celebrated my dad's birthday yesterday. This is a guy who hates when his family make a big fuss over him. I've gotten to the point where I know better than to ask him what he can use or what he wants for his birthday. He just won't tell me!


Anyway, We love to celebrate him but he never allows it. This year, he made it pretty easy on us by calling his brother and sisters over for a Labor Day BBQ. Little did he know that we had other plans! After dinner, as we all sat around catching up and spending time together, I brought out his cake and we all sang happy birthday to him. What do you get the guy who never lets you get him anything? A cake in the shape of a present! I hope he enjoyed it! Happy Birthday to the best dad a girl can ask for!

Now for the details on the cake! This was a white almond cake with strawberry filling. Everything that you see in the picture was edible and made of fondant.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Today marks the 31st wedding anniversary of my wonderful parents. Wow...... in this day and age, that is definitely an accomplishment! Especially when you have three very headstrong and stubborn children!

To help them celebrate, I decided to make them an anniversary cake in their wedding colors. My mom tells me that she wanted the wedding colors to be white and pink but my dad wasn't having it and demanded blue and white. Somehow, my dad won that argument! My mom did kind of get her way though and had her maid of honor wearing pink with one of those big floppy hats! I'll have to find a picture so that you get the true awesomeness of these outfits! LOL

I made them a pink champagne cake iced in vanilla buttercream frosting and covered in fondant.


Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Tinkerbell!

A friend's daughter turned 3 and had a Tinkerbell birthday party this weekend. Her mom asked me to make some confetti cupcakes with green icing. I decided to take it a bit further and instead of making a standard rainbow confetti cupcake, I set out to find purple and green sprinkles. How hard could it be right? Wrong. I didn't really want to order them online for reasons that I don't remember now... but that would have been the most logical choice instead of driving all around Chicagoland trying to find sprinkles. I finally found them so all was well by party time! I thought it would also be fun to sprinkle some "pixie dust" over the tops :-)

Here they are: Green and purple confetti cupcakes with lime green vanilla buttercream frosting and purple "pixie dust"


All ready for the party!

Happy Birthday, Kayla!

Becoming a teen

To those who know me, it's no surprise that I love bright (and sometimes borderline obnoxious) colors. I think that's one of the reasons why I like making kids birthday cakes so much. You can be creative and bright and it's ok!


A friend's niece turned 13 this weekend and asked me if I would make a cake for her birthday party. The birthday girl requested a chocolate cake with strawberry filling. She also wanted the cake to be "hot purple" and mentioned that her other favorite colors were blue and green.

This is what came of it:

Front view-

Back view-

This cake was really fun to make even though my hands are still purple and blue from tinting the frosting. It's so bad that I wonder if they will go back to normal. How did I make such a mess?!

Want to know what's scarier than purple hands? Delivering a cake! It's especially scary when you need to cross over train tracks to get to the house. Stress, stress, stress, but the cake and I made it in one piece!

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Jordan!

Peanut Butter!

So I am continuing to test out recipes that I want to offer. I stumbled across one today that is definitely a keeper and will be added to my order form. Peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate buttercream. YUM! While it was baking, my place smelled like I lived in a Reeses Pieces candy. It smelled so good that I didn't even know what to do with myself. So good.

As with many of my other recipes, I test them out on my family and my co-workers. My family got to enjoy these tonight and loved them. My husband even said they were the best cupcake/cake he had ever tasted. He's a good husband! ;-) The to making these today was that my cousin's Liv's birthday that is right around the corner. The cupcakes gave us an excuse to embarass her by singing to her at the top of our lungs in the middle hotel lobby that she is staying in. My family sure has a ton of fun when we get together!

Cakes to celebrate our old campus!

I was approached recently by the president's secretary for the school that I work for. We are moving to a new campus soon and she asked if I would be interested in making a cake for the goodbye celebration in honor of our old campus. The only requirement that she had was that she wanted it to include both our old and current logo's. There were so many options running through my head, that it was difficult to narrow things down and create a game plan. What kind of cake to make? What kind of design to use? So many possibilities.

Ultimately, I decided that it would be cool to make individual cakes to portray each of our logo's. Doing things this way also solved the dilemma of what kind of cake to make! Everyone has a favorite right? The photos below are results of that idea. I'm pretty happy with how they came out!

The old logo was a chocolate fudge chocolate chip cake covered with an almond buttercream frosting and fondant accents.

The new logo was a yellow butter cake covered in almond buttercream with fondant accents.

Cupcakes!

Cupcakes....what's not to love? They are easy (no forks) and fun (they come in a cute little cup) to eat, a lot of fun to make, and you get your own individual portion. I love cupcakes!

Saturday morning I was hanging out with my daughter avoiding all of the housework that I needed to get done when my mom called and invited us over for dinner. My grandma is in town from Puerto Rico and of course I wouldn't miss the chance to see her while she was here. I accepted and my mom was like oh yeah... and can I order a few dozen cupcakes for you to bring over for dessert? Of course mom. Nothing like last minute!

I had a few recipes that I wanted to test out and my mom didn't have a preference on flavors so I got to work! The flavors I chose were pink lemonade and smores. The smores cupcakes were so yummy! I've established however, that pink lemonade is NOT my favorite. Others seemed to have liked it though so that was good. On to the pictures!

Pink Lemonade cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing:
And these were the smores cupcakes with marshmallow buttercream icing:
YUM!

Cookies... or lack there of

My in laws are in town visiting us this evening. I made an awesome dinner: skirt steak on the grill, corn on the cob, grilled onions, mexican rice... yum! My father in law has a MAJOR sweet tooth so I thought I'd make him some coconut macaroons. He'd love to eat them and I need a picture of them for my blog! Win win right?

We finished dinner and I put the baby to bed with plans of taking pictures once the baby was asleep. I go into the kitchen with my camera and what do I find, my father in law and husband munching away and no macaroons to photograph! Note to self, do not leave boys alone with my cookies if I need them to still be there when I return. Maybe next time!

Baby Shower!

I threw a surprise shower for a friend at work today. I honestly, can not believe that I was able to keep it a secret for as long as I did. I was just so excited for the parents to be! The problem was, Ashley, mommy to be, wasn't able to make it the shower so I had to try and make a cake that was manly! What's more manly than a ducky cake? Not much! HA!

I had to drive this cake downtown which really stressed me out. I had nightmares that I would hit a pothole on I55 and my poor ducky's head would fall off or I would need to slam on my brake and he would be splattered against my dashboard. Thankfully none of those scenarios came to be. All three cakes made it downtown in one piece! Whew! Congratulations again, Jake and Ashley!

Branching out....

So my boss had a birthday recently. I thought it would be fun to cover his office in streamers and fill it with huge balloons.... so I talked my co-workers into it and on we went!


What's a birthday celebration without cake though? Rather than make a cake, I thought cupcakes would hold up on my crazy long commute better. My boss and I share a love for Ricky Martin and he loves Cher so we printed off teeny images of them and used them as toppers. HILARIOUS! Ok... maybe I was the only one that thought so... it was a lot of fun to do though and I hope we were able to make his day a special one.


On to the cupcakes! Blue champagne cupcakes with champagne icing covered in blue crystals.


About a month later, I was approached by co-workers to make a cake for our other boss. She was turning the big 3-0 and we needed a way to make sure we celebrated. How did we do that? See cake below.

Umm.... don't ask. She LOVED it. Enough said. ;-) Cherry cake with chocolate buttercream icing. Eyes and teeth were made of fondant. Nose and dots on the eyes was gel icing.

Anjali turns 2!

So.. one of the other reasons that I started to take cake decorating classes was because I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on my daughter's birthday cakes when I could very well do them myself. She loves Minnie Mouse so I set out in search of a minnie cake that I thought was doable. I didn't want to do something that would take to much time since I was also making a 4th birthday cake for my goddaughter. Thankfully, I took the friday before off from work because it took me a lot longer than expected although that might have had something to do with my soon to be two year old "helper" who kept insisting that she taste test my frosting!


After many many hours though, I finally got them done... a 2nd Minnie birthday cake and a 4th Tinkerbell birthday cake. The first layer of the minnie cake was confetti and the second layer was chocolate. The first layer of the Tink cake was confetti and the second was a butter cake. They were both frosted with almond buttercream.

I thought they came out pretty cute- although between you and me, that bow was almost the end of me! Here they are!

Where it all began!

Alright! Want to see some cakes? I'll start from the beginning with my first cake that was decorated beyond store bought icing, sprinkles, and a candle or two. Don't laugh....it was my first cake! Thankfully, I've learned how to keep the cake crumbs out of my frosting, how to cover my board, and to not stick random utensils into the cake if I run out of hands ;-)

My second cake that I made was for my mom's birthday. It turned out a bit better. It was a yellow cake that I dyed purple inside. The things at the bottom are sweet pea flowers and NOT feet- thanks for that Dad!

Third cake for class was cute and a lot of fun! My daughter couldn't wait to dig right in! Notice her arm in the background. Daddy had his work cut out for him trying to keep her away so that I could take a picture!

And my final cake! I had a ton of fun figuring out how to use fondant. My present cake- isn't it cute?