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?

Hi!

Hi! Welcome to the Sweet Life blog! My name is Michelle and I love to bake and decorate. I've enjoyed cooking and baking for others since I was a young child and am happy to continue to do it to this day.

A little about me, I've been married for going on 6 years and have a 2 year old daughter that loves to help me in the kitchen. I just finished my Masters degree in Clinical Psychology and my graduation gift to myself was a cake decorating class! I was watching a food network cake challenge for the millionth time and wondered why I couldn't do the same. I realized that I could and so I did!

I want to use this blog to keep track of the work that I have done. If you are interested in ordering something, please feel free to let me know!