Cake Dummy

Almost a month ago, Tyler and I had our engagement photo session with Soul Mates Photo, Melissa the photographer does amazing work! I've used her work as my profile pic and header image.

Tyler and I love to cook together, so we thought it was only fitting for us to have some pictures of us working away in the kitchen (see our engagement session here). Because I love to bake and decorate, I wanted to make sure we had cakes in the background... enter my first cake dummy! I loved decorating the cake dummy, why you may ask... because I don't have to worry about puncturing a hole in the cake, I don't have to worry about the cake being lopsided... I just get to decorate! So here it is, my first dummy cake!


I love Japanese patterns. In college, most of my paintings for my advanced painting class were inspired by Japanese patterns. Japanese patterns are geometric and simplistic and I just love it! The pattern you see above is the classic wave pattern. After covering the cake with fondant, I cut out a scalloped shaped fondant piece and wrapped it around the cake. Then I went in and hand-painted the wave pattern in. It didn't come out the way I wanted it, but it kind of has that Japanese wood-block print feel. So I like it now. I want to do this cake again and I may try my hand at pipping royal icing instead of hand-painting.

The remodel of our kitchen has been completed, so look out for yummy treats!!! Until then, happy baking!

~Danielle

Hand-Painted Optimus Prime

As I mentioned, I did a Transformers themed ice cream cake today. But I didn't get a chance to talk about the decoration. So here are a few behind-the-scene pictures of Optimus Prime.

I used this image from Google as my guideline

I used modeling chocolate and fondant for the base

Because of the gradient in the colors, I had to do more hand-painting. So, I got another chance to practice my skills!!! Woohoo!

And that's it! I hope you like it!

Until next week, happy baking!

~Danielle

Hibiscus Cake

My little sister turned 21 last week and all she wanted from me was a cake with a hibiscus on it. So, I thought I would use her cake as an opportunity to practice my hand-painting techniques. Her cake was a 6" 4 layered cake (2 vanilla buttermilk, 2 red velvet) covered in white fondant.

I haven't learned how to do gumpaste flowers yet, so I couldn't make the hibiscus three-dimensional. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a class soon!

But, my best friend did give me a fondant/gumpaste tool set for my birthday that I wanted to use. I decided to make the petals come off the cake a little to give it a bit of dimension.


Then I hand-painted each hibiscus. Here is the finished look with red velvet cupcakes to match :)


Happy Birthday Jen!