Baby Boy's Baptism Cake with Cupcakes

All Photography by:  Jerome Callender Photography

So, it's been a long time since I've been able to post anything.  I've had a lot going on in my life, I got married, went on a honeymoon and moved into a new house!  Now that all the wedding planning, traveling and moving is complete, I have some time to catch up on my blog.  This baptism cake is from a few months ago and my wedding cake will be a blog post soon, once the wedding pictures are ready!

I made this cake for my friend's baby boy's baptism.  He's such an adorable little guy, I was excited to make it for him :)

His parents requested chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  I'm always happy to do a buttercream cake, as I think it tastes much better than fondant, but does sometimes take me more time to get smooth with sharp edges. 

This cake was three layers of chocolate cake filled and covered with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream.

To decorate the cake, I made a cross motif out of rolled fondant with a bit of gumpaste.  Also a simple border with a bow and the cake was done!

For the cupcakes, I did a swirl of buttercream with a large star tip.  The topper "L"s were made of piped white chocolate.  I wrote out 20 "L"s on a page, covered it with a piece of wax paper and piped onto that.  I like to have a stencil, but you could pipe it free hand.  The chocolate was put in the fridge for a few minutes and they were ready to go on the cupcakes :) 



The last part of this cake setup was the blocks.  They were made out of rice krispie treats (RKT) covered in fondant.  I didn't cover them in buttercream first, just rolled the fondant out thick, so that the lumps and bumps in the RKT couldn't be seen.  The letters for the blocks were made using a chocolate letter mold.  I first thought the chocolate letters could stick to the fondant with a bit of water, but quickly learned that it doesn't hold after the water dries and used melted chocolate instead.

 Congratulations Leo!

Baptism Bible Cake

I made a cake for my niece a few weeks ago :)   It was a bible cake made with the Wilton's book pan that her parents provided for me.

They requested a traditional butter cake.  I had some issues with cracking on the top during baking.  I think it was because I had the oven temperature too high (350) when I should really have done it at 325 or even 300 degrees Fahrenheit.  The 350 degrees would usually be okay for a butter cake, but since this pan is so large, I should've reduced the temperature to make sure the middle was baked before the outsides started burning.  The cracking wasn't too big of an issue though since it went on the bottom, so I just trimmed it to make it level and flipped it over.

I crumb coated the cake in a simple buttercream icing, just  butter and icing sugar and made it as smooth as possible.  I left that to set in the fridge while I made the LMF fondant.  LMF is really easy to make and ready for use right after it is made which makes it quite convenient.  So as soon as I made the fondant, I rolled it out and covered the cake.  To make the crease in the book more visible, I used the ball tool from my gumpaste tool set to push into the crease. 



 After tinting some fondant pink, I used a mold to make the border and a strip of rolled fondant to make the book mark.  The silicon molds are very convenient for making borders and other decorations.  The key to using them is to brush it with cornstarch or powdered sugar first, so the fondant/gum paste pops out easily and to push the fondant/gum paste in level with the back of the mold so that the decoration sits flat on the cake when its done.

I formed the cross out of strips of fondant mixed with some tylose powder to stiffen it up.  The cross was a little tricky and took me some time to get right, as it was hard to free form all the pieces and make them symmetrical.  The letters were made with tappits.  The detail above the date was made using the same mold as the border.   




This cake ended up getting completed all in one day, from baking to completion.  This is a big accomplishment for me since usually I take days to get a cake done!