Renee's Birthday Cakes

When I finished my last cake decorating class, my mom asked me if I'd do the cake for my sister Renee's birthday, a few weeks away.  I was excited to try something new, and started looking around the Wilton website for ideas. What I found was this.  It was perfect.  Renee is a seamstress, and makes lovely wedding dresses.  I decided to just do the big cake, as that would be enough for the usual birthday crowd.

I rented the cake pan from PM Hobbycraft. When I got it home I thought I'd better make 2 cakes, just in case one wasn't enough.  The pan wasn't nearly as big as I thought it would be.  So I came up with a colour and flavour scheme for the second cake (yellow & blue/ lemon & blueberry).

After a couple of mishaps with baking the cakes (I really need to get a louder timer), I had two lovely cakes in my freezer, waiting for the day of the party.


I had to figure out how to make the bodices.  The pattern on the website uses fondant, but I've never worked with it at all before, and I didn't want to practice on a 'real' project.  I'm also too cheap to buy a whole box of fondant for such a small required amount.  I was not going to cover the whole dress in fondant - it doesn't taste nearly as good as 100% butter buttercream.  So, I made them with royal icing.  I used 4 copies of the pattern provided on the website, covered them with waxed paper on a piece of cardboard, and piped and filled in the pattern with the icing, 2 pink and 2 white, as well as piping the hangers.  I waited a few days, then used more royal icing to glue each pair of bodice pieces together, sandwiching the hanger in between.  It worked a whole lot better than I expected it to.

I also had to make all the flowers.  I used a few different drop flower tips (I honestly can't remember which ones), and piped them all on a cookie sheet lined again with waxed paper.  I had decided to use gold peal dust to make the flowers shimmer.  There are two application methods listed on the pearl dust package - I chose the wrong one.  I chose to try the wet method, mixing the dust with clear vanilla and brushing it on with a soft brush.  The shimmer was all blotchy.  Bad enough that I scrapped them all and with only 36 hours 'til party time, re-piped all my flowers and applied the gold dust the with a dry brush.  That was definitely the right choice.  They looked much better.  Unfortunately, the flowers lost some of their definition as I dabbed on the dust, so I don't think I'll use the it on buttercream flowers again - at least not the little flowers.

Once all was prepped, I just had to put it all together.  I cut a slit in the top of each cake, after icing it, and tucked in the bodices.  I then glued all the flowers on with more buttercream icing.  I used  (or broke!) every one of the pink flowers, but only about half of the yellow.

This is actually a simplified account of this project.  I ran into snag after snag, but it was a great learning experience.  I'm glad I have no current cake projects in the works and I can just relax and get ready to go on vacation.

I just realized...

I just realized that I haven't posted any pictures of Bryn.  So here are a few of my recent favourites.







Most of Bryn's best pictures relate to food. There is a reason she's chubby - and not just 'cause she's mine!

Look Mommy, Mato!

No, Bryn isn't talking so clearly yet.  It's my niece, Gwen.  I've been watching her for my sister Lisa a couple of days a week while she figures out a more permanent child care solution.  Last Thursday we were waiting for Lisa to arrive at the end of the day, playing in the front yard, when I noticed that Bryn had a couple of crab apples in her hands (we have a tree in the back yard).  I didn't really think much of it - she loves to pick up the fallen apples.  By the time Lisa got here, Gwen had one of the apples.  She went up to her Mommy and said (something like), 'Look Mommy, Mato!'  Lisa said, 'Oh, have you got an apple?' (again, I'm paraphrasing).  And Gwen responded 'No, Mommy, Mato!'  We took a closer look and sure enough, it was a little green tomato.  My Bryn had thieved two tomatoes from my plant in the front garden!  I'll have to watch her more closely if I want to have a harvest this year!