Tutorials Anyone?

Hi All!
So I been thinking of sharing some tutorials with you all but it's amazing how many is already out there. And since I am a beginner at all of this I hate to give you all a tutorial that is already out there. But hmmmm.... maybe I'll come up with some thing different and if not different. Than I will just try to share what I learned through out my experience in baking and decorating cakes regardless of how many tutorials are out there. lol

Iced cake

This is a fully iced cake with texture to give it a wave look for this beach theme cake. I made the seashells and starfish out of gumpaste. Thanks to Confetti cakes book I was able to make these seashells with out having to come up with my own techniques. I didn't add much deco because the bride wanted to add on the seashells herself and if you noticed the cake topper... The bride also made this out of polymer clay. At first I thought she made it out of gumpaste or fondant but turns out she used clay. I thought it looked cute and tried my best to work around her cake topper.
The cake is a yellow cake with chocolate buttercream filling all made from scratch.

Twilight Cupcakes

These cupcakes were made last minute for my husband friend's daughter. She loves twilight and definitly loved Jacob. LOL But due to it being last minute I didn't get to do my decorations in advance and had to scramble the night before. I decided to just go with "team edward and jacob" theme cupcakes. I tried to make the words look like teenage handwriting and I also used my cricut cake to cut out the circles for the cake. Oh! I had bit of a problem on the cake batter... The recipe I was using for vanilla cake wasn't the best. So I made a whole new batter using a different recipe and it came out perfect! It's amazing how many different recipes there are for just one type of cake flavor. I usually just go with what sounds yummy in the recipe and give it a try. It's the only way I think I will find the perfect cake flavor.

My 10th Fondant Cake

Here you will see a cake I did for a little girl's birthday party. I had a bit of a bump a long the way of decorating my cake. First off I started by baking a 9" and 8" round cake and covered it with fondant. It looked like two same size round cakes just the lower tier a tad bit smaller than the top. But from afar it looked almost like one tall cake. I was so disappointed and almost discouraged about the whole cake. I think what discouraged me the most is that I had to remove the fondant before I could do anything else with the cake! But I decided to do my best and carve down the 8" cake into a 6" round cake. Then I some how managed to salvage the fondant and use it again to cover the cake. When I stacked it, it looked a lot better. Tip to self: Never make any cakes with a radius measurement of an inch away from another, make it at least 2 inches apart from one another so that when you stack it, it won't look like it's the same size when covered with fondant. After all of that I noticed that there was a huge piece on one side of the cake that wasn't covered by fondant. So the designs that I originally had for the cake had to be improvised into a totally different design. I changed the design and worked with what I had to save the cake. Thank God it all pulled through! Did I mention this was my first order I did using my airbrush. It was nerve wrecking just hoping that the airbrush wouldn't spray too much color on at first but then I got the hang of it. This was definitely a cake that helped me to over come obstacles and learn from my mistakes. By the way the one at the top of the cake is a candle made out of gumpaste. I tried to do the whole Pink Cake Box # look but did it a bit wrong, next time I need to have a pic in front of me to be sure it is identical to what I want.

Icing My First Cake

Recently I wasn't feeling well so my first attempt at icing a cake didn't come out as planned but I tried my best. This is a 10" round lemon cake with buttercream filling. It was a challenge for me to get the right consistency for the buttercream so that I could crumb coat it and coat it once again for the final touch. After some time of trial and error I finally got a good consistency. Then the challenging part was to get a smooth surface and it wasn't so easy, it definitely takes practice. I tried! You can check out the cake by watching my video below.

My 9th Fondant Cake

I made this cake for a lovely couple who wanted orchids cascading down their cake. It was simple yet stylish once I added chocolate drizzles. The cake was made from scratch and I don't know if you noticed or if I mentioned that I am now frequently making cakes from scratch rather than cheating and using cake mix. The flavor and texture of home made cake seems better in flavor and more filling. I prefer scratch over store bought cake mix. So I made vanilla cake for one tier and chocolate for the other with chocolate ganache filling. I decided to also use my left over ganache to drizzle over the fondant. This was a 2 tier 8" square and 6" square cake. I had fun acting like a florist and arranging flowers on the cake.

My 8th Fondant Cake

My very first wedding cake attempt went quite well. I used my famous marshmallow fondant and made the flower out of gumpaste. To make my gum paste I usually use fondant and add tylose. It saves me a whole lot of money rather than spending it on store bought gumpaste. The cake is 2 tiers and the bottom tier is a 10" round and 6" round cake.

Disastrous Cake!

OMG so I made a 4 tier round cake for Easter and it was a beautiful disaster... It was a donation to a church, they thought it was beautiful but all I could see was the disaster.
There was some type of beauty in it but the cake itself was a disaster. Still don't get it?
Well I made some Easter themed figurines out of gum paste and those came out awesome. But when I baked the cake I did some thing that I wish I never had done. I put my frosted cake in the refrigerator and as soon as I pulled it out I covered it with fondant. I know right? WTF was I thinking, well I am a beginner so what do you expect it's called ignorance. My fondant got really sticky looking and started to get blotchy with tears of water. It looked like it was half melting and sweating. But luckily I let it sit out for a while and it dried up. Although the cake looked a bit lopsided and the edges weren't as smooth. It was a hott mess. I just took it as trial and error, but I wish I didn't have to experience it with a 4 tier cake that fed about 100-120 servings!!!!Here are some pics of my bunny buddies and chicks that I made. The rest is history!

My 7th Fondant Cake

This was a very fun fun cake. Yup I said fun twice ;-)
Everything went perfect for this cake and so did baking it. I made this cake out of scratch and it is yellow cake with buttercream filling/frosting. I made about 50 cupcakes to go with the Hello Kitty cake I made. The flowers are made out of gum paste and I used my "neon swirl technique" as described in my Neon Cupcake Swirls blog. I replaced Hello Kitty's bow with a red flower as seen in the picture below and instead of buying a Hello Kitty cake pan I carved it out myself which was a very simple technique.

My 6th Fondant Cake

This is a Thomas the Train cake that I made for a beloved family member. I wanted to originally make a Topsy turvy cake but knew that my beginner skills would make it look horrible! So since I didn't have balls to carve it into a Topsy turvy I went with a different technique similar to what I wanted. I used Styrofoam and shaved it down so that is was at an angle and then placed each tier of cake on top of it. This made it look lopsided and almost as if it is floating. I love this look because it is very clean and I am thinking of making another one like it just a different theme. Also I can't forget to mention where I learned this technique of tilting my cakes... I give all the credit to Miss Mayen from YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/user/09165067633.
She has a bunch of tutorials and because of her generosity in sharing that is what motivated me to begin decorating cakes. You will be surprised how many other YouTube users out there have awesome videos on baking and cake decorating. Feel free to check out my channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/mommyssweetlife. I am hoping to make more videos on tutorials to share with others what I learned and how I go about my way of doing it.
Thomas the Train cake is covered in marshmallow fondant which came out to be very delicious! I colored it with Wilton icing paste colors and then dusted the clouds (which looks almost like flowers lol) with pearl dust to give it a little spark. Thomas the Train was made out of gum paste which is my first time ever using gum paste to make a figurine or any sort of deco. I enjoyed using gum paste because it kept it's shape better than fondant and seemed to dry a bit harder as well. I am very pleases with how Thomas came out, in fact to make him I had a wooden Thomas the Train in front of me while sculpting the gum paste one. I found this to help so that I can match them both up and make sure my sculpture looks like the original Thomas. The railroad tracks go all around the bottom tier cake and it is fondant. The clouds were cut into circles with a cookie cutter and then I used a small knife to shape it kind of like a cloud. Then for James (the red engine) I used gum paste and cut him out with a small knife. I carved in his smile but in the pic you are unable to see it. For James' little hut I got the shape from a children story book by cutting the page and shape out of the book and then rolling out my fondant so that it is thin enough to carve out the same shape. I hope you all enjoy this cake as much as I do. To me this was a success...