'Birthday Present' cake

Mayra's birthday party was kind of last-minute, so we came up with this square 'gift' cake - simple ready-made frosting and a bow made from satin ribbon (wired so it holds the shape better). If you make this cake with buttercream frosting, just add the bow RIGHT BEFORE you serve it, so the ribbon won't have time to soak up the grease from the frosting. :)

Rubik's Cube Cake

We had a huge Rubik's Cube cake for Chad's 14th birthday. We used a square cake pan, 4 layers (pvc supports for the bottom layers). The colored tiles are all rolled fondant, over white butercream frosting (this one was particularly yummy!)

Skateboard Cake

Chad got a new skateboard for his 11th birthday, and helped me to design this cake. We used two round cake pans for the board, trimming off the sides before placing them end-to-end, and then filled in the middle with the scraps of cake from the sides. Chad insisted that we needed to raise the ends, and luckily we had enough scraps left! :) The wheels are marshmallows, with gummy lifesavers for the bearings.

Basketball Cake

This one was for a Team Party at the end of the basketball season - Gabriel's team mates LOVED it! The basketball is made from the same dome pan we used for the R2-D2 cake (below) and I added regular food coloring to some buttercream frosting to make the ball orange. The stripes are simply black licorice. :)

Treasure Chest Cake

We celebrated Gabriel's 8th birthday with a Pirate Party. The cake is made with three layers of 13 x 9 cake, with a cardboard support under the top layer so I could prop it open as the lid for the chest. Everything 'inside' the treasure chest is candy - ring pops, chocolate coins, candy necklaces, and the Gushers fruit snacks that look like little jewels.

R2-D2 cake

The Star Wars party was a really really REALLY big deal, so we had to come up with a cool cake! The idea for te R2-D2 cake came from the 'Betty Crocker Bake-N-Fill pan', which includes a pan shaped like a dome - the perfect head for R2. Then it was just a matter of supporting the lower layers of the cake with PVC pieces, with disposable cakeboards in between each layer. The buttons on R2 were all candy, and the blue sections were rolled fondant. (the legs are cardboard covered in buttercream icing - couldn't come up with a good way to secure actual cake onto the sides of this one!)

TANK CAKE

This was for gabriel's sixth birthday, with a G.I. Joe/military theme. We made marshmallow guns out of PVC pipe and spray-painted them (camouflage, of course) and had an all-out marshmallow WAR outside. The 'tank' was made from a bread pan cake, a cupcake, and a pirouette cookie, with fondant frosting rolled out for the camo look. I also added crumbled 'Nilla Wafers' for the sand under the cake.