Leigh B's Wedding!

Leigh and I are life friends. We've grown up together, from carpooling to and from elementry school to going to the prom together in high school. There are even pictures of all four of us (brother and sister included!) in the bathtub together when we were little!! Those were the days....haha! So when Leigh's mom Mrs. Diane asked me to do a cake for her wedding party in Goldsboro, there was NO hesitation. And as classy and elegant as Leigh is, her cake had to be too!

This cake was so much fun to make! It was three different flavors...vanilla, chocolate with a layer of chocolate gnache, and white almond sour cream pound cake. Delicious! The cake was buttercream with royal icing piping and handmade gumpaste lillies and roses, which turned out so pretty!

We had a little bit of excitement with the middle chocolate layer, where I learned that hot gnache does not actually stick to the cake, and it is essential to let the gnache cool BEFORE icing the cake....but all in all, it turned out fantastic. I was so pleased and proud of this one! There were only a few slices left, but after all of that dancing someone had to grab a little extra sugar-filled goodness!!

So congratulations to the new Mr. and Mrs. Cory Mitchell! I wish for you both nothing less than God's best blessings!! I'm so glad I got to be a part of the celebration of your new life together. Congrats!

Love,
Beth

Birthdays Galore!!

Just when I thought I had done every known monkey cake possible......

Curious George! How could I turn down a Curious George cake for my beautiful cousin David's 1st birthday?? He is such a blessing to our family, I was VERY excited to do his cake. Luckily, I got a 'before' picture and an 'after' picture!


I was also able to celebrate with my dear friend Anne for her birthday this month! Anne is a France-fanatic, and I think she would fit in beautifully in such a classy city as Paris. In the spirit of her lovely culture, Anne got a Paris cake for her birthday...complete with an Eiffel Tower!


Stay tuned....October is going to prove to be a busy cake month!!

My First Big-Girl Cake

A few months ago, I was asked to do a cake for my Aunt Laura's parent's 50th wedding anniversiary. Now, at this point, I had never made a cake larger than a 2-tiered birthday cake....and she needed a cake to feed 150 people!

Talk about a leap of faith, asking your neice to do a cake for you when she has absolutely NO experience....but don't we all have to have people who have faith in us to give us experience opportunities, so we can gain experience? Thank goodness for folks like Aunt Laura...who have much more faith in me than I deserve!!

After some serious time and effort, the cake came together better than I ever could have hoped. I made all of the flowers for the cake myself out of gum paste, which is one of my favorite cake tricks. Its just like sculpting, and turns out SO pretty in the end! On the way to the church delivering the cake, a huge gust of wind blew away some of my lillies, which immediately exploded into gum paste dust on the ground...but luckily I had enough made to get by.

Needless to say, I am SO proud of this cake!!

Me, begging my mom to stop taking pictures. But you know Momma, she never listens!

The sugar flowers were definately the 'icing on the cake' here! I think they turned out so good!

Monkey-ing Around!

Apparently this is the year of the monkeys! In the past few weeks I've gotten to do two cakes for little boys....and the theme of both of them was monkeys!

Both cakes were delicious vanilla cakes with all buttercream decoratiosn....and sad to say, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of any of them while they were being eaten...they got 'gone' too fast!

Learning point: when making icing that is DARK brown, as the fur of the monkeys that I did, it helps to start out with chocolate buttercream as a base! Coloring straight from white buttercream can take a LOT of food coloring. Dark brown teeth are never that attractive...even after eating a slice of cake!

Here's a cute monkey, peeking over the edge of the cake, welcoming Baby Jack! (I promise I took the picture in the right direction....my lack of technological skills is astounding...)

Happy 1st Birthday Max! I just thought this jungle monkey turned out absolutely precious....in a very masculine, boy way of course!!!

These cakes were such fun to make, and the chocolate buttercream tasted delicious as well! I can't wait to move on to my next jungle creature....

Happy caking!

Beth

First Post!

Hi All!


So, as I'm working on my PhD in Physiology at NC State, I've become a closet cake baker. Between the pigs, the vet school, classes, etc, its nice to have something that is full of sugar and flour (and flowers!) that tastes delicious and lets me be creative. As my life is full of 'ologies'....biology, physiology, immunology..... my little creative venture is going to be another 'ology.' Cakeologie.


I've decided that I want to keep a record of the cakes I've been baking....and I think this is going to be a fun way to do it! This is a learning process, the blogging AND the baking, but I'm incredibly excited about both.


So, to catch up on the last year of cake fun, here are a few pictures of some of the cakes I've done so far. I've taken the liberty of not photographing the disasters....those were eaten on the floor of my kitchen with a large spoon....but I'm really proud of the ones here! I can't wait to learn more...and bake more...soon!

A Kansas State themed cake for a friend going away to vet school!

In true Ashley and Brad style...a cake with Canada scenery and lion/tiger friends!

Snazzy shoe cake for a Sex and the City themed bachelorette!

Tenessee Volunteers themed groom's cake for Laura and Chad.

I was going for realistic and ferocious...instead I made cute cats!

Ashlyn and Chad's wedding cake...It had to be beautiful for such a beautiful couple!

A festive birthday cake for my sister Betsy... a cake, not a bonnet!

Cakes from my cake class!