Baseball Cake

Today was my son-in-law Tommy's Birthday.  Since I'm the go-to-girl for cakes, my daughter asked me to make Tommy, a die hard Angel's fan, a baseball cake.  She gave me complete freedom to do whatever.  After thinking about it awhile, I decided on a smaller cake with cupcakes. I like the way it turned out and there was more than enough cake for about 30 plus people. This cake was a celebration all itself.

Baseball cake
A few items you'll need:
red food coloring paste writing gel
fine water color type paint brush
Green food coloring
Square pan and half of a ball pan
Decorator frosting (about 8 cups worth)
White fondant
3 cake mixes

 

Bake cakes. I used 3 boxes of Duncan Hines Chocolate cake mix to quickly make my cakes. For my square, I used 1 1/2  boxes of the mix.

 

 

For the half round, I used less than half of the cake mix. And for the cupcakes, I used the remainder of the cake mix.

 

After cakes were cooled, I did a scratch coat of frosting on my round cake.  I cut and filled my square cake and did a scratch coat.  I rolled out a thin layer of fondant and placed it over my round cake.  I gently pushed the fondant around my cake making it nice and smooth and then cut of the excess.

 

I tinted some of my frosting green and frosted my square cake. Here I added the round fondant cake to the top. 

 

 

I took a little bit of my red writing icing and added a drop of water to it.  I mixed it in a bowl.  For this, I made sure the consistency was still thick but thin enough to paint with.  I didn't want any drips or running.

 

I painted on a long line with the red color and then added the stitches.

Once both sides of the ball were complete, I added more green frosting to the cake with a Wilton tip #233. I wanted that grassy field look.

 

Wilton tip#233 

 

 And now my cake's complete and ready to party!

 

 

This is what makes it all worth it!

 

Happy Baking and celebrating and of course...eating!

 

 

The Thanksgiving Table

 

One holiday that I am most thankful for is Thanksgiving. It's a time when family and friends come together and celebrate all they are thankful for and the blessings that they have been given. I love spending each and every moment with my company and I also love giving back to them whenever possible.  This gathering I put on was for them, the ones I love, the ones I cherish, the ones God has blessed me with. This was also a birthday party for my son and a 25th anniversary celebration for hubby and I. Three parties in one....

and it was absolutely lovely, simple and fun.

 

Here are a few of the decorating ideas that I did for next to nothing.

 

 

I added a sprig of orange above my mirror.  This brought in some of the fall colors.  It was something someone had given me the year before as a gift.  For the flags, I used twine and unlined (computer) paper. I simply cut triangles, used a hole punch and punched holes on both sides of the top of the triangles and then strung them with twine. With a pencil, I added letters and once they looked good and I was happy with the sizes, I used a felt pen to color them in.  This hung above my dessert table/ candy buffet. 

 

 

 

I made a simple cake and covered it in homemade fondant since I had no time to run to a bake and cake supply.  It was so simple to make with marshmallows, one thing I always have on hand in my home.  (You'll soon know I'm a roasted marshmallow junkie and roast them over my stove all the time for a quick snack.)

Here is a link to a recipe just like the one I used~

http://rosebakes.com/how-to-make-homemade-marshmallow-fondant-yummy/

 

For the flag on top of the cake, I used grocery sacks and cut them into triangles, glued buttons on them and then glued them onto twine that I tied onto  two wooden skewers.   I also used fresh flowers in front and added a sash to the bottom of the flags and a ribbon to the bottom of the cake.



 

For the table setting, I found round cut logs for my table and used fresh vegetables like artichoke, pumpkin, dried corn cobs, grapes and fresh sunflowers. After the event was over, the foods I used to cook with and eat.  I gave the pumpkins to everyone that came. Then I printed a thanksgiving blessing and added it to the setting.  After adding candles, the table looked complete.

 

Here's another view.

 

 For my little food area, I used my coca cola crate, which I adore, to gather up my utensils and such.

 

Here's the dessert table with all items added.

This is what one of my displays looked like until I added the finishing touches. You can see the big log I stole from hubbies fire log pile.  (I did eventually let him burn them but I held them for almost a year before I could part with them.) They added nice height to the table.

 

Me and the hubs. Happy 25th anniversary hubby.

This is my candy buffet bar.  It was smaller than usual because I had made so many desserts.  I found as many orange, yellow and red candies as I could for this.

 

And when my family and friends left, they left with a SwEeT reminder of the thanksgiving celebration we had just celebrated.

 

Happy Baking, Making and Eating~

Hippy Chic Bridal Shower

I was recently asked to help my sister with a bridal shower she was hosting for her lovely friend. The bride to be really wanted a Hippy Chic style shower.  I instantly started going through as many Tye dye or hippy style cakes as I could.  In the end, I derived my own idea by trying to work in fresh flowers and using my airbrush.  If you don't have an airbrush, the design below will be very tricky but you can always use different colored frosting, pipe it into designs and then smooth it out with a warm knife.  
Here are a few ideas below for your own party.

For the cake, I made a two tier and frosted it with a rich butter cream. This was a white cake with fresh sliced strawberries to go with a summer day. I airbrushed this cake and let it dry in the fridge over night.  The morning of the shower, I added a sash of ribbon that I found at Michael's craft store and pinned it on in the back.  Then I added fresh flowers and some grass spray on the top. 

 

 

I swirled the top so that if it showed through the flowers, it still have a finished look.

 

My sister wanted the cake displayed in front of her stairwell. This shot shows how a simple area can blossom and really look even nicer in pictures with a few close ups. 

I used simple crepe paper for this area.  You can also use strips of material but this is a more economical way to decorate.  The end result was still very classy and whimsical. I stapled (since my sis doesn't own pins) to the top of her wall.  Then I twisted slightly and stapled at the bottom to hold the paper securely in place. The wind couldn't blow this down if it tried! 

 

 

Here is where I added fresh white and orange daisies.  I used a thread and needle for just the blooms.  I went through the back of the bloom with the string.  I stapled the top of the string to the top of the wall and tied it on, I adjusted the flowers and let them hang.  

 

My sister also bought a few lovely bouquets that we arranged for the candy buffet and cake table.  I love fresh flowers and since the bride's colors were blue, purple and orange, I thought these gorgeous orange sunflowers that we found at Costco wholesale were just dreamy.

For one of the candy ideas, my sister took chocolate candies that were coated purple and placed them in a large martini glass. She add beautiful candy rock swizzle sticks in blue and purple. Yum.

 



 

 While I was inside decorating, my sister and the bride to be's mommy decorated the outside.  Here is a lovely table display they set up using martini glass favors, candles and fresh flowers.

They also hung fun and whimsical paper lanterns.

 



A couple days prior to the shower, I had found these cute little ducks in the brides colors.  The fact that they had purple peace signs on them added to the hippy charm.  We floated these around the pool.   I lucked out and found 7 of them at the 99cent only store.  Gosh, I love that store, it's like a party in a box sometimes!

 



 

This is a nice shot of the tables set up.  Hi to my mommy and hi to my sis in the back ground.  Talk about hard workers!

Here are some cute little charms the mommy of the bride found for each of the glasses.

 

These were some of the favors for the ladies in attendance. Since it was a pool party too, they had chap sticks with peace symbols, and also plastic take home water bottles.  Talk about spoiled guests.

 

That's me, my sis and my lovely momma. At this point, we were all finished with an hour to spare.

 

 

Here's the lovely bride to be.

 

 

 

 

 

I really really enjoyed helping with this shower.  It was fun, colorful and completely whimsical. And from what I hear, the bride and the guest all loved it too.