New cake order Ombre style

Yesterday I was fortunate to send out another cake order. Yeah! This time it was for a basic 8" chocolate devil's food cake with Ombre-style piping. I used italian buttercream icing for the piping and realized that for the price I was charging I probably should've used a more basic buttercream. 

The customer asked for a bavarian cream filling after my quote so even though I should have charged more I really wanted to make it. I could have used pre-made bavarian cream to keep the cost down but I was going to get to learn something new. Have you ever had bavarian cream from scratch? OMG! The scratch bavarian cream with the chocolate cake and the italian buttercream was soooooo yummy together. I almost wish the customer hadn't come to get her cake.

As with all the cakes I do, I learn something that I need to remember for next time. I see plenty of things on this cake that I would like to fix but I KNOW this cake tasted amazing and I think I was able to make Bill's birthday that much more memorable.

Mushroom Fairy Cottage Cake for a seven year old

I can't believe another year has past and I've created another 3-D birthday cake for one of my children. As I've said before, I really enjoy the challenge of cake decorating and I always learn something new with each one.
For this year's cake I created a mushroom cottage complete with fairies. This is the second toadstool I've done for my daughter. The first one you can see here was a large icecream cake. My then 2 yr. old enjoyed it very much... well the decorative sugar on it at least.
This year's cake was inspired by Debbie Brown's "50 Easy Party Cakes" and I followed the general instructions for it. Because most of the guests don't seem to like too much fondant, I decided to ice the cake with buttercream and use the fondant as accents.

I created the toadstool shape with the help of a giant cupcake mold and half of a Wilton sportsball mold. As always, I froze the cake before carving and putting on the crumb coat. Some people don't believe in freezing cake but I feel the large amounts of butter and sugar keep it perfectly for the short amount of time it sees the freezer. Once the crumb coat had set in the fridge (15 min.) I frosted and assembled the cake. My girls helped create the fondant fairies, the door and the paths.

I'm pretty happy with how smoothly this cake went and it was right in line with my current mushroom obsession. Stay tuned for another cake as my niece will be turning three soon. What will it be?