lynndaviscakes

Lightning McQueen is hand painted on Fondant with clear vanilla extract and food coloring gel.  If you need help in drawing Lightning try to find a coloring book picture and cut it out, photocopy and size the picture to fit in the cake.  Take the picture and lay it over the fondant to get the general shape.  With a toothpick gently go over the lines so that you get the general details.  Invest in a detailed paint brush that is food safe.  Paint in all of the colors and leave the black outlining to the last.  Ice the cake and lay the fondant painting on the cake then decorate around it.  This cake I used a buttercream frosting and added 1/4 cup of Hershey’s Cocoa Baking Powder and 2 tbsps of Chocolate Extract for the brown frosting.  The cake was a hit and they removed the painting to keep before cutting the cake.

A quick and easy way to decorate cakes is to use candy molds.  I used the rose flower and bud candy mold and used the leaf tip to finish this cake.  I also put buds and leaves on each corners of the cake.

This is really not as hard as it looks.  I took the Wilton Course on stacking cakes and the instructor told us, just remember you are just decorating two cakes.  Prior to taking the class I tried this but when I removed the top tier all of the icing came off of the bottom cake.  The easy fix is to sprinkle powder sugar before stacking the cakes.  Use wooden dowels to hold up the second cake.

What do you do when you have someone ask you to make a cake for a bike nut?  I thought about making the entire cake a bike but instead purchased a bike from Toys R Us.  The road is chocolate icing you purchase from the store and then add black food coloring gel.  The grass tip was used for the rest.  Sprinkle some confetti flowers for color.  To stand the bike up I hot glued two skewers which popped off as soon as the bike was removed from the cake.

Butterflies are always a fast and easy cake for birthday, summer parties or just to make Mom feels like she is special.  This cake is made with the star tip.  The eyes are mini MM’s.

This quarter sheet cake is decorated with fondant flowers.  I took the Wilton Cake classes at Michael and found they were fast and easy to make.  Make the inside to the cake as interesting as the outside buy adding 1 tbsp of Caramel Extract to a yellow cake mix.  My friends participated in a taste testing with mini cupcakes and Caramel came in first, Chocolate second and Rum third.  I get my extracts at Watkinsonline.com.

Thomas and Percy will make any little boy eyes light up.  The 3D pan was from Michaels but I had to change the from to make it look like a English train.  The tracks are Hershey’s bar, Oreo Cookies for the wheels and crushed Nilla Wafers as the sand around the tracks.   The box car was filled with MM’s.  This was the first 3D train I had made and I drove to work and almost came to a stop going around each corner.  I know  the other drivers were probably cursing me but they made it.

This is a fast and easy cake.  The pan is from Michaels and you can make several different animals with the same pan, bear, pig, giraffe or cat.   If you want to make black icing take milk chocolate icing in the little plastic tub from the store and add black food coloring gel.  If you add black gel to a normal buttercream you will get a gray or have to use so much that all your guests purple lips, which might be fun at a party.

This pan I purchased at JoAnn’s.  The baby is a mini Nilla Wafer.  Pipe in the face and the rest of the cake is done with a star tip.

One of my friends at work wanted this cake for her daughter but we added a twist.  I laminated pictures of her daughter and husband as riders in the carriage.  Just use self laminating pouch to seal the pictures and pipe icing around them to make the curtains.

You can make this little Merry Go Round Cake by using chocolate dipped sticks.    Attached animal crackers by a little bit of choclate.  The Top was made out of construction paper but you could us fun foam.  I used a cookie chocolate mold to make the animals on the sides and highlight with icing.