From Cheesecake to Fondant!

It started 3 years ago when I was inspired to bake all of my kids birthday cakes. I missed a year because of my very difficult pregnancy with my 4th and then later missed a couple of cakes for my Matheus because of heart surgery. But what started off as a labor of love in my kitchen of our 600sq ft. apartment for my babies has now grown into a full blown passion! My skills are still amateur but they have certainly come a long long way!

Courtesy of Ina Garten's recipe :-)

The first birthday cake I ever made! Mitchell's Triple Chocolate Espresso Cheesecake by request for his 8th birthday. This recipe belongs to Ina Garten. My ganache drizzling technique was messy but it did not taste any less delicious! And as with everything from Ina, she did not disappoint with this chocolate lover's dream!


The first layered cake I ever attempted, this 3 layer Purple Ombre Butter Cake ( I used blackberry jam for the filling) for my Zaley's 2nd birthday was covered in my first ever homemade buttercream frosting. Before this I thought frosting only came out of the plastic tub from the store. My frosting skills were pretty nonexistent as you can tell from the picture and I was new to cake stacking. Side note: I found that using salted butter (instead of the unsalted butter as most recipes call for) resulted in a more flavorful frosting. The salt really does activate the taste buds. This cake was originally designed to be 5 layers but the other 2 layers slid right off..oops! I tried salvaging them using skewers stuck right around the perimeter of the cake but the 2 lost layers were too far gone.

This is a really bad picture so the layers are not distinct but this is the ombre effect I was going for. My Zaley's favorite color is purple so of I course I had to make her a full on purple cake :-). 
For the same birthday, I also decided to venture into the world of desserts that would normally adorn a "dessert table" at a birthday party. So after hours looking up recipes and trying to narrow down my options to a few desserts that I thought would not be too hard to pull off, I decided on these.

The best brownies you will ever eat! 

Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies! Need I say more? Each individual part in the name of this dessert alone was great on its own but is it even possible to get all 3 into one?! I found the answer in the form of these beauties right here. They have become my all time favorite indulgent treat!


And for the peanut butter chocolate lovers I just had to make this "Snickers" Freezer Bar. I was amazed at how well the layers turned out. And even though this did not require baking, it was still a lot of work making and prepping each layer and then pouring/arranging each one into the rectangular foil pan without everything gushing out onto my floor. Not sure how much I actually froze because my floor got a pretty good dose of sticky and sweet...ugh!

Looks just like a Snickers bar :-)

After what I thought was a pretty successful baking/making session for my Zaley's birthday, I was even more pumped to continue and was already looking forward to the next birthday.

At this point I was feeling pretty good about my cake making skills. And even though I lost 2 layers on my Zaley girl's birthday cake, I knew what I did wrong and challenged myself to get it right with Matty's cake. Fondant was an ingredient I was very intimidated by but I knew I wanted to master. So I worked fondant into the design of this birthday cake. I did not want to do anything too elaborate or complex for my first time. So I chose fondant pieces that were easy enough to execute. And the result after 4 hours in the kitchen is Matheus' TMNT double layer butter cake for his 6th birthday.

Matheus photobombing his birthday cake 

The TMNT fondant work was pretty easy to execute but as simple as they were (made even simpler by my Zaley girl's comment "What happened to the turtles Mom? Where are their bodies?"<< insert rolling eyes emoticon), I was pretty darn proud of myself. But not of my lettering though LOL. The "Happy Birthday Matheus" was off as you can tell, as my very crooked lettering marred my beautiful manhole cover. I underestimated the gooeyness (yes this is a word) of the yellow bottled icing. Two words. "Never again" with the bottled stuff.

Chocolate cake recipe is courtesy of Ree Drummond. 

Skip 1 year into my birthday cake making journey and we are now right at my oldest son Mitchell's 10th birthday. He was very into "Clash of Clans" at the time and so was born this cake. I mimicked this design from a cake I saw while searching for ideas online. And I chose to do this particular design because it had some fondant work that looked easy enough to execute. I knew I could pull this one off the night before the party. For this cake I wanted to try out Ree Drummond's chocolate cake recipe with the chocolate mousse filling/icing. So armed with my ingredients, recipes, and hours of YouTube self-training, I spent 6 hours baking and assembling this 4 layer double chocolate "Clash of
Clans" cake for my Mitchell. And as you can see, my fondant game was stepped up LOL. Side Note: to save tons of money on fondant, I colored my own by using/buying only white prepared fondant and coloring batches using my Wilton icing gels to create the colors I needed.

After a bit of success with Mitchell's cake, my confidence level was at a high and I knew that I wanted to challenge myself even more with the next birthday cake. Up next was my Zaley girl's 4th birthday. For her party, the theme and decorations all revolved around her birthday cake. I chose the cake design first and then all the decorations were made and ordered to match the cake. Like my daughter, I wanted her birthday cake to be the center of attention.



With my layering and fondant skills honed a bit more, I created my Azalea's 6 layer "Rainbow & Sprinkles" cake for her 4th birthday. Need I say that my Azalea absolutely loves sprinkles?! (Oh and rainbows?!?) She loves them so much that when we go out for frozen yogurt or ice cream all she will get is a cup or bowl of sprinkles ONLY. No ice cream. No frozen yogurt. Just sprinkles.

The rainbow fondant topper was the hardest part of this one. The first one actually broke and I had to redo it with only 3 days to harden. It was summer time here in Hawai'i so humidity was at an all time high. And humidity and fondant DO NOT play well together. I learned that the hard way. The first rainbow fondant topper took over 2 weeks to harden, only to break. By using a fan that was kept blowing at the fondant topper for a full day while using books and paper towels to keep the topper standing, the second rainbow dried just in time.

For her dessert table lineup, I made "Rainbow Jello Cups"! Each colored/flavored layer corresponded with a yogurt-jello layer to create the pastel effect, but also to add a milky tang to what could have been an overly sweet dessert. The combination of jello and greek yogurt is out of this world! I am not a fan of jello, but this, this I am a fan of!

Pictured here is the 14-layer Rainbow Jello for Zaley's "Rainbow & Sprinkles" birthday party. These bad boys took soooo much time as each layer had to set before the next one went in, but soooo worth it! Isn't it pretty?

And of course I had to make cake pops for the birthday girl per her request. So here are the Rainbow Cake Pops complete with a cake pop stand was homemade that I crafted at home using Styrofoam, construction paper, and Washi tape.




And because there just wasn't enough sprinkles, I had to go ahead and make these cones for the ice cream. Azalea ate these Sprinkle Sugar Cones without the ice cream though.

And who doesn't love fruity pebbles? They are very "rainbowny" in color (yes its a real word) so I had to incorporate some "Rainbow Rice Krispies Treats" into her lineup. I made these even more over the top by drizzling it with melted white chocolate!

The next birthday was for my Matheus (October 13, 2015), but unfortunately I developed health issues that required open heart surgery during the first week of October so I did not make a cake for my Matty's 8th birthday<< insert very sad crying emoticon. So to date I owe Matty 2 cakes, which I will double for his 9th birthday this year :-).

The last of my clan, my youngest, Mr. Mason, was turning the big 1 just a month away so with my recovery as my main priority (while ordering cake supplies from Amazon in my spare time), I was determined to make his birthday cake. My vision for this one was very ambitious as it will require a full fondant covering of 2 tiers of cake. Not to mention stacking the tiers and then creating not only a 2-D fondant topper, but several fondant pieces as well. I've never worked with fondant on this scale before and I didn't have time for a practice run. There was no room for error so I had to get it right the first time.

My greatest masterpiece thus far: A 2-tiered (Bottom tier is double chocolate, top tier is carrot) full fondant "Nautical" cake for my Mason's 1st birthday. This one was extra special because it was the most ambitious cake I've made and it took so much time and effort into getting it right. I had to cook Thanksgiving dinner that same day too so it was such a great feeling to pull this one off! My siblings helped with all of the fondant pieces. I am NOT that creative so I welcomed their ideas and skills. I especially love the pennant flag and the #1 circle piece. And as much work and time went into this cake, I am ready for the next challenge. And being that it will be princess's birthday up next, I will have to outdo this one :-).

It warms my heart knowing that my kids will treasure these memories for a long time, memories that I hope they will pass onto their kids and their kids after them. Life is hard and not everything will be happy and peachy. And I can't and won't always be there for my kids. The cakes that I make for their birthdays will get eaten and disappear, and eventually so will the pictures and this blog that memorialize these milestones. But it is in the moments that are the most challenging that I hope my children will draw from their memory bank and through remembering how much of my own life that I invested in them, will always feel my love. And with that love, they will overcome. Anything. That is all this mom could ever want.

Will you bake me a cake please Mom?

How about I do you one better? :-)

Eat Cake, Be Happy, Together.

Every baker, novice or professional absolutely needs these! Tools of the trade for every beginner baker/cake decorator! I give all of these products 5 raving stars!