cake decorating - come share!!

[noelle]

hey, folksies. 
just wanted to share some of my confectionary artwork.

these are my wilton class cakes.. oh, my teacher was soo disappointed i wouldn't use the white picket fence like in the book.. and the plain yellow butterfly..

the swing image was freehanded from some clipart.
i used a transparency to trace a web photo of the monarch, then covered the transparency with wax paper and piped/toothpicked royal icing right over it.



and these are some cookies i freehanded.
with just a toothpick. really. that's it.
because i have to do everything the hard way. 

though i must credit the original art to Mary Engelbreit, Cicely Mary Barker, and Rosemary Wells.

[Lothruin]

Oooh, Max and Ruby!!  Love them!  Seriously, these are lovely.  I'm getting ready for my daughter's 2nd birthday, and feel very worried about my choice to make figural cakes of Cookie Monster and Blue from Blue's Clues, and I have PRE-SHAPED cake pans!  (Yeah for thrift store finds!)  Can't imagine trying to do something like that without the extra help!  Yours are lovely.

[beara0034]

Those are beautiful!  I have never tried my hand at fancy decorating like that, but I always linger a long time in the aisles that have all the Wilton books and supplies.  Your cookies and cakes are beautiful - I am astounded at the amount of detail you put into them.  Nice work!

[melidomi]

Your cakes and cookies are cool - I especially love the butterfly.  Here's testament to my personal insanity:

A friend of mine got married in india, so we had a little party for the couple when they got back.  I, being crazy, decided to make a wedding cake.  I think it turned out pretty well.  Pay no attention to the messy (and broken) tray.

[Caradea]

Wow  All of them are so amazing! The cuteness-lover inside me loves the bunnies! But the detail on all of them are so nice!
I really hope to do something nice to my christmas cake this year. These are some of my lameass cakes.

Super Chocolatey Castle Cake (my birthday cake one year)

St. Dogbert banishing stupidity, freehand drawn on a fondant iced sponge cake and painted in with food colouring. (hubby's birthday cake one year)

Okay this isn't a cake but it's another exhibit to prove I'm insane. I baked this gingerbread house at home and then took it to my inlaws and assembled it there  Yes, very brave of me. It didn't turn out that badly but I'll never do it again because I couldn't get it to fit together right!

Front

Back

Inside shot of the "rose window" and a nice example of one of the rather massive holes I had to patch heavily with royal icing.

[yardenxanthe]

This is a fun thread!  I don't have any pics to share, but I just wanted to say you all are waaay cool!

[norsgoebel]

Hurray for this thread!  This is what I do for my job so I was very excited to see a thread going for it. This is a cake I did for a client a couple months ago.  It was butter cake carved into the purse shape and covered with fondant.  I used the edible markers to draw the logo designs on and used fondant and fondant/gumpaste mix for the handles and buckles

[noelle]

norsgoebel- i've heard of people carving their own shapes with frozen cakes.. is that what you did?
can you just use a big honkin' knife for that? 

[stargirl52]

wow, norsgoebel, i orginally thought that WAS actually a louis vuitton handbag, and i thought "Why is there a handbag on a post about cakes?" Then I read like a smart girl would've. That is really quite amazing.
-G.

[norsgoebel]

Noelle-

A big honkin' serrated knife tends to work best.  The cakes I work with are quite dense so there is no need to freeze them.  I wouldn't reccommend using sponge or any airy type cakes for sculpture anyways.  The key I think to carving your own is to work in very small bits, shaving away parts instead of actually carving, constantly turning and stepping away from your work is important to keeping things in perspective.  I'll post some of my other 3-d cakes later.  Wilton is a great course for those getting started, it helps get the basics down and then you can run with it, like being a rebel and not making the fence pieces or heaven forbid making a realistic butterfly!  Great work.