Noah's Ark Cake Topper...

This was a cake topper I made for a cake designer friend of mine for a baby shower. First time I've done a "freelance" work lol Inside was styro foam, the rest of the decorations and animals were marshmallow fondant. She's gonna take a picture of the whole cake set up and then I'll post it here.

Lions inspired by Elayne Moura :)

My ThreadCakes Contest Entry!

I know I haven't posted here so much. that's because I haven't done so much. Lots of things to plan and deal with, besides, this cake took me a lot of time too. I do have a Pastry Class draft post to finish, but I'll finish it later.

This one I had to post sooner. Here is the link to the entry http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/964 and about the cake, so I won't right all here ... Laaaaaazy!! The video I'll post in the end.

I chose a simple design because I really wanted to take the risk to sculpt something bigger, so it couldn't have so many details. As I said in the entry, I started with other design that had lots of details, but, not so much cake. I mean, it'd be very cool when finished, but still, I felt like I had to make it big and 99% cake. I know the ducks look freak :P big beaks! but that's what I felt when I saw the original design. They were scaring the little guys.

But I liked it. I've learned a lot with this cake and we have lots of cake after all, even though my husband took 1 duck and the boat to work next day lol.

I used cream cheese pound cakes most of all... I love this recipe. It looks dry in the pictures, but it's because they were frozen or chilled. At room temperature, they were awesome. My husband loves it! I didn't use so much filling because, well, I was practicing the sculpting, so I didn't want to mess up with tons of fillings, but now I can try a more filled cake for next time.

I never thought I'd like so much to carve a cake like that. The Threadless Designs are awesome. I want to make so many cakes based on the designs lol they make me want to challenge myself, not just coping, but inspiring too..

The video I made in the last day of submission, so it was very simple too :P

Below I'm posting the translation to Portuguese of my entry for my Brazilian viewers and friends :) Also, I'm planing on writing here in Portuguese as well, like, in the same post. Hope I won't be lazy lol. But I guess it's gonna be in the next post. This one is already way toooooo long :)

Quando eu descobri o concurso e fui olhar os designs, eu queria fazer todos! Mas claro, eu tinha que escolher um so. Eu comecei com um que tinha muitos detalhes que nao era bolo na verdade. Eram comestiveis, mas o bolo mesmo nao era tao importante. Entao eu deixei de lado e escolhi o Quack Attack feito por Brian Walline, porque eu poderia fazer 99% de bolo e esses patos de plastico (pra mim eles parecem de plastico por causa do brilho :P) estavam assustando os homenzinhos! Eu achei bonitinho :P

Entao eu fiz um bolo de limao e cream cheese... muitos deles!! Eu ate perdi a conta dos ingredientes. No final estava tao automatico que eu ate esqueci que eu poderia tentar outros sabores. Apenas no ultimo eu me dei conta e fiz de chocolate. No entanto, bolo de limao e cream cheese e uma delicia e o meu marido Marek adora come-lo durante o cafezinho dele. Mas ele nao e fa de buttercream :P Ainda bem que eu nao usei muito.

Eu fiz umas 3 ou 4 receitas de buttercream de limao e mais ou menos o mesmo tanto de pasta americana de marshmallow.

Eu usei a camera do meu marido pra registrar o processo, mas talvez eu tenha exagerado um pouco. Quase alcancei a marca de 300 fotos, mas foi divertido ve-las no final. Ah, e deu muito trabalho tirar as fotos e fazer o bolo ao mesmo tempo. A camera ficou meio melecada no final e por causa disso tudo resolvi fazer o video. Nao podia desperdicar todas aquelas fotos.

Eu levei cerca de 30 a 36 horas pra completar o bolo, divididas em 12 dias porque eu so podia trabalhar nele algumas horas por dia. Alguns dias eu podia mais, outros apenas em alguns detalhes e outros nao dava nem pra encostar. Mas nao se preocupem... o bolo nao estava velho, estava uma delicia!! O buttercream e a pasta americana conservam o bolo fresco, ainda mais na geladeira. Eu arrisquei, coloquei a pasta americana na geladeira. Transpirou depois que pus pra fora, mas ficou bom depois de algum tempo. A calda de confeiteiro (nao sei como e em portugues :P) ajuda a secar bem. Eu usei pra dar aquele efeito de plastico brilhante que tem no design original. Depois que o suor do bolo secou, o bolo estava lisinho de novo, seco, nada grudento, perfeito!! O bolo parece um pouco seco, mas e so porque estava congelado ou gelado. Depois que atingiu a temperatura ambiente, estava bem umido. Adoro!!

Eu achei essa uma boa chance pra praticar um bolo grande esculpido e minha nossa, deu trabalho. Mas eu gostei!! E aprendi muito. Porem, chegou uma hora que so queria e termina-lo!!! :P

Os homenzinhos nao tinham muitos detalhes, como no original, mas eles fazem o bolo todo fazer sentido :P O capitao foi corajoso!

Os patos, bom, eles parecem loucos, mas essa era a ideia. De alguma forma eles me lembraram o Coringa. Aquele sorriso na cara.

Eu nao usei canudos ou palitos para suportar o bolo. Porque esse bolo (pound cake) e bem firme e foram congelados ou resfriados, eles se suportaram muito bem. Usei glace real pra colar o barco e espaguete pra suportar os corpos dos homenzinhos.

O unico suporte que usei, foram os palitos de churrasco pra colocar os bicos nos patos. Nao tinha outro jeito de colocar esses bicoes no bolo. Falando nisso, os bicos foram feitos com cereal de arroz e marshmallow. Moi o cereal no liquidificador e misturei com marshmallow derretido pra formar essa especie de massa.

O bolo estava uma delicia. Meu marido adorou e ele levou um pato e o barco pro trabalho no dia seguinte e dividiu com os colegas de trabalho (que ficaram contentes por ganharem tanto bolo de graca :P) porque era muito bolo pra nos dois. A gente ficou com um pato. Eu cortei em fatias e congelei e congelei, assim meu marido tera bolo para o cafezinho por um bom tempo ;) e eu pro cafe-da-manha. Acredite ou nao, o bolo ainda esta gostoso!! E por isso que eu adoro essa receita!

Eu fiquei bem feliz com o resultado e nao vejo a hora de fazer mais, assim posso guardar as fotos pros proximos concursos. Os designs me dao um monte de ideias e eles sao muito desafiantes!!

Obrigada pessoal por esse concurso!!!

Girls on a pillow cake...

This was my first experience sculpting a cake.... I'm glad I chose because I didn't feel it was so hard to sculpt it. I chose mud cake and pound cakes to use, as I've read a lot in the internet and they are really good for carving. I didn't even need to freeze them. Just fridge was enough, but I do want to try to freeze them next time on a cake for myself, to try the consistency later.

The filling was ganache and all the cake was covered with marshmallow fondant. The girls were made out of a ready-to-roll fondant because I still haven't gotten the right consistency for modeling with the MMF.

I had to take a picture of it :)

And then...

Crocks and converse shoes :)

Teddy Bear's Bday Party for the American Cancer Society...

This event was celebrating the cancer survivors, the ones who lost the battle and those who are still fighting it. There was this special Happy Birthday Party for them and I donated this cake that I made with all my thoughts and heart :) I have somebody in my family fighting it and I really hope she will win it.

It was a lot fun to make this cake. I just love making figures and tiny stuff and they turned out better than I expected. It was a cherry pound cake with chocolate fudge filling. I was there to help serving and was very happy to see people liking it and appreciating. It makes me very happy seeing people smiling when they see my cakes or other sweets. There were 4 more cakes also which were great as well! The idea was to be a contest, but not enough people signed up, so they decided to celebrate only the Party, which was very nice!

I am still trying to work with my husband's camera, but I just don't get the focus!! grrr anyway, they don't look so bad, I did many close ups and stuff... I reduced a lot the sizes of the pictures to post, so they might look a little worse than they really are. Next time I'll not reduce that much.

Here are some pictures of the Birthday Party during the event:

Once upon a time, there was a cake... :P

Red Velvet Cake with a "Heart" filling...

I didn't think it would work at all when I bought this Wilton set of pans, but it did!!! I'm very surprised and loved the result!!! But I have to say I was very careful. I greased a little with that easy cake release spray and made sure I filled the cavities all the way to the top, with cream cheese icing, by the way. And I carefully, put them together as well. Then, I decorated and it was time for pictures, which I did very careful too (lots of "careful") :P I didn't want to mess up the heart and the picture. I had to put my cake back into the fridge every 5 minutes because of the weather, it's getting very warm. For this I couldn't try something WOW for the decoration as well. I needed to take back the pastry bag to the freezer many times.
And that's it...
I love RED!!!

Marek's Birthday Cake...

This was my husband's birthday cake. It was really fun to make it :D and he loved! He looooves pizza and photography so....
It's a coconut cake with a coconut cream filling covered with chocolate MMF and the figure was made with fondant as well. By the way, I'm falling in love with figure modeling. Even though I don't make them so much, I'm always checking something about online and will start doing it more.

Gum paste flowers class with Nicholas Lodge...

A few weeks ago I flew with Giselle, a friend of mine, to Atlanta, GA for a 5-day Gum Paste flowers at The International Sugar Art Collection by Nicholas Lodge. It was busy. I was rushing all the time to follow the schedule, but it was worth it. It was fun and Nicholas filled us with information and knowledge. We're planing on going back there later in the year for other classes.

Because we were very far from Downtown Atlanta, we didn't have a chance to do some tourism :( Next time maybe.

Some pictures of the class:

My flowers in progress...

All of us working on our flowers...

My flowers almost ready...

My flowers at home, after taking them out of the box...

Chef Nicholas Lodge, me and Emily, his assistant...

My Lily, together with Lizianthus (the purple one above), are my favorites:

Now some of Nicholas Lodge cakes:

Some of Nicholas Lodge flowers (I love the tiny ones :P)

Peach Cheesecake...

And I finally got it!! :) My first experience with cheesecake wasn't even worth it the picture 1 month ago. It was such a disaster. This time I decided not follow a recipe and just judged what would be necessary to make a basic cheesecake without trying too much and voila! My peach cheesecake. And I'm organizing the post about the Nicholas Lodge's Gum Paste flowers class :)
The photo is by myself, I'm trying :P

A cake for my hubby :)

When I made the Easter cake, I had some left over of the filling and my husband tried a little. Then, he told me he'd love to have more of it 'cause it was delicious and I said I'd make it for his birthday, which is just on the end of this month :P He seemed a little disappointed, so I surprised him yesterday with this cake. I thought it'd be nice to leave him a cake to eat while I'm gone ;) Today, I'll be flying to Atlanta, Georgia, for a 5-day Gum paste flower class with the Chef Nicholas Lodge at The International Sugar Art Collection School of Sugar Art. I'm very excited about it!

It's exactly the same cake as the Easter cake: a very moist chocolate cake with strawberry cream filling and fresh strawberries. I might get a shot of the inside before I leave later. Also, I'm still working on the pictures. This was the best I got out of the bunch. It still has focus issues, I know, but I'll get there. And I didn't use my husband's Cannon 'cause I couldn't find the charger, so, I had to use my simple one.

Easter Cake...

This is a very moist chocolate cake with a strawberry cream filling and also fresh strawberries. It was simple, but I found REALLY fun to leave the fondant a little aside and explore other ingredients for decorating. Of course this kind of decoration is nothing new, but for me it was totally. But I loved it. The flowers didn't turn out as I wanted. They were supposed to stand as normal flowers, but it wasn't working and I was so tired that I just decided to do like that. The final consumers wouldn't mind, I was pretty sure. The nest, is made of tinted coconut and the eggs are peanut butter eggs. The dirt is cookie crumble and the "fence" is built out of Oreo wafer sticks. :) I thought it'd be pretty to take the picture on the grass as there were flowers and nest on the cake and the day was sooooo beautiful!
Happy Easter!

Late St. Patrick's Day Brazilian Truffles...

Those I made for that day, just I'm posting very late. It's brigadeiro inside :) but a sweeter one, I got to make a recipe less sweet which is much better and tasteful.

And I am really really trying to learn more about photography because my pictures suck :P I just need to get buy the right supplies and my husband will teach me some techniques and I will try to remember what I learned about photo in college. What a shame! :( well, I didn't need to take good pictures before, my little digital was enough for travel pics. :P

Brazilian Candies for Baby Shower...

I made those for Stephen and Michelle's baby shower. The ones with chocolate jimmies are brigadeiros (let's say Brazilian chocolate truffles) and the ones with white nonpareils are beijinho (made with coconut), humm I read somewhere they translated as coconut kisses.

A little close up of the inside of the brigadeiro, yummy!:

And here the beijinho:

Ready to go: