Sweet Airs

Black and White

2011-10-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

This cake was made for a black and white themed birthday party. The birthday girl is sort of a tomboy but she's also REALLY fashionable so I wanted to really represent both sides of her. The strong lines and angles of the diamonds represent her more tomboyish side while the pearls around the edges of the cake and the black and white fondant buttons show off her more girly side. The cake is vanilla with buttercream frosting and fondant decorations. The flower on top is gumpaste and the center of the flower is a cure gumpaste button (hard to see in the picture)

Troll Cake

2011-10-18T12:02:00.001-07:00

This has to be one of the most outlandish, fun-to-make cakes I've ever done. The sister of the birthday boy asked me to make him a cake based off of the trolls from the 80's movie Willow. Apparently this is an inside joke between them because those things are REALLY ugly. (see above...) The cake is vanilla with chocolate buttercream. The features of the troll are actually modeling chocolate that has been draped with fondant to really make them stand out. I marbled the fondant and painted it with brown food color gels so that it would look really dirty and gross. And of course, notice the great big white chocolate booger that is dripping out as it picks it's nose!!
Thanks Daphne for the opportunity to make this cake!

Garden Wedding

2011-08-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

A good family friend asked me to do her daughter's wedding cake and I was honored to be a part of such a wonderful day. I gave my friend and her daughter some inspirational photos to see what they would respond to and they pretty much wanted some of everything! I took the challenge and I think it came out really well. The colors worked out perfectly for a late summer wedding. The cake is somewhat minimalistic. Swirls of fondant symbolize fanciful flowers cascading down the sides of the cake. The fun, fanciful flowers on top added a lovely visual contrast to the sweet pastels of the rest of the cake. The inside is chocolate with a particularly buttery buttercream.

Fantasy Wedding

2011-08-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

My friend and co-worker got married this summer and she asked me to make the cake. When she and I were talking about design she showed me some images that were REALLY fun! She wanted something pink, something elegant but fun, and she wanted a castle on top. So here it is! This tall red velvet cake is topped with a white chocolate castle. There is hand piping all over that matched the beading on her wedding dress and some really fun gumpaste flowers. I also made her little red velvet cupcakes to go around the base of the cake. I just LOVE red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting!!!

Emmanuel Music

2011-03-16T17:47:00.000-07:00

This cake was made in honor of the 150th birthday of Emmanuel Church on Newbury St. I've been going to Emmanuel all my life and really wanted it to celebrate everything that Emmanuel has meant to me. The bottom tier is a hand painted image of the church facade. The top two tiers represent the beautiful songs of Emmanuel Music rising to the heavens.

Fabulous

2009-12-30T16:47:00.000-08:00

This cake was for a dear family friend. The basic directive I got from his partner for this surprise cake was "over-the-top-fabulous". Some layers are chocolate, some are vanilla, and all are vanilla buttercream with a strawberry cream filling.

2009-12-23T19:21:00.000-08:00

This cake was for a dear friend who's husband is a violinist. I wanted to really get every detail and was extremely excited to make use of my new found love of modeling chocolate. The cake is chocolate and chocolate bc with raspberry filling.

Art Nouveau

2009-10-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

The following cookies were inspired by the above image in the style of art nouveau

Cocktail cupcakes

2009-10-21T10:18:00.001-07:00

Black and white cookies

2009-10-21T10:15:00.001-07:00

Colorful Cookies

2009-10-21T10:08:00.001-07:00

Scrabble Tiles

Raspberry flowers

You're a star

The Sweet Shop

Gumball machine

White wedding

Winter

Summer

Citrus splash

Cupcake fun

2009-10-21T09:56:00.000-07:00

White chocolate covered pretzel

Gummy citrus

Hostess cupcakes

Classic gumballs

Tea time

Candied grapefruit

Double bubble

Jellybean

Candy leggos

Jawbreakers

Hennessey

2009-10-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

I was asked to do this cake for a birthday celebration. I thought it was a really fun idea. The cake is vanilla with vanilla butter cream frosting. The neck of the bottle is made of marshmallows and the whole thing is covered in fondant. The decorations are all hand painted in food color gels.

Practice 2

2009-10-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

This was another practice cake. I found an image of paper flowers and I thought it would be fun to translate that into sugar. The flowers and leaves are gumpaste and the cake is covered in fondant. I did this fun texture in the fondant, but it doesn't really translate.

Practice

2009-10-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

This cake was done as a random practice. I wanted to work on my fine piping skills, specifically swirls and pearl edging. I decided to base this design off of classic henna tattoos.

90's Retro

2009-10-09T19:18:00.001-07:00

When the client came to me, she said that she was having a 90's themed 21st birthday party. She specifically wanted a boom box and she asked me to incorporate a cassette tape and a pair of big, dated sunglasses. I had a lot of fun putting all of the details on the boom box, including purple sugar-graffiti of her name. Also, the neon mini-cupcakes were a fun girly touch.

Sushi

2009-10-09T19:10:00.000-07:00

My father loves Sushi. When his birthday came around this year I jumped on the opportunity to make him a sushi cake! No fish involved, it's chocolate, but I thought it would be really fun to make different sorts of sushi out of fondant. I really wanted the rice to look real, so I snipped the edges off of mini marshmallows. The detail is sort of lost in the picture, but it was really fun to make, nonetheless.

Did Diddy Do It?

2009-10-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

My co-worker asked me to make a Prius cake based off of the infamous Satan's Birthday episode of South Park. I, of course, could not resist. So I based my design off of the pictures from the website, making sure to stay true to even the smallest of details. The cake is a devil's food with cinnamon buttercream.

Congrats '09!

2009-06-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

When Christine asked me to make her graduation cake, all she gave me was her school colors. Other than that she said I could use my imagination that fit in with her low key barbecue party. I mostly went with abstract designs and decorations that all fit in with the excitement of graduating. On the bottom tier I used the diamonds to highlight the text "Congratulations Christine!" I also made little diplomas out of gumpaste with fondant ribbons. The little figurine and the hat on top are both gumpaste and the little person is supposed to be Christine, cute hair and all.

A Sugar Injection

2009-06-10T09:13:00.000-07:00

Nurse's appreciation week again and here's my latest take on medicinal sweets. I hand cut these sugar cookies and decorated them with royal icing and food color markers to look like syringes. My neighbor and her staff just loved them.

Just Push Play

2009-06-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

I made these mini-cupcakes for my friend Brian's music tech concert. The songs were all composed by the students and were mostly created through digital means. I thought it would be fun for the students and their families to enjoy a little taste of their labors by eating a little play or stop button. The red record buttons are my favorite!

Halloween 2008

2009-06-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

These sugar cookies are decorated with royal icing to look like pumpkins. Perfect for Halloween!

These fun sugar cookies are decorated with royal icing to look like spider webs.

These creepy cupcakes look like they are right out of a mad scientist's lab. I used gray butter cream to make them look like brains.

These brittle bones are made entirely of meringue.

On the left are cake truffles (a mixture of cake and butter cream frosting) that I decorated with black butter cream and red piping gel to look like eyeballs.

On the right are a ghoulish take on lady fingers. I shaped these brittle coolies to look like fingers and painted whole almonds red with piping gel to look like painted fingernails.

Baby Bebop!

2009-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

This quirky baby-shower cake is almost too fun. The parents decided to name their daughter after a popular anime character known for her love of mischief. For this reason, I modeled the fondant baby into a mini-version of the character. There's a chunk taken out of the cake that the baby holds in her hands, looking ever so innocent. The baseboard is covered in fondant, matching the pink quilted baby's blanket.

Vintage Fabulous

2009-02-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

When my dearest Brett came to me and asked me to make a cake for his wonderful partner Dave, I was determined to come up with something utterly fabulous. Dave is at the same time incredibly fun and ever so classy and I really wanted the cake to reflect that. The overall design is based off of the glamour of the roaring twenties. The cake itself is chocolate with buttercream frosting covered in fondant. The pearls and roses are all fondant painted with gold luster dust.

Frosted Lacoste

2008-12-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

This cake is the result of my final project for my Visual Foundations 2 class. The basic premise of the project was to choose and object and then recreate that object out of a material that either confirms or denies its meaning. What would be more fitting than for me to make a sneaker out of cake? The cake itself is vanilla with buttercream and fondant. The sole of the shoe is mdf covered in fondant and has been crafted so that the back of the sneaker actually lifts off of the ground making it look like the sneaker is mid-stride. All of the details are there, from the laces and the tongue to the green dots and stitched Lacoste alligator are there and were done by hand. I was really pleased with the outcome and the class really enjoyed it!

Cleff Cookies

2008-12-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

Just before the Northeastern Chorus concert, the president asked a number of us singers to make cookies to be sold at intermission. I decided to take this opportunity to do what I do best and go all out. These are sugar sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. All of the decoration was done by hand. These cookies were gone in a matter of minutes.

A Hungarian Birthday

2008-12-15T11:57:00.000-08:00

When a father asked me to make a cake for his little girl's birthday, he initially asked me to incorporate the Hungarian flag. He later informed me that the flag's presence was not necessary, but it was clear to me that his daughter's heritage was very important. For this reason I decided to base this girly design on a classic Hungarian embroidery pattern. I took some liberties to make it a bit more elaborate, but I think the end result is just right. The cake itself is two layers, one carrot cake and one spice cake. The frosting is two toned whipped frosting. All of the decorations were piped on by hand.

Spring Fashions

2008-11-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

When two friends approached me and asked me to make "doll cakes" for their birthday party, I was all to happy to oblige. A chance to design dresses and make cake? That's practically perfect! In any case, the basic idea behind a "doll cake"is that the skirt of the dress conceals a half sphere of cake. The top half is simply half of a Barbie doll. The cake is pink fondant. I chose to decorate the strapless dress with green polka-dots and a green belt with a bow tied at the back. Also, notice the matching green necklace and earrings.

Spring Fashions 2

2008-11-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

This is the second of the two doll cakes. The cake is vanilla with chocolate frosting and is covered in green fondant. The trim along the hem of the dress is decorated with handmade fondant roses. This theme continues up the back of the dress and on the barrette in her hair. Once again, these cakes were so much fun to make!

Pitch Pipe

2008-11-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

My roommate and good friend Yui is an avid music lover and an incredible singer. To commemorate her birthday this year I brought this cake to chorus. The cake itself is vanilla with buttercream frosting and a raspberry filling that has been decorated to look like a pitch pipe. All of the details have been piped in buttercream by hand.

The Cake Business

2008-10-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

This cake was actually my take on a classic design. I wanted to make it as accurate as possible while still fitting the idea that the client had in mind. The cake is vanilla with buttercream frosting and fondant. I wanted to have the tie extend beyond the edge of the cake and for the collar to look like real fabric. You can't really see it in the pictures but on the pocket I added in details that look like stitching around the edges and across the fold at the top. Also, I made a little fold in the pocket kerchief. There are little fondant buttons on either side of the collar.

The Seasons of Love

2008-10-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

When Jon and Chris asked me to make their wedding cake I was truly honored. It was a fall wedding at the infamous 'Dream Away Lodge'. I wanted to incorporate the feeling with the idea of timeless love. I thought that Alphonse Mucha's 'The Seasons' was a good starting point considering the very artsy eclectic venue. The blocks of color on every other layer are my rendition of his work. I painted an abstracted background with colors that corresponded to the season that each woman represented. I then stenciled the women onto that background in black. I piped the borders on in royal icing. For the other layers I stenciled leaves in fall colors and piped the gold stems in royal icing. On the fourth tier I wrote in food-color marker "Love knows what time is" This was my first wedding cake and I couldn't have asked for kinder and more deserving clients.

Raspberry Meringue Cupcakes

2008-10-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

In addition to their wedding cake, Jon and Chris asked me to make some cupcakes for the kids. I decided on these raspberry meringue cupcakes. I topped them with fresh raspberries and doubled up the cupcake papers; plain white on the inside and gold foil papers on the outside.

cupcake cones

2008-10-27T00:11:00.000-07:00

These cupcakes were for the birthday of a good friend. This is actually the same friend that the pink princess cake was for last year. I made the cupcakes in ice cream cones and piped buttercream frosting onto each. Then I decorated them with chocolate sprinkles and little runts for cherries. It's a classic idea but i really wanted to make the frosting look like soft serve.

A Spot of Bubbly

2008-10-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

When love of my life Brett Johnson asked me to make a cake for two of his friends' birthday party I was all too happy to oblige. The basic idea behind this cake was 'utterly fabulous' and what is more fabulous than champagne? The cake is made up of alternating layers of chocolate and spice cake. This is all covered in buttercream and fondant. The champagne bubbles on the lower tiers are fondant painted with gold luster dust. The champagne lower half of the bottle is cake covered in fondant and painted with piping gel. The top of the bottle, the cork i guess, is hand sculpted rice-crispy-treat and is also covered in fondant. The baseboard is styrofoam that I upholstered with gold satin. I was really pleased with how it came out!

The Taste of the Tropics

2008-10-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

When Christine asked me to make her birthday cake, she sent me a picture of a pink hibiscus flower saying that it was her absolute favorite flower. I think the cake was vanilla... i can't really remember. The frosting is buttercream tinted to be two different shades of pink. The baseboard is cardboard with green paper leaves. The stamen of the flower is florist's wire with pink beads dangling off the end. The petals are sculpted out of the buttercream frosting.

Passport to Heaven

2008-10-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me to make a birthday cake for his friend who has yet to become a citizen. He decided, what would be a better gift than a US Passport? The cake is vanilla with buttercream icing and fondant. All of the gold is hand piped royal icing painted with luster dust. I did it without any sort of sketching or guide and I think it came out pretty well.

Sugar Babies

2008-10-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

These mini-cupcakes were my gift to a friend for her 20th birthday. The yellow ones with the candles in them are banana cupcakes and banana flavored frosting. The pink ones are cherry baby cupcakes, vanilla cupcakes with cherry jam filling, topped with pink royal icing and a half a cherry. At the restaurant we lit the candles and sang. It was sort of a 'birthday cake in a box.'

Sweet Gardens

2008-10-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

These cupcakes were made as party favors for my neighbor's father's 50th birthday. Their family has been a big name in the flower business for decades and she wanted to commemorate this fact with these flower-themed treats. I painted his initials in gold onto mini flower pots and tied ribbons around them. I then put little styrofoam balls, as supports, in the bottom of the pots and covered those with straw. Then I placed carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting on top of all that. I made thick sugar cookies decorated with royal icing and skewered them with lolipop sticks. I stuck those right into the cupcake and into the styrofoam at the base of the pot. I think they came out really cute!

A Fish Out of Water

2008-05-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

When my friend asked me to make a fish themed cake for a birthday party, I immediately saw an opportunity for creativity. The cake is vanilla and the scales are all hand-piped, green and blue buttercream frosting. The eyes and the fins hand-modeled fondant that has been painted with piping gel. The base is also painted with piping gel that has been textured to look like water.

Prescription Cake

2008-05-20T10:54:00.001-07:00

My neighbor asked me to make this cake for her staff in honor of nurse appreciation week. The cake is half vanilla half chocolate and is carved in a half cylinder to look like a prescription bottle. It is decorated with buttercream frosting and black piping gel. The text on the label of the bottle consists of the names of all of the people on her staff. The pills around the cake are all vanilla and chocolate cupcakes that have also been decorated with buttercream. The capsules, the longer, two-toned ones, are actually each two cupcakes that have been cut and glued together to make them longer.

Sweet Symphony

2008-04-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was asked to make this in celebration of a semester-worth of hard work and a concert well done for the Northeastern University Chorus. The top tier is vanilla, the middle tier is chocolate, and the bottom tier is a combination of the two. Each tier is covered in fondant and all the accents are fondant. Whole cake is dusted with luster-dust so it shimmers in the light. The black music notes and lettering are hand piped gel. The baseboard is hand painted to look like the keys on a piano.

PB&J

2008-04-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

What is more classic and youthful than a PB and J sandwich? The bread is white velvet cake and I made sure to let the edges brown a little extra to create the illusion of crust. The peanut butter is actually peanut butter frosting and the jelly is actually jelly frosting (an original creation). It was really important for me to make the sandwich fillings authentic instead of just coloring buttercream. The best part was that because the frosting was on the inside, you could actually cut off a piece, pick it up, and eat it with your hands!

Lights, Camera, Action!

2008-04-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

A friend of a friend asked me to make a cake for her Oscar-themed graduation party. The colors in the cake matched the color scheme of the party. The two biggest requests that she made were that she really wanted fondant and that she wanted an oscar Statue made of fondant on the top tier. I decided to make the whole top tier into the base of the oscar statue. The name plate actually says her name and graduation year in food coloring pen. The middle tier is surrounded by diplomas made of fondant and the bottom tier is hand-painted with red food coloring and I drew the silhouette of a red velvet rope all around the bottom edge. The pearls are hand-piped buttercream. The cake base is plywood that I hand painted with black and gold to look like Hollywood Boulevard.

Guinness

2008-04-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

I made this for my friend's birthday; if you can't tell, he's a big fan of Guinness. The cake is vanilla with chocolate buttercream frosting for the beer and vanilla buttercream for the head. The lettering and designs for the Guinness logo are hand piped royal icing.

Pretty in Purple

2008-04-23T13:15:00.000-07:00

This was another just-for-fun cake so the bottom two layers are actually dummy-cakes. I wanted the whole cake to look like an elegant dress, so I hand sculpted the bust out of rice crispy treat and covered it in purple and off-white fondant. The top layer is chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and is covered in fondant to match the rest of the cake. The decorations are all hand piped buttercream.

Taste-bud Transplant

2008-04-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

I made this for my mother just before she went in for kidney surgery. The bottom layer is a transplant box and the top layer, the pink, is a kidney. The whole thing is chocolate cake, buttercream icing, and fondant. The red crosses are hand drawn with food coloring pen. The Ice in the transplant box is blue fondant that I have dusted with powdered sugar to give definition to the lines.

A Hole in One

2008-04-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

My friend's mother asked me to make a cake to celebrate her husband's birthday. All that she required was that it be based on a golf theme. I based modeled this cake to match the shape and design of the ninth hole on his favorite golf course. The cake is half chocolate half vanilla and is split into four layers which gave it great hight. The frosting is buttercream covered in fondant. The golfballs are also fondant. The lettering and golf tees are all hand piped royal icing, the trees are green buttercream, and the sand traps are grahm cracker crumbs.

Ciao!

2008-04-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

I made this for dessert at a dinner party to celebrate the end of our first semester in Italian class. The cake is orange chiffon and the frosting is orange flavored buttercream. The flowers are fondant with yellow, royal icing centers and the lettering is white piping gel.

Pretty Pretty Princess

2008-04-23T12:31:00.000-07:00

I made this for the birthday of a family friend. Her favorite color is pink and when I asked her mother what she wanted for the design the only requirement was "Pink, lots of pink." The cake is yellow butter cake with colored buttercream. The roses are fondant and the tiara is hand piped royal icing with runts for decoration.

Poka Dot Paradise

2008-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

This is the first cake I ever made using fondant. It is a simple design, and it was just for fun but I was really pleased with how it came out. The cake is chocolate with buttercream frosting and fondant.