My So Called Visit to Charm City Cakes

Yep, that's me in front of Charm City Cakes. Can ya see the black plastic on the windows? Yep, it's there and nope, ya can't see in. And the sign on the door? It says "By Appointment Only"..... Okay, I can do that, how much notice do you need? 5 minutes okay?

Jaclyn's Sweet 16

Jaclyn's sweet 16 cake. Jaclyn wanted a cake like her sisters 13 cake. I didn't want to do it exactly like her sisters so instead of the fondant flowers, I mad a swirly pattern and piped Happy Birthday Jaclyn on it.

LMMC Got a facelift thanks to Sheila!

I searched the internet and searched and searched. So annoying that I'm on dial up and EVERYthing takes forEVER! I couldn't find things I liked that were free, let's face it, I'm cheap! Or frugal...that sounds better. After all, I'm raising 3 growing boys on 1 income...I don't have a choice but to be cheap. So I got the name of a blog designer from my friend at Momma D's. Check out her blog and read all about her testosterone filled world. I thought her blog design was very cleaver and so I contacted Sheila to get started on my own. Extremely reasonable and really nice work, sooo worth it!



I knew what I wanted, or so I thought. That is until Sheila started asking questions about colors, backgrounds, patterns, fonts, images...SERIOUSLY?, I have NO idea what I want! So after doing some research, I came across the cutest felt cupcake! I contacted the maker of this sweet felt creation, Donna to ask permission to use her image in my blog design. Happily, she agreed! So thank you very much Donna! Here's your cute little cuppiecake in my new blog logo! Donna has lots of adorable items for sale at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5387167 .



So after lots of trial and error, here's the new blog design! Let me know what you think and BTW guys, I'm lonely over here with my 7 followers! Spread the word!

Cornelli and flowers

This is my friend Kim's birthday cake. 2 layer chocolate cake with italian buttercream. I decorated it in a cornelli lace pattrn with random flowers.

Brendan's Graduation Cake

This is Brendan's graduation cake. I made the mortarboard with a cake I baked in a Pampered Chef batter bowl and a piece of cardboard covered with wax paper and frosting. The tassel was made by adding green and white fondant into a PC garlic press. The badges on either side were for the fire department he was a member of and the NYS police. This was a 2 layer vanilla cake with homemade bavarian cream and strawberries.

Ryan's Cupcake Tower

The finished product! It turned out great!

Ryan's Graduation Cake

This is my favorite cake ever! I had so much fun making all the different elements of this cake for Ryan. I made a 2 layer 3 tier vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and covered them with fondant.

Starting at the top, I made a marblized black and white sheet of fondant and cut out the letters of his name.

Then I layed a football on top. Hanging off the side was his football jersey. He is an ESPN fan, so I made the ESPN logo out of fondant and added that to the front. One of his favorite shows on TV is Lost, so I made a little Lost scene with palm trees and sand. I made a red heart with his and his girlfriends initials inside. I made a cool black cross outlined with red. Standing in the front is my pirate cat made out of fondant. Ryan was in advanced photography classes in high school, so i made a camera out of fondant also. Attached to the cake next to that is a diploma. I also added a basketball,

Ryan's Graduation Cap Cupcakes

Graduation caps made with fondant.

Ryan's Football Cupcakes

Football cupcakes made with fondant.

Ryan's Basketball Cupcakes

I made the basketballs with fondant. I got the texture of a basketball by rolling the fondant on the dash of my car! Cleaver huh!

Ryan's Cats

Ryan's cat cupcakes for his love of "Cat Fancy" magazine.

Shiver Me Cupcakes!

The next few posts will all be about Ryan's graduation! I have this great friend who's son graduated high school this year. I had so much fun doing his cupcake tower! So the story goes this way....

Ryan had very specific ideas about what he wanted on his tower. Basketballs, footballs, cats, pirates and graduation caps. Here's how he came up with his wacky themes...Ryan's mom took him shopping for party supplies and walking through the store he kept commenting on how he's like to have a pirate themed party. He got his wish in some very cute ways. I made these pirate cupcakes for him. I also made a pirate cat holding a telescope that went on top of the cake for the top. He made himself a treasure chest to hold his "booty"...very cleaver and crafty! The cats came from his love of the magazine "Cat Fancy". He jokingly said that all his friends were coming just for the cats....to my surprise they were the first to go at the party! Basketballs and footballs self explanitory. Graduation caps I made of fondant and half with "TV '09" and half with "RWC" for his high school and college.

The cake on the top was my baby! I know Ryan had an idea of what he wanted on top, but I begged him to let me have creative control of the top. I think he was pleased!

More cupcakes and the top cake to follow.....

Springtime cookies

I made these cookies for a festival in the springtime. These are great 3D flower cookies. Who doesn't love a good soft sugar cookie?!

Eid Cupcakes

I made these pretty cupcakes for an Eid celebration.

UPK Graduation

I made this for the local Christian school's Pre-K graduation. I made each childs face with buttercream and piped their names underneith their face. The curtain is made with fondant that is actually a burgundy color but the picture looks much darker than it was. I also made each child a cupcake with their hair color and a fondant graduation cap!

Dare Graduation Cake

This is a cake I made for a local Christian school for their D.A.R.E. graduation. I made the lion directly on the top of the cake with buttercream.

Luau cake

This was another of those challenging cakes. I made beautiful petals for a flower and ended up not getting them together as nicely as I'd like to have. I molded shells using an unused soap mold and made a grass skirt around the edge of the cake.

Fire Engine

I made this fire engine and the badge with royal icing on wax paper. When they were dry I transferred them to

the 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting.

Butterfly cupcakes

These were among the first orders I had. Cupcakes with fondant butterflies for a little girls birthday.

About Ready to POP!

This is a baby shower cake I made. Favors for the party were popcorn boxes full of homemade caramel popcorn. The tag was the silhouette of the pregnant lady with the recipe on the back of it and it said "About Ready to POP". So I made carrot cake with cream cheese icing and shaped it like a popcorn box. I covered it in white fondant and then added the red stripes. I printed the silhouette on paper, cut it out and used it as my template for the fondant. For the popcorn on top, I boiled sugar and water until it was thick and dipped each piece into the hot sugar and stuck it all to the top individually. This is one of my favorites!

Max's burger

A couple of years ago Max wanted to have his birthday party at Burger King, so I made him a burger cake.

I made 3 layers and used flattened gumdrops for the lettuce, colored frosting for ketchup and mustard and sunflower seeds for the sesame sees on the bun.

Jagermeister

This was an extremely challenging cake. This was the second cake for the tattoo guys. I started by shaping cake into the bottle shape. That color fondant was very hard to achieve! I covered it and added all the details. The deer was very hard for me and I ended up drawing it on with edible marker.

Footballs

Football sugar cookies.

Halloween Cookies

I made these adorable cookies for each of my boys to take to school for their Halloween partes. I wrapped them individually and made lables to put on the back of them saying Happy Halloween From Zach/Max. I make all kinds of decorated sugar cookies and they ship well!

Pretty in Pink

I made this a 2 layer vanilla cake with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream. I made a basketweave border and some pretty flowers.

Merry Christmas

I made this cake with 3 layers of chocolate cake and 2 layers of chocolate raspberry truffle filling. It was covered in buttercream. The snowflakes were made of royal icing and the poinsettia with fondant brushed with white shimmer dust. I made the Christmas bulbs with rice krispie treats covered with fondant and rolled in colored sugar. The tops of the ornaments were just pieces of black fondant with a piece of wire for the hook. The bow was also made of fondant that I brushed with gold shimmer dust.

Pretty little cuppiecakes!

Just some cute cupcakes I made for a festival.

Jessica's 13th birthday

So Jessica wanted her cake to be in the shape of the number 13 and wanted lime green and purple. So my hubby found letters on the internet for me and printed the right size. I cut out the letter shapes and covered them with buttercream. I made purple flowers out of fondant and pressed the centers so they would sort of pop off the cake. I piped the lime green centers on the flowers and bordered the top and bottom with black. They loved it so much that I had to make the same sort of cake for her sister's 16th birthday!

Pastor Dave's Yankees!

This summer our pastor and his family moved after 18 years at our church. We had a picnic as a going away for them. I put together a cupcake tower and on top I made a Yankees baseball cap because it's Pastor Dave's favorite. I love the way it turned out! Miss Sherry even tried to pick it up as if it was a real baseball cap!

Miss Sherry

At my church we have a womens get together once a month at a local restaurant. It's called SOS or Share Our Stories. Each month a different woman tells about her faith story and her walk with God. The speaker this particular month was our pastor's wife Sherry. It was an extra special SOS because Miss Sherry and Pastor Dave and their daughter Christina were about to move to another church after 18 years. My 2 girlfriends and I attended Miss Sherry's SOS as our first. What a beautiful story! We laughed and cried and we miss them terribly!

So the first cake was for guests and was vanilla with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream. The second smaller cake was made as sort of a back up in case we ran out with the hopes that we wouldn't so I could send it home with Miss Sherry. I was able to do that and she loved it. I covered the top of it with royal icing flowers.

Pokemets!

So I was approached to do a birthday cake for a little girl and was told that her favorite things were Pokemon and Mets. Hmm.....where do I go with that one? So this is the cake I came up with. It was 2 layers with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream. I cut out a Pokemon character from fondant and put a Mets jersey on him. The Happy Birthday is in the colors of the Mets and around the edges of the cake I put Mets logos and Pokeballs that I made out of fondant also.

There's also a funny story behind this cake and another that I did. They were for the tattoo artists that my husband goes to and the cakes were made in exchange for tattoos for my hubby!

Strawberries!

This was 3 layers of chocolate cake with homemade strawberry filling and covered with homemade whipped cream. I decorated it with fresh strawberries and shaved chocolate. I made this for my friend Tom's birthday.

Alienne's 1st Confirmation

This was a huge cake! I made this for my Sister in law's church celebraton for my niece's 1st Confirmation. It was all chocolate cake, 2 layers, with whipped chocolate truffle and strawberry filling. I did a nice cornelli lace pattern on the top and a cross out of buttercream roses.

My stringless Fender Stratocaster Guitar cake

My brother in law was turning 40 and my sister wanted to throw him a party. My brother in law is a self taught guitar player and his dream guitar is a cherry red Eric Johnson Fender Stratocaster. So my sister emailed me a picture and that's what I made him. It ended up being full sized at 4 feet long! I first drew the body of the guitar on a paper bag until I was happy with the shape then I layed it onto the cake and cut it out. The neck of the guitar I cut out of another cake. I covered the cake with buttercream and then with cherry red colored fondant. The neck of the guitar I covered with a tan color. Then I cut out the faceplate and added that on. All of the details on the cake were made of fondant and I used royal icing to pipe on lettering and such. Because I didn't think of the strings while I was assembling the cake, I couldn't put strings on it without ruining the look of the guitar.

Samantha's Cupcake Tower

So Samantha knew exactly what she wanted unlike lots of customers. She got 12 dozen cupcakes half chocolate half vanilla. The chocolate ones got vanilla buttercream, the vanilla ones got chocolate buttercream. I made fondant discs and let them dry then painted them with vodka and silver luster dust mixed. When they were dry, I piped a black S on each. Then I also added silver dragees to each cupcake. The top cake was 2 layers covered in vanilla buttercream and I made a scrolly sort of design with black buttercream and silver dragees randomly. On top, I made an S with fondant and let it dry with the stick stuck in the middle. When it was dry, I painted it with silver luster dust. I was very happy with how this one turned out!

Smile

This is a smiley face cake for Raven. I made one for her and one for her guests. Around the bottom border of the larger cake I made miniature smiley faces.

Mardi Gras

This was a 2 layer 3 tier cake I made for a mardi gras fundraiser at my sister in law's church. I made masks out of fondant and decorated them with royal icing. The diamonds and stripes were fondant painted with a mixture of vodka and food coloring. I hammered a dowel down through all three tiers for stability and when I was almost done, I hit a button on my cake stand that tips it to the side and it almost toppled on the floor. I was able to catch it, but you can see on the bottom layer where it's buldging...it happens!

Pinnochio

Chloe's Pinnochio cake. I made the image on wax paper with royal icing.

Steelers birthday cake.

This was for Trevor who was turning 11 and wanted a football themed cake. His favorite team is the Steelers so I mad a fondant football helmet and jersey. I layed them over a "grass" covered chocolate cake.

Nurse

I made this cake for the school nurse's birthday. I made a 1 layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. I also made some cupcake students.

Kitty cat!

This was a cake I made for my dog/house sitter's birthday. She's a huge cat fan, so this is what I came up with. I used a dome shaped piece of cake for the cats face and a cupcake for the ball of yarn. The sides were covered in basketweave.

This was one of 2 graduation cakes I made for Laurel. This was a shared cake for a church celebration. All buttercream roses with cornelli work and top and bottom border.

The second cake was for Laurel's party at home. I made the mortarboard with a dome shaped cake and the board part was a square of cardboard covered in wax paper then frosted. Then I made the tassel out of fondant.