Mr. Bump

I am particularly fond of this Mr. Bump cake because it was a collaborative effort between my son and me. He really wanted to participate in the making of his birthday cake, so I bought some food coloring markers and let him draw his favorite characters from the Mr. Men series of books on the sides of the fondant. I was responsible for the top cake--covering Mr. Bump in fondant and and wrapping him to look bandaged as he does in the book series. Jack was so pleased with his cake and took great pride in telling his friends that he helped make the cake. He'll remember this birthday for a long time!

Modern Daisy Cake

Spring is in the air! This cake was done for a meeting of a book club. A few days before, I decided to make lots of sugar daisies (and then ended up using only three). My style is a little more contemporary, so when I started putting all those flowers on it, it just didn't feel right. I decorated the sides with fondant shapes and edible pearls. Individually hand-rolled fondant balls created the bottom border. Inside, was white butter cake and a lemon buttercream filling, made from with my homemade lemon curd.

Class with Colette Peters

I just returned from Orlando where I attended a fondant and gum paste class with the famed cake designer, Colette Peters (http://www.colettescakes.com/), at the Notter School of Pastry Arts. In the cake world, few are bigger and more influential in terms of design. Colette is credited with creating what is known as the "topsy-turvy" cake design, where a cake looks unbalanced, but is structurally sound.  We decorated dummy cakes (styrofoam rounds) to practice our techniques. Dummy cakes are typically used in bakery displays and often in magazine shoots. Some of the attendees were able to take their creations with them, but because I was flying home, another attendee took mine to display in her shop window. It was so much fun and so exciting to meet Colette!