Christmas Cakes and Cookies

Christmas cakes and cookies are always fun to make.  I made this cake with a snickerdoodle recipe and used the same flavor in the icing.  I used Christmas colors for the ribbonwork design and then added bouquets of poinsettas with baby pinecones and holly leaves.

I made Christmas cookies with a sugarcookie dough, rolled out and cut with large cookie cutters.  Since I was selling the cookies I had to charge enough to make a profit off of each cookie, and I wanted the customers to feel like they were getting their money's worth, so I always use the 6" to 8" cookie cutters.  I used buttercream icing to decorate with instead of the smooth royal icing recommended by Wilton.  I don't mean to knock Wilton so much, but they always want to sell you something and make you feel like it isn't right if you don't buy their products and use them for every thing you make.  You don't need every one of their products to make a decent product.  When my mother first started decorating cakes, I remember going to the Wilton store in Albuquerque just about every other day, because she needed this tip or that mixture, or that something or other to make one dang cake.  She spent hundreds of dollars on cake decorating stuff that she didn't really need, except for that one cake, that she made that one time.  It really makes me angry.   I have maybe 4 tips that I use on hundreds of cakes to make every kind of design immaginable and even though I have hundreds of tips, I usually just sell them or give them away, because I'll never use them.  My granddaughters might want them eventually, if they ever decide to do cakes.  But I will teach them my way first, so they won't be taken in by the "you have to have it all  Wilton people"

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This is another design idea to make that is Christmasy.  Strings of Christmas lights and holly berries and leaves.  Sprinkle with some edible glitter and it looks great.  P.S.  don't use the colored edible glitter, it looks like dirt on the icing. always use the clear or white edible glitter.  it always looks elegant and expensive.

I made these feather cookies, cut freehand, they were approximately 12 inches long.  I decorated them with buttercream icing and silver dragees' and placed them on top of buttercream pine needles and buttercream pinecones.  A pretty presentation on a silver platter.

Wedding and Shower and Grooms Cakes

There are all types of Wedding cakes as you'll see here, from small to big and all in between.  Wedding cakes were at one time, almost always white, but now they come in any flavor, color, shape and size.  I always enjoyed making the Wedding cake and the lovely presentation of the cake afterwards, but getting the cake to its destination was another story in itself.  At the time I first started making cakes and before I remembered to take pictures of my cakes, I made a 3 tier cake for a former Mrs. Oklahoma bride who was getting remarried (to a different man, her second marriage) and it was a very elaborate cake and I had worked on it for a couple of days.  It was finally finished and the groom was there to pick it up on his way to the wedding 30 miles away.  It was in February and the weather was bad that day with snow and ice storms.  I put each tier in a seperate box along with the pillars and topper and here he came in his tuxedo, looking picture perfect for a groom.  He carried the first box out to the truck and came back in for the second, and out he went and the box went up in the air and he fell on his back on my porch step and the cake came down still in the box, but on its top.  I was devastated to say the least.  Was he going to sue me?  I never thought to check the steps for ice.  He just wanted a tylenol and I tried to fix the cake as best I could.  It was a total disaster. 

This is a ribbonwork cake I did, I had been wanting to do a "Native" type wedding cake for years and never could really think of anything appropriate as far as the typical tiered cake, but I got inspired when asked to do this cake, it turned out perfect.  I used the ribbonwork designs from my collection and used a different design on each tier, yet the same colors on each design to bring it all together.  You could use any type of design, beadwork, ribbonwork, fingerweave, etc.  The one thing to remember is to use the same colors throughout to keep it together.

I made this cake as an Engagement cake, but it could be used as a Wedding, Shower, Engagement, Anniversary cake also.  I love all the roses, and another thing I did when making cakes, was I DO NOT USE THE WILTON WAY OF MAKING ROSES!  There is a much easier and faster way of making roses and one day I'll have to post photos of how to do it, but not today.

When I first started really doing cakes and taking photos of them, they kind of didn't look too good.  The photos didn't show the detail  of the icing and all the work I'd done.  It was frustrating.  Then one day I sent a drum cake to a NAC meeting and there was a professional photographer there and he was taking photos of my cake.  My daughter was there also and she was telling me about this man and that I should call him and get some tips on taking cake photos, so I called him.  We were in the middle of remodeling the kitchen at that time and I wanted some place to take pictures of my cakes when they were finished.  So I called him and he explained about the lighting and everything and so we put in ten overhead tracklights above my island and several other lights around the kitchen to catch the lighting effects on the cakes.  It did work out better, and this cake above is one of the first ones I did. 

This cake is a layer cake with lots of roses around it.  It was used as a Wedding cake.  Like I said earlier, you can use any size and shape you want.  Some people just don't want to put alot of money into a cake.  If I was buying a cake myself, I wouldn't want to spend alot of money on it, but I would want it to look nice.  Below is another cake used as a Wedding Shower cake, with ribbonwork and a Edible photo of the happy couple.

Below are other types of cakes, different sizes, and also a couple of ideas on how to present.

Matching Groom's cake.

The Wedding cake.  The topper is made of real roses and the florist provided more greenery, baby's breath and tiny rose buds to decorate the setting.

More of the same for the Grooms cake. 

This is the Wedding Shower cake, it's one of my favorite cakes.

This cake was a Groom's cake, it was the first time I had used the edible photo for a grooms cake and it was also all white, instead of the usual chocolate icing.

A design used from the Wilton Cake Decorating magazine, I don't remember which year, but it turned out beautiful.....however, I did not use the Wilton way to make the roses.

The cake above was a 50th Wedding Anniversary cake.  They wanted the sheet cake on the bottom and a couple of tiers on top.  They also wanted an edible photo of the Honorary Couple.

The Cowboy style cake, where I used the edible photo paper of tooled leather designs and then used a decorators tool to trace the patterns and it looked like real leather.  I wish I had been able to see the cake with the flowers on it.  I know it was beautiful.

The Grooms cake to match.

This cake was beautiful.  It looked like porcelain when I was finished.  I love the color.

An OU Sooners Grooms cake.

This is another of my favorite cakes.  It looks so elegant.  The all white is even prettier with edible glitter sprinkled all over.  Again, I did not use the Wilton method of making the roses!

These are all just suggestions for wedding cakes, grooms cakes, wedding shower cakes, and anniversary cakes.

All photos are property of Connie's CakeBox 2009.  Please do not download, save or print without written permission.  Thank You.

Childrens Cakes

Nothing makes your heart melt like a little girl checking out her Barbie doll birthday cake for the first time.  The following photos are a few of the Barbie doll cakes I've made over the years, I used a medium size stainless steel bowl for the skirt and depending on your bowl, and doll, you may need to add another sheet cake on the bottom, as some of the photos show, or you may need to add some extra icing around the waist for proportion.  These are all just various ways you might want to use to decorate the skirt of your cake.  Be creative, the more scrolls, ruffles and fufu stuff you can make, the better.

These are a few more photos of other childrens cakes, all are free-hand and a couple are edible photos.