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.

Cowboy Western Styles and Ideas

When I was asked to do a western style wedding cake, I really didn't know what to put on it, but the first thing that came to mind was the tooled leather designs, that are everywhere here in Oklahoma.  So I did some research, again, I cannot stress enough "Do your research" and I found some designs online.  I was working with Edible Photos at the time, so I used my photo program and made some strips of tooled leathers that I really liked and then printed them off onto the edible paper.  I cut the strips out and after placing them onto the sides of the buttercream cake, I used a plastic tool and just embedded the designs into the buttercream.  It worked like magic and actually looked like the real thing!  So here are some of the different ways I used the strips for different designs and different cakes.

And here are some of the strips I use.

The following cakes are some just for fun cowboys and cowboy stuff.

Details, Details, Details

On this cake, I wanted to make it as authentic in detail as I could.  I used a reference book and pictures.  I like to use buttercream icing, it's more pliable, and personally I think its easier to use than the fondant that alot of decorators use.  To me, fondant is more like clay, and I never was good at modeling from clay.  It also taste like clay....but that's just me.

I also used a reference book for this next cake, and again, pay attention to the detail.  I used gold and silver dragee's and bright bold colors.  If you're going to make something Native American, don't use pastels, unless specifically asked to use pastels.  Native american colors are 99.99% bright and bold.

The cake below is depicting straight dancers, traditional dancer, and Osage woman dancer.  Not all dancers dress like this.  That is one thing that make the Native American Dancers unique from each other.

The cake below is a pair of moccasins.  I also used several borders in coordinating colors to bring the entire cake together.  Nothing looks more pitiful than a cake with one or two borders only.  It makes the cake decorator look lazy and cheap.  They don't want to do to much work, or use too much icing because it cost extra.  It doesn't take more than a minute to put each extra border on the cake and it makes a big difference.  You will see as you go, I mean that each border comes together to frame your main work as you go.  It's best to make your middle piece first and work your way out. 

This cake above could probably be a generic Indian cake, but again depending on the tribe, you might want to do some research before you go putting a TeePee village on a cake for an Eskimo.

Below is another ribbonwork cake with poinsettas and pinecones and hollyberries.  Again you can see another way to use the ribbonwork design.