Mike's Happy Potter Birthday Cake. (March 2002)

This cake turned out far better than I had any right to expect it to. I baked this cake and did a crumb coating the day before, but I really didn't have time to do the decorating until about 3 hours before Mike's party because my family was visiting. Fortunately, I had at least cut out the animal shapes the day before from a thinly rolled sheet of fondant. I never would have finished in time if the fondant hadn't had time to harden some overnight. I colored them by painting them with watered-down food coloring, and then drew in the details with a non-toxic black marker. Everything else is just buttercream icing.

For those of you who don't know what this cake is, even after looking at the picture, it's a Harry Potter cake. Each of the 4 quadrants of the cake is the shield of one of the 4 houses at Hogwarts: Gryffindor (the lion), Slytherin (the snake), Hufflepuff (the badger), and Ravenclaw (the eagle). I was afraid Mike wouldn't recognize it, but he did. He saved the animals too (they're on a plate on top of his fridge), although the Slytherin snake broke.

Problems: You know, I really didn't have any *problems*, but I plenty of anxiety. I was just sure the animals would come out a disaster, and the shield designs would just look like random blobs of colored icing, and I was sure I'd drop the cake before I got it to Mike's, or that I wouldn't arrive until after the party was over, but everything turned out well. Oh, I didn't have time to whip up another batch of icing to decorate the sides of the cake, so I just used up what I had left from the shields, and I think I had *just* enough to finish.

Mom's Birthday Blue Willow Cake. (April 2002)

We all really like Blue Willow china, and we have lots of it, so I made a blue willow cake for mom. It's covered in fondant. The design itself was drawn on a separate circle of fondant in pencil, then painted over in blue food coloring.

Welcome Abby! (March 2002)

I made this cake for my new 1st-cousin-once-removed, Abby when Christy brought her up to Philadelphia. The cake was inspired by one my grandparents had for their 40th Anniversary.

Double Birthday Split Personality Cake. (March 2002)

Katherine asked me to do a cake for a double birthday party she was having at her house for 2 of her friends, a guy and a girl. She remembered the cake I did for my own 30th birthday and thought it might be nice to do a cake that was half black leather, and then half frilly flowery. (Apparently when she mentioned her idea to one of her other friends, s/he asked, "Which half is for which person?")

The black leather cake is very time consuming under normal circumstances, but fortunately I had made lots of extra metal studs and spikes and chains for the first cake, not knowing exactly how many I'd need. The chain is made of gumpaste. The black leather and the other silver things are fondant, the flowers are royal icing, and the rest is buttercream. I told Katherine ahead of time that everything was edible, but that the chain would taste terrible. So she told this to everyone at the party and they all immediately grabbed a piece to taste it. She said I was right; it tasted like plaster. Told ya so. :)

Problems: In the second picture, you can see where the black leather ripped a little right where it meets the flowery half. And the daisy lost a petal (they're very delicate). I was also a little worried about exactly what do to for the flower design, and I went with a basketweave in the end and that turned out well.