Boxes and Bows

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours asked us to participate in a holiday home show she was hosting.  There were all types of homemade gifts and decorations to purchase, and Matt and I supplied the homemade treats to go along. 

We decided to get a little tiering practice under our belt in preparation for our big wedding project (this Sunday - eek!) and went with a stack of presents all in different flavors.  We also got to make our first fondant bow, which took a few tries but turned out nicely I think. 

Enjoy!

Natalie

Bake Sale Galore

A friend from work asked Matt and I to help her out with her big committment to her son's school's bake sale a few weeks ago.  This sweet girl graciously committed to MANY cookies and MANY cupcakes.  We agreed to take the 6 dozen cupcakes off of her hands and had a blast with the fall theme.  From what we hear, the cupcakes were a hit and raised a lot of money for the school.  Someone even grabbed up all the pumpkins to use as place settings at their Thanksgiving table.  Fun idea!

Stay tuned for a Christmas theme in the next post!

Natalie

Make Way for Ducklings

Do you guys remember that book? I LOVED it in elementary school! My favorite librarian (and surrogate mother) would be proud to know that. It was one of those books that had a big, gold seal on the front from winning a fancy award - you knew it had to be good! In fact, I'm thinking I might need to grab a copy to read over and over to Baby Costner. (BTW, if you didn't already know, Matt and I will have a new family addition as of June 3rd!)

You are probably wondering why I'm using my cake blog to review children's literature, but I assure you it has a point. A few weeks back, Matt and I made a special birthday cake for his aunt. She is an avid duck hunter, as is her entire family, and she has been one of our biggest supporters as we've started this cake-making venture. From the start, she kept joking about wanting a duck cake for her birthday when it rolled around. And we couldn't resist! We loved making the fish before, so we were thrilled to have a similar challenge on hand.

Matt and I both agree that this one was the most fun so far to make! Everything from start to finish ran smoothly with no hiccups or unexpected results. I think Mallards are just gorgeous, too, so we had a lot of fun looking at photos and getting our color inspiration. Hope you enjoy!

PS - Do take note of the two bands on the duck's feet. This was the feature of the cake for our aunt...she even saved the feet after we ate the cake! You see, she is the only one in the family to have earned the bragging rights from catching a duck with two bands around his feet. Quite an accomplishment in the world of duck hunting!

PPS - I had to go find an image of the book while I was at this! Memory lane is so fun!

The Last of the Catch Up

And...I'm back, as promised! This post should get us caught up all the way and even includes a cake from this week. I don't think we have an cakes on-tap for this weekend, but there should be some exciting ones coming up, so stay tuned.

First, you'll see the cupcake theme continued. A few weeks ago, our friend Ashley had a full schedule of celebrations with a mid-week baby shower and a surprise 50th celebration for her mom on the weekend. So we pulled together two batches of cupcakes for her...and when I say "we," I mean "Matt." The first set is for baby Molly's shower (in pink and green) and the second set is for Miss Judy's 50th birthday (in red and blue). Both are yellow cake with vanilla buttercream. And both feature a mixture of buttercream and fondant decorations.

Next up was a wedding shower from some friends of ours - Nicholas and Angela. They are both former co-workers of ours who have since moved to Nashville and are planning a wedding back here in Fayetteville later this month. Matt and I (yes, I actually worked on this one a bit!) created a vanilla cake that was covered in fondant with a quilted impression and the couple's future monogram, along with chocolate cupcakes covered in buttercream and the matching monogram - all in the couple's beautiful wedding colors. This was a fun project for us and got us inspired to try some wedding cake ideas in the future!

And last for the new post is a cake we made just this past week for our dear friend, Jennifer. She celebrated a birthday last Saturday, but most of our group of friends was traveling, so we celebrated on Wednesday night with a homecooked meal (from Ashley) and desert from the Costners. We kept this one all in buttercream with a whimsical feel of paislies and polkadots.

Thanks for checking in...and hopefully, I won't keep you waiting so long next time!

Natalie

Call Off the Search Party

I know, I know...I'm not being consistent AT ALL with these posts. It's certainly not due to a lack of content - we've been busy working away at many cake projects since my last post. Life just seems to get in the way of me blogging about it. I won't bore you with all the details, but know that I've thought about posting often. After all, it is the thought that counts, right?!

I'm going to break these up into a couple of posts. Most of the projects in this post are either recreations of something you've seen on here before (hello, tennis cakes!) or cupcakes. What's funny is, we never really thought about cupcakes much, but there seems to be a fair amount of interest in them, and they are a lot of fun to make.

It's only fair for me to mention that most of the creations you are about to see are mostly due to Matt's effort. As I said, life gets in the way sometimes, so he's had to carry a lot of the load for the cakes lately. It actually works out well because he's definitely the more talented of the two of us. I keep telling him he needs to open his own bakery called "I don't need my wife" ...well, at least not my help!

First up, a set of birthday cupcakes. The week we made these was extemely humid, which made our buttercream a little "testy" to deal with. Let's just say that a humid week is NOT a week for a cupcake sculpute...the pretty decorations just slide right off! I suppose it was a good lesson to learn, and the improvised solution turned out great in the long-run.

Just two days later, we had another fondant tennis cake to deliver. We made this for a friend of a friend who was celebrating her son's and husband's birthdays. The cake is Devil's Food with chocolate filling. I actually helped out on this one...up until we got the tennis ball covered. The rest is Matt's doing.

And just two days after that (if you are counting, that's 3 orders in one week!), we made another batch of cupcakes to take to some friends of ours in Texas. We actually imposed the third order on ourselves, but our friends have a precious little boy that we had never met at the time and are pregnant with another boy, so we really wanted to celebrate their family. Elijah was just about to celebrate is 3rd birthday, so Matt designed a camoflouge cupcake for him, along with coordinating cupcakes for baby Josiah who will be here in a matter of days, now! They are both yellow cake with chocolate buttercream. Hearing Elijah talk about his "pup-cakes" all weekend was well worth the effort to make and transport them!

Last, we have another tennis ball. In the process of making the last fondant tennis ball, we decided that the cake shape just wasn't made for covering in fondant. Sure, you can see that we make it work, but the frustration that goes into making it work is just no good. So, for the sake of sanity, we put a "cease and desist" order on fondant tennis balls. On the brightside, from all of our cupcake work, we had been having a lot fun piping buttercream, so we decided to try our hand at a piped tennis ball. And I LOVE how it turned out! Matt even free-handed a Wilson logo (like I said, he is good!). All I can take credit for is the baking and the white lines for the ball. Everything else goes to the husband once again!

The next post will have a few more orders of cupcakes and a couple of cakes. Stay tuned for those...hopefully I won't go MIA before I get them posted. :)

Natalie

Strike a Pose

Matt and I have been interested in creating a sculpture for a couple of weeks. Nothing like The David, just a cupcake sculpture. Two of my nieces had big birthdays last week (16 and 13), and we were heading down to Little Rock to celebrate, so we decided it was the perfect occassion to try our hand at the sculpture.

My 16 year-old niece, Blair, is very artsy and has lots of artwork she has created on her wall. So, my designer husband sketched out a cupcake that reflected some of her abstract work. For my 13 year-old niece, Taylor, you can never go wrong with anything girly, so we created pink sparkly swirls with green swirl accents. We mounted all the cupcakes on a piece of styrofome, and tada! The sculpture was a hit, and the cupcakes disappeared quickly. (We might have even had leftovers for breakfast the next morning!)

Hope you enjoy! It's a little departure from our fondant work, but fun nonetheless!

Fat Chick Part Deux

Right after we made the tennis cake, we received our second order for a replica of the original birdie cake. (Yea!) A friend of mine was going to be in town for a big birthday bash, so we recreated the fat chick - this time in red and light blue - for her.

The cake is three layers of white cake with vanilla buttercream - my favorite, just like wedding cake. Speaking of, we made this cake on the weekend of our first anniversary and had one layer left over...so we gobbled it up in celebration. I haven't tasted many of our cakes as I've tinkered with them, and I must say, this one was YUMMY! I might have made a fool of myself shoveling it down I like it so much!

Hope you enjoy another fat blue bird!

PS - I'm a couple of weeks behind on posting the things we've been doing. I will get you caught up quickly, though. Looks like we will have this week off, so we are going to focus on practicing some piping skills, I think. Stay tuned for a cupcake sculpture from last weekend.