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