piece of cake......

Side Note....I started writing this post back on Wednesday morning & am finally now finishing... 2 days later......
I've been horrible about blogging lately! I know this is a bad excuse, but I've been so busy with our basement project, baby stuff, and just catching up with life in general. The cake side of my blog has been lacking the most. So as I sit here waiting for the carpet installers to get here (and wait for my mom & sister to get to my house already!!!) I am going to update you on the past 3 months of cake baking/decorating that I've been doing!

A CORNHUSKER GROOM......
I got asked by the neatest couple, Marcia & John, to make John's grooms cake for their wedding. Marcia was so great about letting John make all the decisions regarding the grooms cake so he picked a white cake with raspberry cream cheese filling and all he wanted for the decorations was to make it Husker Themed. After lots of brainstorming, I am so happy with how the cake turned out on the big day!!
How cute are the bride & groom??? These pics are courtesy of their photographer - Bradley Jensen

And the yummy cake........

CUPCAKE CRAZE.....
My friend Kristen's mom Leslie, asked me to make the cupcakes for her daughter's high school graduation party. I had never made cupcakes in bulk, but I wasn't about to shy away from the challenge. She ordered 200-250 cupcakes - half red velvet with cream cheese filling & half chocolate with buttercream filling. Since Jenae's party theme was going to be zebra & hot pink, I thought these cupcakes needed to have some style as well! For the Chocolate cupcakes, I ordered these zebra cupcake liners from globalsugarart.com & then iced with hot pink buttercream frosting.

Since when these cupcakes are on display, they're going to need some height variation to make the display look interesting, I also bought these graduation themed cupcake liners & inserts.

Now time for the big event......baking 250 cupcakes. Since cake holds its moistness better if you freeze it, I chose a Saturday one week before the party to bake all the cupcakes. I started with my grocery list & gave myself a budget of $50 for all the supplies. If you've ever actually thought about what it takes to bake 12 boxes of cake (plus my super secret ingredients), my list was quite lengthly & involved 72 eggs, and 48 oz of sour cream. I started at Super Saver & was disapointed when their Duncan Hines (which is my brand of choice) was over $1.50 each. That's going to put me overbudget!! So I was off to Wal-Mart, sigh......., I really despise Wal-Mart. But for these large baking projects, it really was the best choice. Cake mix for under $1 & sour cream in tubs so large that I was also embarassed to buying such an item! My total came in at $48 and some cents. Success!!!!

I started baking a little before noon & had 4 cupcake pans in the oven at any given time.

About 5 1/2 hrs later, my cupcake count was around 300 & I had them packaged up nicely (key to freezing cakes---you have to wrap them very tightly so no moisture or freezer burn can attack your lovely cake) and secured in our deep freeze. I waited until the day before the party I whipped up all the frosting & having no idea how much frosting it would take to frost 250 cupcakes, I made 2 batches of cream cheese frosting & 2 batches of hot pink buttercream. It was quite messy, as JJ would continuously find hot pink frosting on his clothes or his hands for the next month. I have no idea what he was getting into that he would constantly have frosting on himself, still a mystery........
Here's a shot of my 2 large tubs of frosting

Now this is a HUGE letdown, but I don't have any pictures of my finished product!! I know! I know! This huge buildup to these cupcakes & I have nothing to show you!! If you knew the mania that was present when I was trying to frost 250 cupcakes & package them up over my hour lunch break?

HOLY FISH, MATT'S 30!!!!
heeeeee get it??? HOLY FISH......heehehehe I thought I was pretty clever!!!
My brother-in-law turned 30 over Memorial Day weekend, so to celebrate, his wife Tara asked me to surprise Matt with a cake! She asked for something hunting or fishing related. Here's the final result!!