Mrs. Lydia's Kitchen

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Baby Shower, Pink Dress

This is the invitation used as the inspiration for a baby shower cake


Made a pink, marshmallow fondant little baby dress on a hanger, similar to the one on the invitation.

Finished cake, with silver pearl border, pink pearls sprinkled over the cake, and the pretty little baby dress.

Sunflower Cake

Yellow Cake, Cream Cheese Icing, MMF Petals, M&M Ladybugs: Sunflower Cake!

I love how this cake turned out, it is pretty high on my list for favorite cakes. It's silly but I also love the "woody" texture of the 'stem', that was a whim decision, very happy with it.

This is going to be my new business card image. Cropped a little, but get ready for it to show up! :)

Created the petals with two different sized cutters, added the lines and hand shaped the curve. Piped the center with a star tip.

There were about 7 little ladybugs crawling on this cake, painted M&Ms with food coloring for these cuties.

I was told that the birthday girl LOVED the cake, she wouldn't let anyone else cut it because she found a way to cut between the petals to keep the cake intact as long as possible.

Can't beat feedback like that!

Friday, November 9, 2012

North Florida Fair- Decorated Cakes Competition

The North Florida Fair has an array of contests for livestock, horticulture, County displays...as well as Fine Arts and Home goods. There are several divisions for cakes and other baked goods, including Decorated Cakes.

This year the theme for the fair was "A Whole Lot of Happy," I decided to utilize another division of the Fair and highlight flowers bringing happiness to gardeners.

I decided to make the cake 4 layers high, the finished cake was 8x4", I went for decorations more than size.

Handmade each leaf & petal for a bushel of flowers: White Roses, Purple Peonies, and a 'Pink Perfection' Camellia (My Nana's favorite).

Gardening gloves. With stitches, patterning shown on the "top" of the right glove and the nonslip palm displayed of the left glove.

Sprinkled some oreo "potting soil" around the chocolate bushel made from a mold.

I created "seed packets" to display on 3 sides of the cake. Each was hand painted with food color "paint".

Packets were for Sunflowers, Tulips, Bleeding Hearts {previous 2 photos}, and Pansies

Made yellow Sweet Peas to trail around and up the cake sides.

Here is the completed cake. Yellow Cake, Buttercream Icing, Marshmallow fondant gloves, seed packets, & flowers, a chocolate bushel- everything edible except the thin wires securing the flowers to the cake.

Here is my cake at the fair, 3rd place! :) {a little worse for wear on that left corner, probably got grazed moving it into the case, pretty good for 2 days after delivery}

This is the Second Place cake, I love it! The little cupcake people on the Ferris wheel is genius (there is a battery pack that lights up the center, not sure if it was supposed to spin, but still- pretty cool). There are cute little prize winners (a cow, a pumpkin, I think a chicken...). Overall, I am happy to be beaten out by this cake- it is precious and very fitting. :)

This, however, is the First Place cake. *I am trying very hard to be gracious in the issues that I see {and would like to point out} in this cake, in an effort not to appear to be a sore loser. Make your own judgements- I will just say "pizza box" and shake my head quietly*

Here are the 3 finalists together. Hopefully when I pickup the cake next week I will be provided with a score card of some sort.

Monday, October 29, 2012

First Birthday Cake, Farm

A pink, farm, first birthday cake for Ms. Madison. Yellow Cake with cream cheese icing.

A mini-corn field with a little family of chickens enjoying some kernels.

A pond, with lily pads, cattails and a little duck family. (Yes, the girl & baby ducks' heads shouldn't be green, technically...but they are prettier this way...)

A little piggy in his favorite muddy wallow.

I knew if I kept making everything a family there wouldn't be room for them all on the cake, so I just had to make the single animals extra cute... :)

Sweet little moo-cow, I love how he turned out... Obviously too big for the pink barn...but hey, I never said it was to scale.

Overall I was SO happy with this cake, and got a fantastic review from Madison's Mommy. :) Pleased to say also that everything on this cake is 100% edible, even the corn stalks, cattails, and cow's legs- they just contain noodle supports.

Ms. Madison's Smash Cake, tried to keep the fondant to a minimum so she could eat as much of the cake as possible without fear of any "small parts". Hope her Mommy posts pictures of her getting into this one. :)

Spooky Halloween Cake

My little brother's Tae Kwon Do school has an annual Halloween Party & dessert contest, this was our 2012 entry.

Yellow Cake with Chocolate icing (tinted green for "spooky lawn" effect). Each pumpkin was hand rolled and 'grooved,' most by my brother, he did a great job! Some I turned into little Jack-o-Lanterns.

All components of the cake were 100% edible, even the tree and haunted house. The windows were painted with a glow-in-the-dark food coloring (couldn't make a picture of that effect turn out correctly though).

See that smiling pumpkin by the house? It's my brother's "Symbol"- I surprised him by adding it to the cake! He loved that.

What's this?! Eggs hatching from under the tree with larvae running everywhere?! What can this mean?!

BOO!!!

Here is the big creepy spider that has created all this mess! Yikes! Must be her babies hatching from under the tree! This cake was a hit from what I was told about the party, and won first prize at the TkD dessert contest! Yay!! Happy Halloween!

Fall Festival- Cake Walk

Cakes were requested for the Aucilla cake walk fundraiser. This happens at the fall festival, so I was able to make cakes with elements of each. A very fun project.