Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday!  It’s a beautiful fall day here is Nashville!  I’m so excited about some new things happening here at Creative Crumbs…it’s truly amazing to see my dreams grow and blossom almost every day!  

I’m really looking forward to checking out some new kitchen spaces this week as I’m rapidly outgrowing my current one!  I’ll definitely keep you updated with stories and pictures along the way…. 

This week’s featured cake was a fun, nostalgic one for me.  I loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar when I was little…actually I loved all of Eric Carle’s books!

It’s so much fun to do kid’s cake as an adult….it’s almost like getting to play with finger paints all over again!

This cake was for a 1-year-old’s birthday.  I drew out two ideas based off the book, and mom picked the first one.

I started by coloring all my fondant….I mixed up a base color (like blue), then added some other colors (a little bit of light blue, purple, and green for exanple) and swirled them together without mixing them in completely.  You can see the mottled color of the dots here:

And then all my dots:

I made Mr. Caterpillar out of the same colored fondant and placed him top of the cake with a number 1.

So cute!  One of my friends even said she wanted a cake like this for her birthday!  Ha!

Happy baking!

Vintage Lace Cake

Happy Sunday!  Hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful day as much as I am!  

This week's "cake" is one I made to display at an wedding event this weekend.  I put "cake" in quotation marks, because there actually isn't any cake present here:)

Display cakes are a great way to show off designs, techniques or just sizes in 3D, instead of simply in pictures.  The decorating process is the same as with a real cake - I still use fondant, buttercream, royal icing, gumpaste, and food coloring to make all the decorations - I'm just covering up styrofoam bases instead of cake.

Display cakes are also fun because I get to come up with the ideas for them!  I always have input on the designs of the cakes I make, but for display cakes, I get to pick the inspirations not just execute them.  I had an idea this week that I wanted to make something with lace and brooches, but I didn't want it to look too old-fashioned...and here's the result!

All the brooches are handmade out of fondant and royal icing.  The rose lace is piped using a special technique I discovered a couple of years ago.  Its one of my favorite lace designs.

I'm going to be working on some additional display cakes this week to take to an event next weekend too.  For those of you in Nashville, come out to Centennial Park next Saturday, September 15 from 10:00 - 6:00 for Made in Nashville!  Its going to be an awesome event featuring all things local and benefiting the TN Literacy Coalition.

Happy Baking (or decorating!)