Anthology of Cakes, Buttercream Baby

Let me preface this post by saying that I LOVE baking cakes.  I love baking in general, but cakes really take the cake.  Ha!  Any excuse I can get to make one, I jump on it.  I've even offered to make cakes for friends free of charge, though no one has jumped on that bandwagon yet.  

Now...even though Fondant covered cakes are some of the more beautiful confectionary creations known to man, you just can't beat buttercream, baby. So...these are some of buttercream cakes i've made.

This one was a devil's food cake with chocolate buttercream icing.  It was our First Annual Colburn Super Bowl Bash.  Lots of fun! I took the Wilton Football pan and doubled it.  My hand was cramping to HECK from piping all of those stars.  But so worth it.

I love this cake.  Hannah's 2nd birthday party was Lady Bug themed, and I just can't help but smile when I look at this one.  The cake is a from-scratch white cake out of the Southern Living cookbook.  Divine.  The little ladybug on the top of the cake is a cupcake.  This was the first cake I'd ever made and decorated.  Good memories there.

This monstrosity was Hannah's 4th Birthday cake from last year.  She had a Princess party, so I thought Cinderella's castle was fitting.  Thank GOODNESS for Wilton's cake set...It would not have been fun to make all of those steeples out of rice krispie treats and cover in fondant.  The cake was the same white cake recipe from the Southern Living cookbook (yeah...it's that good), but this time I put raspberry jam in between each layer.  SO GOOD! 

Everything is buttercream, except for the little fondant flowers.  Those were a real joy.  :)

This bad boy was so much fun to make.  Ethan's first birthday was a cookout (as has each subsequent birthday).  We're so original.  The top bun and bottom bun are pound cake, baked in a pyrex bowl to get them to curve.  The actual Patty is  one layer Devil's Food cake covered in chocolate icing.  The lettuce, pickles, onions, and tomatoes are fondant.  The mustard and Ketchup are icing.  

And the side of fries are sugar cookies with red icing ketchup. 

This one is the cake I made for my husbands grandmother Helen for her 75th birthday last year.  We had about 75 of her friends come to her house and surprise her!  It was a blast.  

She is a fan of pink, so I ran with it.  This is the tallest buttercream cake I'd made, and we had some SERIOUS leaning issues.  But, like Duff himself even says on Ace of Cakes, every cake has a back.  The "75" cake topper is gumpaste. 

I saw pink for about a week after that.

I'm always looking for my next chance to make a cake.  I've got some ideas floating around in my cake-crazed head!

Coming up next...FONDANT.