Choo-Choo Train Cake

I created a special Choo-choo Train cake for one of my favorite little boys around, who recently celebrated his 2nd birthday. Little J has this fascination with trains and I thought it would be perfect to create a cake that he can call his own.

I wanted to create simple cupcakes for the party guests, but include an individual cake for Little J. For this project, I actually played around with creating my own cupcake and cake stand! I got this idea from my super talented friend Tania of Cake4Six. For my cake stand, I used various sizes of cardboard cake circles, styrofoam cylinders, ribbon, and wrapping paper. It was really easy to create and it is both inexpensive, disposable, and you can theme it however you want it to look!

The cake is a two layered 6" Funfetti cake with vanilla frosting. The cake is covered with tinted fondant, as well as the cake decorations. I was lucky to have my good friends Roger and Amy stop by to help me work on the cake details! Roger even left a nice hand grip impression on the actual cake when he went to pick it up, thinking it was just a bowl or a mold! Because the cake was pretty small, we had a difficult time trying to figure how to shape the train-- should we do only the engine? How many passenger trains can we fit? Will it look funny curved on the cake? Should we add train tracks? I was really happy with how the cake turned out! Mucho gracias to my wonderful friends!

The cupcake were much simpler. I just made Funfetti cupcakes and topped them with vanilla frosting and colored sanding sugar.

Overall, I wanted the cake to have a fun two-year-old feel to it-- bright colors, simple recipes, and large details! Little J seemed happy with his cake and had some fun playing with this "trains" after we sang "Happy Birthday" and blew out the candles!

Happy birthday, little one! Love you much!

Last Minute Open House Cake

When you have a type-A personality, you want to have everything scheduled and have ample time to mentally prepare and plan everything. That is usually how I approach cake decorating. I need time to mentally prepare myself and get into that creative mindset. I also need time to gather my material. So, when my mom approached me and ask if I can create a simple two-tiered cake for my aunt's Open House party tomorrow, I went into frantic mode.

I was lucky enough to have store bought cake mix and frosting at home so that saved me time from any real baking. I also had a bit of leftover fondant, gum paste, and only green, brown, yellow, and red tinted coloring to work with. After a few minutes to trying to find inspiration online, I realized I was on a deadline if I wanted to sleep at all.

I love bright colors so I decided cover the cake in green fondant with brown gum paste as a rock-inspired border (top tier). I decided to create a little house out of white fondant and the last of the brown gum paste for the roof and chimney. I didn't know what I can create with my yellow and red fondant so I create a nice walkway and a cartoonish car. The cake was still missing something so I threw in a tree, but because I didn't have any more brown gum paste or green fondant, I had to settle for a yellow trunk, 2D apple tree. Finishing touches includes adding grass to the cake, adding details to the house and walkway with edible inked pens, and piping "Congrats" on the cake. In hindsight, I should not have been lazy and changed the writing color from green to white so that it would stand out more.

There are many little mistakes I made when creating this cake because of lack of time and materials. As I have mentioned before, each creation is such a learning process. So this is my less than 24hour notice cake! Usually I like to document my baking and designing process, but I was in such a rush I didn't stop to take any pictures. Sorry!

It is amazing to see your piece of work being destroyed and enjoyed!

Congrats to my uncle, aunt, and cousins Tommy and Nancy on their new home!

Cake: yellow cake with vanilla frosting covered in tinted fondant; decor pieces made from tinted fondant and gum paste; addition details added with tinted frosting and edible inked pens

Scooby, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

I had the pleasure of helping my good friend Joanna Park of Floral Sense plan a a little boys' Scooby-Doo birthday party. Her vision of bright blues and greens are so fun to work with, especially when it comes to decorations and the dessert table.

Joanna was super creative when planning this event and came with clever treats for the dessert table.

I created mini chocolate cupcakes... perfect size for snacking!

Joanna had some delicious meaty treats, but this beef jerky are for humans, not dogs!

I created simple white-chocolate covered Oreo cookie pops in blue to match the theme. Joanna came up with the clever idea of presenting them in delicate white tins filled with blue and green Fruit Loop cereals!

Also available were these deliciously cute mini donuts by Dough-a-Deer.

Scooby Snacks!

I experimented by adding a little twist with chocolate-covered Rice Krispies pops!

So happy these turned out well... and they taste great too!

And the centerpiece of it all.... the birthday boy's Scooby-Doo cake!

Joanna provided more pictures and details from this adorable and creative event on her Floral Sense blog.

Photos courtesy of the fabulous D.Park Photography team

Mini cupcakes: chocolate cake with whipped vanilla frosting and blue and green sanding sugars

Chocolate Rice Krispies pops: tinted white chocolate covered Rice Krispies cereal in melted marshmallows; covered with blue and green sanding sugars

Chocolate Oreo cookie pops: tinted white chocolate over double-stuffed Oreo cookies

Cake: top tier- chocolate cake with whipped vanilla frosting and covered in tinted fondant; bottom tier- yellow cake with whipped vanilla frosting and covered in tinted fondant; cake decor are made from fondant and piped with whipped vanilla frosting; Scooby-Doo candle was store bought

Simple Tae Kwon Do Cupcakes

My dad is a Master instructor at Tom Vo's Tae Kwon Do Academy and they do monthly birthday celebrations for their students. My dad's birthday was in February and he wanted to bring something for all of his students during his birthday month. Too bad he told me the night before the event if I can whip up come cupcakes for him.

With just a few hours to create, no supplies, and no time to prep or design, I whipped up some simple and messy Tae Kwon Do cupcakes for my dad and his students.

Baked48 cupcakes, 24 rainbow yellow cake and 24 chocolate cupcakes. I was lucky to have some ready-made frosting to tint and use. Notice the movie on the right? My favorite movie ever, Con Air. I always put on a movie to listen to when I am baking and decorating.

I decided to make the cupcakes look like karate uniforms since Tae Kwon Do uniform aren't as recognizable in cupcake form (instead of the "Y" neckline, it is a "V" neckline). Because I was short on time, I stuck to two colors: red and black. If I had more time, I would made each cupcake with a different color belt. Luckily the TKD uniforms are white so that saved me some time.

The cupcakes look pretty decent after they were all boxed up and ready to go. It can be such a pain to try to quickly whip up sometimes with little or no warning, but I always have fun doing so. Always a learning experience, too!!

Happy birthday to my Papa!!! I love you very much!

M.I.A.

Hey everybody!

I am so sorry I've gone missing for awhile. Life has been really busy and I have not had a chance to update this as much as I want. Please forgive me.

When I do find the time to sit down and update, I will include some scrappy, last minute Tae Kwon Do cupcakes I made for my dad, a fun colored Scooby-Doo cake, some scrapbook pages I've finally finished, and something called vinylmations.

Thank you for continuing to check on my blog! Fun stuff to come, I promise!

xoxo