A year in cake

This last weekend I made a cake for my "best customer" Zephanie. This Cars cake was for her youngest son's second birthday. We first connected up when I made that same son's first birthday cake. So I guess it's our one year anniversary. Zephanie is my best customer because she'll tell anyone and everyone about the cakes I make so I've actually had many people contact me over the past year telling me Zephanie sent them my way. So in honor of the anniversary of my new bccf (best cake customer forever), here is a year in review done in cake. In September I made a cake for our friend Leo from the pool 3rd birthday. In October is when I made this guy for the Tulsa Sugar art show. I'm pretty lame and he actually hung around our house until December. Don't look too carefully at this one that I slapped together for our friend Hope's 4th birthday. In November I got a call from Zephanie's sister-in-law about making a superhero-themed cake for her son. I had ideas of how to incorporate Iron Man into the actual cake and not just the cupcakes, but this is what we ended up with. Sorry Iron Man.

Our little friend Isaac came all the way up to OK for his aunt's wedding on his birthday so I gladly filled his request for a penguin cake. I'll admit that I ended up making it 0ut of rice crispy treats after a catastrophic crumbling of my first version of this little guy. He is sitting on a poured sugar and frosting iceberg. I didn't end up doing all that much. I'm not sure why I was so lame, but I did decorate the chocolate covered rice crispy treats we brought to the church Christmas party. January ended up being EXTREMELY busy. At the beginning of the month, I did a little winter wonderland themed cake for the first birthday of a son of one of Zephanie's co-workers.

 Then the next couple of weeks I made the mistake of double booking weekends. I'm not going to do that again. One weekend I made a little purse and cupcakes adorned with accessories for the fashion party of a daughter of a former roommate of mine (although at that point I didn't realize we even knew each other before OK). That night I took this cake over to a surprise 40th birthday party for a friend of ours. (E saw this picture and asked, why do people always want you to make them a toilet cake?-- I was asking myself that same thing kid.) I double booked the following weekend with a veggie tales cake for the twins of one of Zephanie's coworkers. I had so much fun trying to recreate Larry, Bob, and all their friends out of candy clay. I also used a little candy clay as well as this Thomas cake for Zephanie's older son.
February was E's birthday, and in my usual form, I ran out of time to make him an actual cake.
Cake requests picked up again in the spring. One of Zephanie's friends asked me to do a "chocolate cake with vanilla filling" for his daughter's 11th birthday. This is a chocolate cake with a vanilla bean pastry cream, covered in chocolate ganache, wrapped in a chocolate collar with white chocolate accents. Next came my brother's wedding cake.
When I got back from the wedding I went to a mirror themed ladies' activity at church and brought this cake to share. Next came another slapped together 30th birthday cake for a friend of ours who also happened to be my periodontist's wife. The sugar daisy may or may not have been leftover from my brother's wedding. The next morning I delivered this cars themed cake to one of Brad's coworkers. Her son made a special request for Lightning McQueen and The King. Next came a simple cake to celebrate the addition of another little boy to the family of one of Zephanie's neighbors. Another one of Br's coworkers (who used to work with Zephanie) asked so a couple little cakes a couple days apart for her son's birthdays. A different one of Br's coworkers asked me to make a cake to match the invite for her twins' first birthday. That cake was followed by a pair of boots for another co-worker. Then in May cames the first cake that had nothing to do with Zephanie, Br's coworkers, or our friends. I donated a coupon to E's school's silent auction and it was redeemed by a really nice mom who asked for a dinosaur train cake for her son's second birthday.

Now let's just pretend that this cake for yet a different one of Br's coworkers doesn't look a whole lot like the dinosaur train cake.
In June a little friend of mine turned 12 and asked if I'd make her birthday cake. I told I would if she helped me make it. I sketched up a few ideas and then she put together a final idea and color scheme. I think she did an amazing job.
Then Zephanie gave me another jingle and asked for a baby shower cake. This is what we came up with together.
Then a couple weeks ago another one of Br's coworkers asked me to recreate her husband's "baby" for his 30th birthday. The car is actually made out of rice crispy treats. She also requested some cookies made to look like a couple of the gauges he'd just installed in his flat black, 1971 chevy chevelle with specialized rims. I was SO nervous making this one because I knew that all the details would matter A LOT. And after all that butter, powdered sugar, eggs, oil, fondant, vanilla, and chocolate, it takes us to the cars cake for the little boy who got most of this started. It's no wonder I can't keep a trim waistline. I feel so fortunate to have been given all these opportunities to use my favorite creative outlet so many times in the last 12 months.