Cake Decorating, Ninja Style part 1

I don't keep up with blog as often as I should; if it were a plant it would die, like most of my plants do. Fortunately, even though I have a brown thumb with plants, I have a vanilla thumb (?) with cake! I started this cake decorating venture about a year and a half ago and I'm extremely happy with how much I've learned. Thanks to YouTube, Google, my followers, and a million wonderfully helpful blogs on the net, I feel like I've accomplished so much over this short amount of time.

In fact, one may even call me a CAKE NINJA!

Nice pants, cake ninja.

.......Not that kind of ninja, I hope.

I have been working with fondant for a cake I designed for a friends birthday. She loves shoes just as much as me and her favorite color is red, so whilst browsing the internet I came upon this image and designed the cake based on that:

I have leftover houndstooth sugar sheets from a cake I made last year that I've been wanting to use and would be perfect for this shoe. I've never ever EVER made anything like this before, so it will be a definite challenge for me. I'll have to keep you all updated.

*Update* I did not finish the shoe in time for her birthday, as there was a death in the family. The shoe project will have to continue at another time. 

Most of the time I'm too hard on myself. Like one of my close friends says, "If I treated anyone else like I treat myself, I'd hate me!" I'm a 25 year old almost-graduate, renting a little apartment with my boyfriend and all of my animals. I don't have a store front or some crazy awesome kitchen, or even an amazing desk job where I look like a smart business woman. Speaking of smart business women: 

Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion

That last part actually sounds pretty boring, compared to the fact that I play with cake and fondant and paint ALL THE TIME! So, I started looking through all of my pictures of my completed works and I decided to be proud of myself. I've accomplished more in a year and a half than I ever thought possible. My most recent cakes were extremely successful, and I did them both on one weekend, while I was going out of town! Man I'm the bomb. (Thank you, Randy, for doing all of those dishes <3)

One order was for a boy's first birthday party, with a mustache theme. They sent me the invite, so I designed a cake and cupcakes to match the theme. I made Blueberry Lemon Zest cupcakes with chocolate mustaches, a mustache shaped smash cake, and a blue and green chevron cake with a cursive "P" on the cake. The chevron pattern and letter were made of modeling chocolate.

I searched and searched the internet to find information about applying modeling chocolate to buttercream, and all of the small amount of information that I found claimed it would work fine. In the past it's worked for certain decorations, but I've never tried to use it to replace fondant, like with this cake. It wasn't bad, but fondant definitely would have looked better. The modeling chocolate was heavier than fondant, so it started to sag on the buttercream. Other than that, everything turned out great! I used handmade stencils for the decorations. For the mustache cake, I used a grass tip and chocolate icing. I smoothed out the sides, and added the stringy texture with my decorating tip. (I tried using the fork technique thing suggested by results from Google. It failed. THE INTERNET LIED.) I think my stringy mustache looks better than the forky thing anyways :)

                                     

Well, that's the end of part one. I'll have to continue telling you about the other order I had that weekend in part 2!

Here's a sneak peak :) Have a great night everyone!