I spent Halloween in San Francisco this year!

First of all, our two RHPS shows were AMAZING. Saturday we sold out, and on Friday we sold 250+ tickets. Best Halloween shows ever!

I have to share the best Halloween costume I saw. San Francisco has a tour company called "Go Car", a GPS-guided tour of the city in little yellow go-karts. We were about to cross the street when a Go Car went by with a guy in a turtle costume at the wheel. OK, cute. Then a guy in a spotted mushroom hat drove past. That's when I got it. "Oh my god, it's Mario Kart!" This was confirmed a second later, when Luigi went by. It was brilliant! I wish I'd gotten a photo.

Meanwhile, reactions to my costume ranged from people who knew exactly who I was (including one guy who started quoting Woody's lines to me), to those who said, "Oh! Oh, I know who you are! You're from that movie! Toy Story! You're that character! Oooh, what's her name?", to those who simply tugged on the pull-string pinned to the back of my shirt. Overall, though, I got raves, which I was thrilled about. (Photo below the cut.)

I didn't have a lot of time this year, but it wouldn't be Halloween if I didn't bake something, so:


Oh what a tangled web we frost ...

( the whole colony and my costume )

Wow, 4 cakes in as many weeks! Busy me!

My mom's 60th birthday was yesterday, so of course I made her a cake. She requested one similar to one I made for her and her co-workers about a year and a half ago, so I did the same flavor - lemon cake with homemade buttercream - and a similar design. This time, though, the vines had something to say:



( side view )

After I posted the Stormtrooper cake yesterday, my friend William teased me about making him a 'Serenity'-themed cake for his birthday tomorrow. Well, it happened that he was coming over last night for a Beatles Rock Band session. So I picked up a small cake, and in 30 minutes I came up with this:



For those of you not familiar with it, it's the movie's logo.

Not the cleanest, and I'm sure I'll try a better one in the future - but for a quick piping job, not bad!

I made a cake for my friend (and Bawdy Caste co-director) Jared's birthday over the weekend. He was teasing me about the amount of food coloring I put into my frosting, so I decided to make him a design using as little color as possible. He loves Star Wars and has a custom-made Stormtrooper costume, so here's what I made:



And I did, in fact, use the force to decorate this cake. I had to in order to get frosting out of the detail tip!

The kickoff BBQ for the 2010 Baycon staff was held over the weekend. Naturally, I decorated a cake for it. In honor of our 2009 theme (which featured fantastical creatures), this is what I made:


Yes, it's once again a Frozen Buttercream Transfer.

And what kind of cake goes best with a fire-breathing dragon?

( Dragonfruit? no ... )

We had a bridal shower for a co-worker yesterday, and I made bridal bouquet cupcakes. I've made them once before, but wasn't able to take a picture of them in their display stand, so here they are:



There were three flavors: vanilla, chocolate mint, and the ever-popular red velvet.

As promised, here are photos of my Threadcakes contest entry, complete with the redone design on top.

Many thanks to racerxmachina for alerting me to the contest!

I chose a design called "Sees the Day":


( And here's what I did with it )

If you'd like to see my contest entry page - which has many more pics of the process - check it out here.

Yet another cake disaster last night, folks. Luckily, this one was fixable (if not easily).

As I previously mentioned, I'm submitting an entry for the Threadcakes decorating contest. I decided to do yet another Frozen Buttercream Transfer, as I am usually very pleased with the results of that technique. Because I am crazy, I chose a design with lots of tiny details on it that had to be done with the #1 decorating tip - AKA "the writing tip," AKA "the tip with an opening the size of a flippin' pinhole." Piping frosting out of this tip is NOT easy. Doing the detail work for this design took well over an hour, even though it was only one color, between fighting to squeeze out the icing and resting my aching hand. Eventually, though, I had the details done, the background frosted, and the transfer in the freezer.

A few hours later, I took the FBT out of the freezer to put on top of my cake. I was working to loosen it from the plastic wrap, didn't realize I wasn't supporting the transfer, and ...

Splat.

Half of the FBT snapped off and hit the floor, breaking into several more pieces. I was shocked, stunned, and couldn't believe I had been so careless. And then, the realization hit me: I was going to have to do that slog of a design ... that painful frosting job ... all ... over ... again. Today I've actually been getting shooting pains in my hand and arm from squeezing than damn icing bag so hard.

Thank heavens for Tom. He calmed me down, first of all - I'd have probably been a sobbing wreck if not for him. Then he mixed up more frosting for the background while I re-did the detail work, washed all the dishes and cleaned the counters, AND massaged my aching hand. (And, like all good boyfriends, told me he was sure the second one would turn out even better than the first one, anyway.) I love that man. :-)

So, tonight I'll CAREFULLY place the new FBT atop the cake and finish decorating it. Photos tomorrow!

I think Frozen Buttercream Transfers are becoming my "thing".

It's kshandra's birthday (happy birthday, sweetie!), and she asked me if I'd decorate a cake for her. Well, of course! I had three keywords that I knew described her interests: "purple," "mice," and "karaoke". Thanks to some clipart and a steady hand, here's what I did:


I had some trouble with spacing the writing, but I'm thrilled with how that mouse turned out! I even managed to make her look a little furry!

And now, the wrap-up of my first Baycon as a staff member! I worked in the Convention Hospitality Suite (Consuite), while Tom (who had never even attended the con, let alone staffed it) worked for Convention Operations (ConOps).

( THURSDAY )

( FRIDAY )

( SATURDAY )

( SUNDAY )

( MONDAY )

I found a video of the gear cakes!



Many thanks to 'Czarcats' on Flickr!

For the second year in a row, I had the pleasure of making cakes for the staff party/feed/collapse at the end of Baycon. I'll do a full write-up of the weekend (my first as a staff member) in a bit, but first ... cake photos!

This year's convention was titled "The Lost Sky City of Pyrocumulon", a steampunk-set city of wonder and mystery (and dragons). The very talented Kimmi Albee had drawn a picture of the city that was used as the convention's masthead. I decided to try and put it on the cake. But not as an edible photo or anything ... oh no, I was going to recreate it in buttercream! (Because I am crazy.) In addition, to go with the steampunk theme, I made four cakes shaped like gears.

Here is what Kimmi's drawing looked like:


( And here is what I did with it )

I go weeks without baking, and suddenly I've got two cakes in a weekend!

This one was a collaborative effort between kelkelrenee and myself for our friend (and Bawdy Caste director) Shannon's birthday party:


It was a record-breaking cake! ;-)

(I smeared the name, but I'm very happy with how the hand-lettered "Happy Birthday" and musical notes came out.)

( Follow the music ... )

It's Passover, so good Jewish girl that I am, I naturally made ... an Easter basket cake.


The cake is rainbow chip with buttercream filling.

( And matching cupcakes! )

I decorated a cake for my friend Brittany's birthday yesterday. She's a fan of David Bowie (and just played him for our Rock Star Show last week), so I embarked upon my most complex Frozen Buttercream Transfer to date.

The source photo:


( The result )

Rock on, my friends!

Nothing fancy today, folks - just some chocolate mint Christmas Tree cupcakes for a holiday party here at the office:



Happy Holiday of Choice, everyone!

The office held a baby shower for a co-worker today, and I was asked to decorate a cake. I decided to do a design of a baby blanket with alphabet blocks on top of it spelling out the little guy's name: Marcelo.

I couldn't bake a big enough cake, so the shower planner said she'd bring in the base cake, and I'd decorate it and add homemade baby block mini-cakes:


Unfortunately, I was told that I'd be given a 1/2-sheet cake to work with (and planned the mini-cakes accordingly), and was presented with a 1/4-sheet an hour before the shower. So the name came out scrunched. I suppose I could have put it across instead of zig-zagged, but I thought "Marc Elo" would look even odder. "Why's his middle name 'Elo'?" Oh, well.

Otherwise, though, I'm pretty proud of it!

( Another angle )

Sometime, I'll try this again with a proper-sized base cake. I think it'll look even cuter!

I got the photos uploaded! Many thanks to lokiz_mom and genuine_snark for offering to loan me the right cables, and shoutingboy for suggesting I look for a command that would copy photos from my camera onto the memory card. It worked!

So here are the photos of my cake, which I have entitled "Hats Off to the Bawdy Caste":


(If you don't happen to know the inspiration for the cake, please direct your attention to my icon.)
It's a yellow cake with lemon filling and buttercream frosting. I used a star tip to make it look like sequins, then added a generous covering of "Old Gold" luster dust.

( One more photo )

Happy 13th birthday, Bawdy Caste!

Today's lesson, boys and girls, is that sometimes everything's going to go wrong ... but it's possible to salvage it and come out with a lovely finished product.

A field staff member in my department had her birthday today, and the Departmental Director asked me on Monday about getting a cake. "I make cakes," I said. (Famous Last Words ...)

Maggie, the Birthday Girl, has just bought a house, so we decided that would be the cake's theme. I figured I'd make a 9x13 'yard' cake and stack a smaller 'house' cake on top of it. silentbob037's girlfriend Kelly, who also decorates cakes as a hobby, offered to help me. I figured I'd bake everything, eat dinner while it all cooled, and then level, fill, frost, and decorate.

And then the fun began...

( The Comedy of Errors )

( The Finished Product )

So, there you have it: Snatching victory from the trash can of defeat. Also, everyone loved both the taste and the decorating (if they noticed the leaning house, they didn't say anything), and Maggie sent me an e-mail thanking me for the 'awesome' cake and telling me I'm 'amazing'.

All's well that ends well. :-)

I made a birthday cake for my friend last weekend, using one of his favorite bands as inspiration:


For those of you not familiar with The Misfits, that's their logo, known as 'The Crimson Ghost'. It's a frozen buttercream transfer.

( side view with candles )

This cake was yet another reminder that I need to get baking again! I haven't made a cake since May.