Goodnight, Moon! Welcome Baby Boy!

Made for a February baby shower, the new mother saw a similar cake online, one with a striped bottom tier, stars on the top tier, and a crescent moon & baby topper. I found a picture of a ceramic figurine of a moon & baby and she liked it so much that she asked me to use it as inspiration. She was very happy when she saw the results. The first image above is the actual ceramic figure and the bottom image is my completely edible creation.

To construct the topper, I molded Rice Krispie Treats into the shape of the crescent moon, stabilized it with white chocolate, and then covered it all in yellow modeling chocolate. I made the face separately and then applied it to the moon, blending the seams. For the baby, I made a mold of a small plastic figure and used just the face and chest, adding hand modeled arms, legs, and wings. I hand painted the facial features on the moon and baby.

The top tier of the cake was french vanilla with mint chocolate chip mousse filling. The bottom tier was red velvet cake with white chocolate mousse. Both are covered in vanilla buttercream with fondant and modeling chocolate accents. The 10"+8" tiers will serve 50.

The Kidney Foundation of Cleveland, OH received the donation for this cake.

The Art of The Cake 2010: In The Garden & Winter Wonderland

The theme for this year's Art of The Cake Competition & Show was "In the Garden". Wedding cakes were to be inspired by anything that you would find in a garden. The Divisional competition was entitled, "Winter Wonderland".

My wedding cake entry was a flower covered gazing ball atop a faux marble pedestal with decorative river rocks painted with the 4 main words in modern wedding vows, Love, Honor, Cherish, and Respect. No award for the wedding cake this year, but I did receive great comments and excellent scores from the judges in both decorating and artistic scoring.

My Winter Wonderland entry was a re-do of a class cake. I added some new snowflake trees and made a modeled snowman for a topper. I dusted the snowman so that it would resemble a blown glass Christmas ornament. I'm happy to report that the cake won 2nd place honors in the Professional division!

I also entered my very first tasting competition. I was required to use both coconut and pomegranate in the cake--quite a combination, huh? I've only ever made coconut cake once before and I'd never worked with pomegranate, so it was a real challenge. I wound up making a mascarpone cream cheese pomegranate icing (it was delicious--sweet, but tangy--and a lovely ivory color) on a coconut sour cream cake with fresh coconut. I torted the 2 cakes twice, so there were 5 layers of filling: 3 layers of pomegranate icing and 2 layers of coconut cream cheese icing with fresh coconut. George LOVED it--actually, so did I--and best of all, so did the judges--I took 2nd place in this category, too!

The competition & show were wonderful--tons of great classes and presenters, a variety of vendors, a LIVE cake challenge, and again, the Polaris Center--it's facility, staff, & food--were incredible.

Becky Rink & Anna Weisand put on this show on the west side of Cleveland over the 3rd weekend in January. This was the 3rd year for the show and it's going strong. They do a fantastic job--can't wait for next year!