Walnut Maple Cake

This beautiful 12 inch Classic Cake is gluten free.  Three layers of vanilla cake are complimented by three delicious flavors.  Apricot jam, maple buttercream and toasted walnuts.

Variations on a Theme: Banana

Banana cake with peanut butter filling and cream cheese buttercream frosting.

These two cakes are what I like to call Classic Cakes.  With no fondant or specially made gumpaste decorations these cakes are simply delicious.  Both cakes feature three layers of incredibly moist banana cake complimented by caramel and pecans or peanut butter and cream cheese.

Banana cake with caramel filling, toasted pecans and cream cheese buttercream frosting.

Happy Birthday Allison

This 10 inch square birthday cake was for my favorite client.  It was three layers of gluten-free chocolate chip cake with mocha swiss meringue buttercream frosting.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

My friend Ashley named her son Harold after his Grandfather and to celebrate his 1st birthday she asked me to make this special cake. 
She wanted the theme of the cake to be the book;  Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.  Harold and the Purple Crayon was first published in 1955 and Ashley remembers reading it as a kid.  It is a darling book and I was thrilled to make it a cake.

Harold Isaac's real bedroom is decorated in a woodland theme.
I chose to recreate elements from his real bedroom in this imaginary room.

In the book, Harold draws himself an adventure with his purple crayon.  In the end, he wants to go home and has to find his way back to his bedroom. 
The sides of the cake feature Ashley's favorite scenes from the book. 
On the top of the cake I created a little scene from Harold Isaac's future.   He has fallen asleep after spending the day reading Harold and the Purple Crayon and drawing pictures just like Harold in the book.

This is my favorite part of the book.  I love that hungry moose and deserving porcupine.

Tangled Tower

The friend of a friend asked me to make her daughter this tangled tower.

I was really excited until I found out I only had 5 days to make it. Then I started to panic. The thing about having to rush is that you don't have time to plan out all of the details and stress about what might be the very best way to make the cake. I couldn't aim for perfection - just completion.


The short story behind this long process, I think I spent about 40 hours on this cake, is that they were thrilled. Mattea had a Rapunzel party with her friends and this cake was reserved for a family party. The inside, unlike the outside, was simple. Vanilla cream cheese pound cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream frosting. Yum.


Mattea and her parents were kind enough to give me back the tower (which just lifted off of the cake).  (After so much work I didn't want it tossed into the garbage.)   I've considered making a new base for it  out of styrofoam.  I wasn't entirely happy with the actual cake and I would like to try again with something a little bigger.  I'd also like more time to make it just right.
 For now it will just sit on my dining room table until I decide  what to do with it.  Anybody need a Tangled cake?

My favorite thing about this cake is all of the tiny details.  I even gave Rapunzel a dark lock of short hair.  Unfortunately I don't think you can see it in the pictures.  It is tiny as is her little friend Pascal sitting by her on the windowsill.