Practice

I kept doing practice cakes too. At some point I realized if I wanted to copy things exactly, it would help to have more color options. So onto my Amazon wish list went a whole bunch of Americolor pastes!

This is what I was going for when I realized this:

 And what I got:

It clearly wasn't a match, but I did like it!

Monkey Birthday

I wasn't too worried though. Sure, I couldn't do "pretty" yet, but I could do cute. And cute was so much fun! Especially when I got to decorate cakes based on a theme, like this one.

Dilemma

After the Tinkerbell cake, I faced a dilemma. What to do with all the extra cakes I made for each project? They were filling up my freezer. So I figured why not practice? After all, I had a whole board of ideas on Pinterest that I wanted to try.

First up was this cake:

 

This is what I came up with: 

Cute, but not exactly like the original. So that was first on my official cake baking to-do list: learn how to make gum paste flowers and ribbons. Next was this cake:

 

And my version: 

The gum paste ribbon bullet on my to-do list got another checkmark. And my cake baking wish-list on Amazon? It got a round cake pan added to it...

And Then it Happened...

Someone I DIDN'T know asked me to make a cake! My friend must have showed off the cake I made for her daughter a few months before, because one of her co-workers called me to do a Tinkerbell cake for her daughter.

At this point I had to decide if I was the type of baker to insist on everything being edible on their cakes. I decided against it...at least for kid's cakes. I mean, what's better than getting a cake AND toys?