Today is the Day!

We are scheduled to have our fifth child this morning via C-Section!  Five kids.  Who would have thought?

We are nervous and excited for this newest addition to finally make his/her way into our lives!

Gender Reveal Rose Cake

For this pregnancy we chose to not find out the sex of the baby, and its been really fun!!  Thank you to all those who commented and encouraged us to stick with it and not give in… I am so glad we did!

Baby Blue Rose Cake

 

I am hoping for another boy…

Pink Rose Cake

 

 

My sweet Audrey wants a little sister desperately!

 

In reality we all would be thrilled with either. :)

In honor of the sweet blessing we are about to meet I wanted to share some of the joy and excitement with you.

I am going to start my day with a super awesome gift and I think YOU SHOULD TOO!!

I would love for one of you to win the amazing new phone!

Verizon Phone

Its actually part smartphone.  Part tablet.

But all totally awesome.  These beautiful Verizon phones retail for $599.00!

How can you win one?  Simply tell me:

What do you think we are having… a boy or a girl?

If you would like you can follow along on my Facebook page, I will try to update with pictures and confirmation! :)

Contest runs from May 31st-June 3rd.  You can “vote” once a day, every day!

See official rules here.

Wish me luck! :)

UPDATED:

Olivia

On Friday we welcomed Olivia into our hearts!

She was 8lbs 5 oz

She is healthy and happy and much loved!

(Contest is still open through this evening- just make sure you guess ‘girl’) :)

WINNER ANNOUNCED!

I picked a winner using random.org.  They selected a number between 1 and 611.  Comment #52 was the lucky winner!

Theresa, please email me within 48 hours to claim your awesome new phone!

 

· 615 Comments

Rose Covered Checkerboard Cake

I had no intentions of making a Rose Cake.  I was actually planning on doing a tutorial for this cake, but something happened.

I was so inspired by the whimsical beauty of the MacKenzie-Childs products, I just couldnt help myself!  Since I knew the interior was a checkboard design, I thought the soft Rosette’s would be the perfect compliment.

 Original Rose Cake on Mackenzie-Childs Parchment Check Cake Stand

In addition the the cake interior, the Rose’s seemed a perfect compliment to the beautiful cake stand the cake was sitting on.  I fell in love with the Parchment Check collection from MacKenzie-Childs and I hope you do too.  Cause guess what?

I am giving away a $1000 gift card for their products! (Enter to Win below)

Original Rose Covered Cake with Checkerboard Interior!

They of course have many, many more designs and products that you can choose from.  Like stunning furniture and kitchen and bathroom accessories and even garden furniture and accessories!

To  pipe the rose’s I followed my Original Rose Cake Tutorial.

 

Rose Covered Checkerboard Cake!

For the interior I slightly modified my Vertical Layer Cake Tutorial.  I made the layers white and a pale yellow, trying to replicate the same design that is on the cake stand and accessories.

Then, instead of placing the same color layers directly on top of each other, I just switched out the layers to make a checkerboard pattern.  SO easy!  Of course, you can always buy the checkerboard pan too. ;)

Checkerboard Cake covered in Rosette's!

Please be patient, the Giveaway Widget will load in just a moment! :)  If for any reason there is a technical issue, you can click HERE.  You will be directed to a PromoSimple page with all my giveaway information on it.  Just scroll down to enter on their site!

 

Mackenzie-Childs $1000 Giveaway

*I received some products from MacKenzie-Childs.  They supplied the $1000 giftcard to giveaway to an iambaker reader.  All opinions expressed are my own.

· 64 Comments

Some Things (Silver Rose Cake)

I hope you will forgive me interrupting your regularly scheduled program, I just need to take care of some business.

First off, the sweet little Silver Bell’s inspired Rose Cake above was seen in an ad in the latest issue of Sweet Paul Magazine!  I am a huge, huge fan of those great guys and hope you will be too.  In addition to the digital version, you can even find a copy of their magazine at Anthropology (and many other stores!)

In other not so fun new, my email was hacked into.

It has been nothing short of a huge problem, as the hackers took over my account and I no longer have access to any of it.  I had used that account since 1999 and also used my email as file storage.  (I dont recommend doing that, its not the best way to store important info!  Dont be like me.)  Contact files, business accounts, personal files, personal emails.  I had stored and filed away every important email I have gotten in the past years, and they are now gone. (Even an email I got from Martha Stewart years ago that I had saved because, hello, it was from Martha Stewart!  Well, maybe it was from her people, but you know.  Practically same thing.)

My email provider was AOL and they basically told me I was out of luck and refused to help regain access to my information.  They were unprofessional, unhelpful, and downright rude.  In addition to all that the hacker also sent out numerous emails “from me” asking for money.

My apologies if you were one of the un-lucky recipients of that.

I will be getting you new and improved email information shortly!  In the mean time you can reach me at manda2177@gmail.com.

Hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving, and I look forward to sharing the Holiday season with you.  Christmas is definitely my favorite time of year!

*If you want to make a cake like this, here is a good tutorial as well as this video tutorial.

· 33 Comments

Patriotic Rose Cake {Video Tutorial}

Did you know that the Rose is the National Flower?

Did you know I just made that up so that a Patriotic Rose Cake would seem more natural?

A very smart reader, Lisa, shared this (thanks Lisa!) :

“The rose was designated the official flower and floral emblem of the United States of America in 1986″

People have been asking for over a year now for a video tutorial for the Rose Cake.  After posting the Neapolitan Rose Cake a week ago and getting a few more requests, I finally did it!

While I will probably still refer folks to my original tutorial, this little video shows you a couple fun things:

1. How to make it with different colors. (So this will apply to the Neapolitan Cake as well as any Ombre effect you might desire)

2. Just how quick and easy it is.

This video is mostly in real time.  You really truly can frost a cake like this in less than 10 minutes.  And if you are making all one color it is even quicker.

As you can tell, I made this cake in honor of patriotism… Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day, Flag Day, an Inauguration, basically any occasion that red white and blue is appropriate!

 

How I prepare to frost a Rose Cake:

I get all my frosting’s ready and place in plastic disposable pastry bags.

I then prepare a bag with a 1M tip in it for every color I am using. Here I used three colors, so I had three bags ready.  You can go through a lot of frosting making those roses, and its good to have an extra bag ready to switch out.

Also, I really didn’t do a crumb coat. I have done it with and without a crumb coat and find they both work. The reason I can get away with not doing a crumb coat is because I tend to squish my roses together to avoid any dead space.

When making the bottom layer of blue roses around the cake, I tried to stop applying pressure at the top my my rose, where the next layer would be covering.  Then simply go right over that edge on your next row.  Overlapping is a very good thing with this cake!

 

As you can see in the video, I went fast and didn’t worry about perfection with each individual rosette.

If you didnt like how one of your roses looked, simply wipe it off the cake and re-pipe it.  Easy peasy! :)

There is no editing (other than exposure/color) done to the pictures I have posted.  (The pictures were actually taken with my phone.) Its the same cake in the pictures and video.

The ending cake is still pretty good, even though you saw many errors throughout the video.  That is just a testimony to how forgiving the Rose Technique is!

A few have asked, so here is a link to the gel food coloring I use to achieve such deep colors!  I use a lot so typically buy the largest size they offer. (link is to a smaller size)

Ateco Tulip Red (Sugarbelle has a whole post on this!)

Ateco Royal Blue

 

 

A big special thanks to Kirk from Interactive Business Solutions for filming and editing this tutorial.  You (and your beautiful family) are the best!

· 187 Comments

Neapolitan Rose Cake

UPDATED: Video Tutorial HERE I am obsessed with Neapolitan lately.  And if you are friends with me on Instagram you already know this. I shared this picture yesterday.  As well as another picture of the pre-frosted cakes the day before. And I even made another Neapolitan Rose cake last week [...] Read more »

· 284 Comments

Mothers Day Ideas {10 Great Cakes Mom Will Love!}

The Most Perfect Cherry Cake!

Edible ideas that is. But I guess you knew that. Since that is the whole point of this blog. Anywho! I have got a ton of fun, new ideas for cakes and cookies and treats this year, but I RAN OUT OF TIME!!  Mothers Day is just a few short [...] Read more »

· 34 Comments