Nerf Wars

Cyrus and his Nerf cake at the party

Cyrus is my oldest and he turned 10 in January. Quite honestly, there is something very sobering about your oldest hitting double digits!


When we started planning Cyrus' birthday party he originally wanted a casino themed party. That was fun trying to design a cake for a 10 year old's Casino party; What's appropriate? How will other parents feel about gambling? And the questions just kept coming. So after brainstorming a bit with my little man we came up with Nerf Wars! Every kid, both boys and girls alike, likes to battle it out with Nerf guns. So the theme was set, the invitations were created (thanks to my very good friend Kara Miller) and delivered and the RSVP's were rolling in. Next up... Design the cake! I found a lot of inspiration out there on other websites and when Cyrus saw THE cake he knew he had to have it. 

Everything made of fondant

This particular cake was a lot of fun to make because Cyrus helped me with some of the baking and fondant details. The evening before the party we started creating the Nerf darts for the target and sides of cake. Cyrus was very particular in how dark I tinted the fondant orange. He wanted it to be perfect! So after kneading and coloring enough orange fondant we were ready to make the darts. We simply rolled out some fondant and cut it to length using a real dart for accuracy. Every time we'd roll one out Cyrus would pick up the real dart and inspect our fondant dart. It took much longer than usual for me with my helpful Quality Control Manager! In the end we created 15 darts. Once we completed the rest of the details we let them set over night to harden.

We were expecting a lot of people to come so we decided to bake a 12 in square yellow cake the morning of the party (I always like to have a fresh baked cake). Once the cake was baked and iced, Cyrus helped color the 10 cups of butter cream yellow, we began assembling. The largest target was placed over the top of the cake that had the most flaws in the icing (a cake decorator knows the first rule of cake decorating is hide your mistakes). We used floral wire to secure the darts to the cake.  


Once it was ready to go we needed to load it in the truck and take it to the party-site. When I was putting the cake in the car I sat it down at an angle and when I moved my hands the sleeve of my jacket caught the corner of the cake. The worst part about decorating cakes is the delivery because things like this happen. Fortunately, I had enough icing left over to fix the banged up corner and get it to the party! We ended up having 40 kids and 20 adults show up to the party. We sang happy birthday, blew the candles out and had to remind the kids they couldn't load the fondant darts in their guns. In the end there was NO cake left over! A Success!! Yummy Never Looked So Good!

Retr-OH!

I love it when my clients give me complete creative control over their cake. When I got the call for this cake they told me, "Just do something fun. The birthday girl likes neutral colors".  Wow! Not a lot of information to go by, they didn't even give me a flavor. But anyone who knows me knows I accepted the challenge. I had just designed a wedding cake a few weeks before that was a delightful dark chocolate with cherry filling and everyone loved it. So deciding the flavor wasn't that hard but I couldn't deliver a naked cake! After countless hours searching the internet, drawing sketch upon sketch and getting discouraged thinking that I'd never find a design that I could be happy with I finally decided to take a break from this cake and focus on a baby shower cake that I was in the process of completing.

I put the finishing touches on the baby shower cake and loaded it up for delivery. I must always stress the extreme dislike I have for delivering cakes! Nonetheless, the cake arrived without a flaw. I eagerly placed the cake down on its resting place and as I was turning to leave what should my eye behold? It was a divine vision I stopped dead in my tracks and the light bulb went off! It was a dear friend who was attending the same baby shower and she was wearing an amazing dress with browns and soft green and blues. It was amazing and I knew I had to translate it into a cake design. I must admit asking someone if you can photograph their dress so you can turn it into cake is a bit awkward. The picture was taken and I rushed home to recreate the cute retro dress atop chocolate butter cream. This cake was a hit with the recipient who loved not only neutral colors but also circle patterns and retro designs! 


Yummy Never Looked SO Good! (Thanks Missy :) )