This cake was part of a big surprise for my mom's birthday. She thought she was coming up to have dinner with me ut little did she know other people were waiting for her at the hotel, including her brother and my brother that live out of town. The second surprise was a dinner with 20 members of our family at a Korean BBQ place that she enjoyed. Her last surprise was a trip to Disneyland. She hasn't been to Disneyland in over 10 years so she was super happy about that one. 

This cake was served after dinner. My mom loves the color red and she's a florist so I thought I should make a red flower. This is now my third sugar flower and I would say it is becoming pretty easy for me to make. I actually really enjoy making these flowers and I am determined to learn how to make other flowers besides the peony. As for the rest of the cake, I wanted to keep it simple and modern. I didn't want to take too much focus away from the flower. I just added a little gold leaf and a modern cake topper made by a friend. 

The flavor of the cake was inspired by one of my mom's favorite cookies, the Samoa Girl Scout Cookie. I made a different version earlier this ear bust wasn't super happy with the outcome. This cake I made with chocolate cake layers instead of vanilla and added homemade shortbread cookie crumbs instead of the actual Samoa cookie. ​

This past weekend was full of surprises. It started off with a surprise birthday I set up for my boyfriend, Greg. I set up a night of bowling with a few of his friends after taking him to dinner. The surprise was sort of ruined becasue dinner ran very quickly and I had to figure out how to stall. So during dinner he kind of realized something was up. But, all that mattered was that he enjoyed the night with his friends. Although the party wasn't so much a surprise, he was surprised that I had made him a cake and it was already at the venue =).

So rewind back to earlier that morning. He had golf scheduled with his brother that morning and would be gone for about 5 hours, so that was the window I had to make this cake. I had made the cake layers and frosting earlier in the week so once he left I began the decorating. Oh, by the way, he told me the flavor profile he wanted already but he thought I would be making the cake for the following week for a dinner with his family. Anyways once he left I got to decorating. This was the first time I made spheres. It was kind of difficult because they kept melting in my hand. I ended up getting enough of them to work. I used luster dust to create the different colors on the cake. I added a constellation of his initials on the bottom right corner. I wanted to create an abstract galaxy cake and I think I was able to achieve that. Once I finished the cake, I boxed it up and drove it to the venue, and got back before he got home from golfing. It is very hard to surprise someone with a cake when you live with them and see them every day, but I did it! He was not expecting a cake that night and he was very please with both the design and the taste of the cake. Mission completed!​

This cake was for one of my good college friends named Darryl. The reason this cake is called the Day-Rell is because for the longest time I didn't know how to spell his name, so this is how I spelled it. Don't worry, I finally learned. 

Anyways, let's move on to the design and flavor of this cake. First, he likes peanut butter so that's why I went with this cake flavor. Second, recently him and his wife, one of my good friends too, bought their first house and I was inspired by their decor. Also, his favorite color is red, so I made sure to include that in the design. I struggled a little while frosting this cake because this was my first square cake and that makes it a little difficult. I also accidentally cut the triangles too big so I had to go back and trim them. As for the cake topper, I made that out of small wooden sticks I found at Michaels. It's an artistic/geo-modern "D" (for Darryl if you didn't figure that out). 

This cake brought along some challeges but I am very happy with the final product. I really enjoy making these "geo-modern" cakes and hope to make more soon. ​

One of my good friends from college, Joey, was turning the big 3-0 and decided to celebrate it at a bar in Long Beach. Joey is one of my closest friends so I needed to do something special. I knew exactly what type of cake I wanted to make. His girlfriend said he loves red velvet so that's how I came up with the flavor. 

I had made a anti-gravity beer cake in the past but I used fondant for the beer coming out of the can. This time around I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to make it actually look like beer, so I used pulled sugar instead. To my surprise, it wasn't too difficult to melt and mold the sugar and I think the color came out perfect! Despite burning myself with the hot sugar, I think it turned out great. 

Oh, I should mention the slight headache I experienced when I tried to take a picture of this cake. I took it out to the pool area because it had the most light. I was adjusting it slightly when suddenly something slipped and my fingers went right through the whipped cream foam. Luckily, the foam was an easy fix and the cake got to the bar in one piece. ​