and 8 years later

So Julie is now a good friend, but has been my boss, and before that, my 6th grade teacher. I also babysit her kiddies, Maddie and Luke after school. I wish I had pictures of them to put up because they're too stinkin' cute and sweet!! Anyway, this weekend they celebrated her youngest daughter's, Lauren, 2nd birthday and congratulated Maddie on her First Reconciliation.

When I got her cake out of the box,

She just wanted to stare at it and touch it, and she kept saying "pity, pity" (pretty) Lauren is such a little lady, so Julie just said anything with Pink will work for her cake. Here is a side view:

Maddie had her Reconciliation on Saturday morning, the day of her party. She is a great big sister and just great little girl in general, so of course she only had to say 1 Hail Mary for her absolution. ;) Julie asked me to do a little cake for her as well. It turned out very sweet, just like Maddie girl.

8 years after she taught me, Julie, and her husband George, are trusting me with their babies...uh oh! just kidding ;) And my Luke story for that day: He answered the door: "What are youuuu doing here?" he didn't know I was coming. And then he continued to ask: "what's on your eyes? Did you get your hair dyed?" clearly the kid is used to me lookin' like a scrub with no make up on and my hair up in a pony tail. He's a crazy goof, but such a comedian. Thanks Vaughn and Brauntz families for letting me spend the party day with you! Happy Birthday, Laur Laur and Congrats Maddie girl!!

love, sarah

"...the ladies at work..."

"The ladies at work_________________" is a common phrase in our household. So, one of the ladies at work asked me to do a cake for her daughter Beth's 30th Birthday. Donna said that Beth loved penguins, so I got to my research of penguin images.

It was a great weekend to be working on this cake because while it looked like this outside:

I was working on this polar penguin cake inside:

It was quite the task to string-pipe all of this cake, but it turned out ADORABLE. It's certainly made my list of favorites! :) Hope Beth had a great birthday!!

First Cake-tastrophe

I have never really had a cake disaster before so I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. But this one decided to happen just 4 hours before the cake was about to be picked up! ahhh!!! This cake was for Seton High School's, my alma mater, class of 1980 30th reunion.

Originally I had the Seton S logo. That turned out fine, but I did not like my writing on it AT ALL. I wasn't happy with it. But I added some green sugar crystals and it looked better. My mom said she didn't think it was a big enough cake, so I then went and made some cupcakes. But with no cupcake liners left in the house, I sprayed and greased the heck out of the cupcake tin. Well that didn't turn out too well either.

As if that wasn't disastrous enough, I went to move the cake into the delivery box and the icing cracked completely down the middle. It was awful!!!! :(

So I decided to redo the entire thing at about 3:00 yesterday...the cake was being picked up at 6 :) But in the end, everything happens for a reason, and I liked this cake better. This is the Seton High School crest.

With limited time, I did rush myself a little bit and this isn't the most symmetrical BUT I really liked this one better. Hope the reunion was great, class of 1980!

I think I should just keep a template for this one

I went to high school with Ashlee, and thank goodness for facebook! She asked if I would do a cake for her boyfriend's, Jeremy, surprise birthday party. She had been looking for a Bengals cake and saw some of my blog posts on my facebook page and asked me if I could do the Bengals cake again for her...of course I had no objections.

So if this looks familiar, yes you are right. I have done this cake before. This one took even shorter amounts of time for me, but was just as fun. I added a little bit of turf at the bottom so it was a little different. (compliments to my dad for that idea). Hopefully the surprise went off without any problems for Ashlee. When I delivered the cake, it was so far so good for her!

Hope Jeremy had a wonderful birthday!!

"And I said How about breakfast at Tiffany's..."

I've never owned a Tiffany's piece of jewelry, but this weekend, I got to make one! Alex, AKA Baby, who I dance with celebrated her 22nd birthay this weekend!

Alex asked me a LONGG time ago if I could make her birthday cake, and of course I wanted to. And she asked if I could make it into a Tiffany's box. I started researching right away! This turned out to be a VERY cute cake and she loved it!

Baby's own Tiffany's box [the lid was not cake...it was styrofoam ;)]

another view...

We went to El Toro, a Mexican restaurant in Hyde Park, which is DELICIOUS by the way. When we walked in the waiter was like, "let me take that for you (the cake)" i about FREAKED OUT!!! my cakes are like my babies once I finish them, so I was a bit apprehensive... I know I know, I'm lame.

Before we left, Alex received her free Birthday Shot(s) which she took with the same waiter who took my cake!! it was super fun, and her giant green sombrero, and whip creamed cheeks were quite entertaining for us! :)

love you alex! happy 22nd birthday!

Happy Halloween!

My mom and dad both were allowed to bring in treats to work today for Halloween. So I threw this cute little bat cake together with a cake we've had frozen for awhile. My mom brought this one to work.
My dad also asked me to make a cake for his work Halloween celebration. I really liked the piping on the bottom of this cake. I usually do simple shells, but these are kind of swirls. It was new for me, but cute!
I thought this cake came out really cute as well! even though my spiders were a little bit unproportional :)

Zebra Cakes?

So I'm not really enjoying "sweets by sarah" as a business name. I don't make anything but cakes, so it's just not working out for my liking. When I was talking to my friend, Kaitlyn, she was asking about what my first cake was, and then asked about if I had a name for my miniature business. And I told her my blog has a name but that's it. My first cake was the zebra print cake I did for Merg for her 19th birthday, and so I'm thinking of calling it Zebra Cakes.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!!!

"thank you, thank you very much"

Side view of the Elvis cake
My mom's co-worker, Tina, said she found me just in time. She was looking for someone to make an Elvis cake for one of her family member's 40th birthday. It was going to be quite the challenge to essentially "sketch" Elvis in the cake. But it turned out better than anticipated! I hope Sandy was able to put on her Blue Suede Shoes and have a great party! :)

A Slow October

So I have no neat pictures to post because October has been slow with orders. BUT today I had my first "cake consultation/cake tasting" for Melissa and Kevin. Melissa is one of my good friend's sister, and she and Kevin are getting married in March of 2011. And they were kind enough to ask me to possibly do their wedding cake! So today they came over for a tasting and idea-throwing session. I'll keep their details a surprise until their wedding, but we definitely got everything picked out. I prepared homemade cakes: red velvet (Kevin's favorite), chocolate with buttercream icing, chocolate with raspberry filling and chocolate buttercream icing, white cake with buttercream icing, white cake with cream cheese icing, and chocolate cake with buttercream icing and fondant. Last night was definitely a cake marathon, but it was fun and Melissa & Kevin picked some great flavors, and had some great ideas!

Check back in March sometime to see all the details and how my first wedding cake turns out! :)

It's What's on the Inside That Counts

So this cake was for my Grandma Marianna's 79th Birthday in September. Due to being a bit rushed for the day, I didn't get to set up the best way to transport the cake, so the "Happy Birthday G.Ma (as I call her)" didn't survive the trip but that's okay. :)This cake wasn't about the fancy decorating, it was more about the inside. This was the first time I made and used chocolate ganache. For non-cake/bakery people, ganache is just a fudge filling. I put it between the 3 chocolate cake layers with chocolate buttercream icing...just like Grandma likes it. I guess it's the Stein family in us that makes us chocolate lovers ;). I haven't had the time to perfect the ganache recipe yet, so it was a little rich, but it was nothing a little side of vanilla ice cream couldn't fix! It was a great dessert to a great dinner at Carraba's! Happy Birthday G.Ma! Love You!

Lil' Bug is turning 1!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAYTTEN!!!!

Here's the ADORABLE birthday girl :)

Walkin' around in her cute little dress.
Cheyanne has been my best friend since Kindergarten, she was actually my first friend when I finally got to St. William! And her daughter Paytten is turning 1, tomorrow September 18th! I can't believe it's been a whole year since I went to visit that cutie pie in the hospital late that night. Chey had her whole party as a Princess theme, so naturally we put a crown on her cake :). Unfortunately i had to leave the party early and didn't get to see her stuff her face with the cake, but she was so happy during her whole party! This was a fun cake to do, and Chey and Justen were so appreciative.

Happy Birthday Pay! Love you lil' bug!

Surprise!!! Oh yeah, Change of Plans

So I had my first exam of the semester today, and it was CAKE! good pun huh? ;) Anyway, so I got home earlier than anticipated and was excited to get started on Merg's sister's surprise 17th birthday cake. Welp i had this great idea for a kind of argyle patterned cake, but that quickly changed when my homemade fondant was not cooperating with me. Thus, I came up with the following. I don't consider it one of my bests, but it was super cute! and sparkly! (I've kinda become addicted to the pearl luster dust!!)

Emily is definitely a bubbly, smiley, and funny person, and Merg told me that she would love the cake no matter what because it was from me...it didn't mater what it looked like. So she said. But it DID turn out cute and she called me and left me a message in her loud crazy happy voice saying thank you.

Oh also, if you can't tell, this cake was HUGE. It was a 16 inch round! and weighed at least 10 pounds. Definitely my biggest cake to date!

Happy birthday emily!! :)

Revamping and a Priceless Papaw

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALI!!!! One of our family friends, The McKernan's daughter Ali, celebrated her 8th birthday this weekend. Ever since June, she asked me to make her cake. She made it very clear what she wanted on her birthday cake.

So does it look familiar?? Ali wanted my friend Megan's cake, except with ALL hot pink. No lime green, only hot pink and zebra print. She got it! :) You can't see it too well in these pictures, but I used edible pearl dust on all of the pink on the cake, and it looked SUPER cute and fun in person. Ali and her friends loved it so I heard. This was a fun revamp!

My Grandpa Don turns 69 tomorrow. He said all he wanted was one of my cakes.. yellow cake white icing... That's it. But I wanted to make it fun.
He LOVES money, well joking about it. He always shakes cards out in hopes that dollars or coins will fall out. So I did his cake here as a Quarter. "In Don We Trust" instead of "In God We Trust" made it nice and personalized. He enjoyed his yellow cake, white icing combo, so that's all that mattered. Happy Birthday Grandpa! Love you!

"C'monnnn Mama needs a new pair of shoes!!"

Tomorrow is my wonderful Grandma Rosie's birthday. She's going to be 68 years young and active! So naturally, it was time for a cake. She loves card games, casino games, poker, and bingo, so I wanted to incorporate any of those. If you can't tell, I decided on doing playing cards with the numbers of how old she will be. Again, our A/C is still broken, so the cakes were sweating a little bit as you can see in the picture. But that was the least of my problems of baking tonight. I was going to use chocolate covered oreos as poker chips, but when I added the food coloring to the melted chocolate on the double boiler, it started chunking up. I burnt 2 batches! Obviously I gave up on that task and settled for just the cards. I used a different recipe of cake mix and it was not working out, my icing would NOT stick and kept pulling away my cake! I don't feel like this was my best work, but my grandma will love it. Happy Birthday Grandma! Love you!

A Weekend With No A/C!!!

So the hottest week of the entire summer and our air conditioning completely goes out. It's been quite the dreadful week. Making cakes was definitely a challenge to say the least.

Why does it always seem like when I have cakes to make, they come in doubles! But these were both fun ones so I can't complain!

Buzz Lightyear...to the rescue!!!
Sides of the Buzz cake.

Side of cake again.

"To Infinity......and BEYOND!" -Buzz Lightyear
My Aunt's best friend's grandson's Birthday is this weekend. He's turning 3 and is completely OBSESSED with Buzz Lightyear. So she asked me to make a cake for him. This was probably one of the most challenging. I've never done a character cake before. It turned out much better than I expected actually!
"And this one belongs to the Reds!" Our church's festival...St. William, was this weekend. AND the Reds are doing pretty darn well right now. So for the festival Cake Booth, I made this Cincinnati Red's cake. I made the stencil and did the letters free-hand (if you can't tell). They aren't the best letters. I do have an excuse though: I was without all my piping supplies because I had to do my cake at the house I nanny at due to our A/C situation...well lack there of. But it worked out pretty well. Everyone who saw it loved it, and the workers thought it would go pretty quickly!

Colorful and Dance Camp Ready!

My favorite, Xavier Dance Team, went to camp this past weekend. On Friday night before camp, our coach Erica, AKA Mama Diva, had us over for a spaghetti dinner, so naturally I brought the dessert! This was our goal for camp: to get our "golden ticket" of a gold bid, which is a full paid bid to Nationals in April.

This is my lovely dance team in our brand new uniforms after our camp performance! Granted, we did not get our gold, full paid bid we were aiming for, but we did get a partial paid silver bid!! We also left camp with a superior rating with our Gameday Routine, Placed 1st in Division I, and was voted most spirited by the other college dance teams at camp! The Most Spirited award is like the BEST award to get at camp, so we were very excited about our wonderful awards! It's going to be a great year! Love me some XUDT!

"The Ladies at Work" are famous around the Hungler household. That's where my mom gets all of her crazy stories and advice from. But they have been wanting to try one of my cakes for a long time, so she asked if I could make one for one of the ladies' birthdays. So this is Tracy's. My mom said she's super bubbly, so I did this brightly colored and modern-ish cake.

Side view of the cake

Robert's Birthday

The re-creation of Robert's incident of hitting a deer junior year after Victory Dance. Not funny at the time, but now looking back on it, we clearly have a good laugh. Happy 20th Birthday Robert! (The old man of the group)

My partner in cake crimes, Bonesaw. We had a blast working on this cake, even though it took 4 hours! The car mold took 2 boxes of cake mix and over an hour to bake. The middle didn't fill all the way though, so we had to stuff the middle hole with the extra cake we cut from the bottom. In this case, it's not what's on the inside that counts ;)

My cousin Olivia turned 20 this week, and instead of my aunt Annie buying a cake from a local bakery, she asked me to make O's cake. It turned out so very simple and cute! I did the flowers in fondant, but after I let the cake sit over night, they did start to bend a little bit. So if they were just stuck flat on the cake, it would have been fine, but since they were set off the cake, they bent a little bit. I plan on using gum paste the next time I do decorations... can't wait for that new adventure! :)

Cincinnati Lovin'

This might be one of my favorites to date. One of my best friends, Bryan (Scheck), is a huge sports fan especially Cincinnati teams. So since I had already made a UC cake for my uncle, I decided to try out another Cincy team, the Bengals! For those unaware, this is the Bengal's "B" Logo. It was quite the delicious cake after our night out Paintballing for Scheck's Birthday.

Krista is legal!!

Krista is absolutely obsessed with Hello Kitty and the color pink. And since 18 is a big birthday, I told her to go ahead and pick whatever she wanted for her cake. So as I expected, she chose a Hello Kitty Cake, with her favorite Strawberry cake on the inside. It turned out to be a super cute cake, even though the Fondant-ing job was not the best. I was rushing to get this cake finished for her for her birthday evening. But she still loved it, and I'm so glad!

More Graduation Cakes

These 2 cakes were for a Brother/Sister graduation party. My neighbors, Kelly and Sean graduated from Seton High School and St. William Elementary School, respectfully. We've known their family for a long time, so it was wonderful and a pleasure to be asked to make their party cakes!

Summer Time Cakes

Both the Seton (SHS) Cake and the NKU Norse Cake were for my Sister's, Krista, graduation party. She wanted Funfetti cake, but my mom was convinced not everyone would want it, so we did the 2 cakes. One was chocolate and one was funfetti.
My Aunt Jen turned 30 this year, and my uncle Shawn was kind enough to ask me to make her birthday cake.
Casey, who I call Mario, has wanted one of my cakes FOREVER, so for her birthday at the end of May, I made her this cute girly yet simple cake, with fondant covering and fondant polka dots.

My cousin Josh graduated from Harrison High School this year, and his graduation party theme was rock n' roll. For this cake I went with that theme instead of a traditional graduation cake