Courtney wanted to do a Bob Ross painting party for her 13th and, thus, wanted a similarly inspired cake.  Below is my initial brainstorm.   I knew I wanted paint to ooze out of the tubes and I finally figured out how to make it happen …STRING!

Here are the paint tubes being made.

And here are the paint brushes and the palette knife. I rolled string into the brush part so that when I added the colored royal icing, it would look like paint was dripping off.

And here’s the end result of the brushes.

The full cake.

Full cake from another angle.

Here are the in-progress paintings….some of the girls didn’t get much further than this stage. And I have vowed never to do a painting party again 😬.  BUT, everyone had a great time and I had to keep reminding myself that *fun* was the whole point.

Aubrey loves baking and watching other people baking on @nailedit.  So we decided to do our own version for her party this year.  We thought a lot about what to do for the “original” cake– we needed something that was elaborate enough to make it hard, but not too hard for teenagers, with varying degrees of baking/sculpting skill, to replicate.

Here’s what I sketched out:  A two tiered cake with fondant butterfly and crushed candy rainbow swirl.

Working on the butterfly….

And here’s how it turned out:

One huge mistake I made was wildly over-estimating how many jolly ranchers we’d need to make our rainbow swirl around the cake.  I bought a 4lb bag…we probably needed only 10 of each color. Maybe less. Here are photos of the two teams hard at work.

And the final unveiling! They did an incredible job. I’d even say the Nailed It.

December 2018

This year Courtney wanted a fake ice-cream cake, but she also wanted a paint splatter cake, so we combined the two ideas!

I started with the cones. I wrapped fondant around real cones and then added the pattern. Someone asked me why I didn’t just use real cones…   Oh… that would be so much easier, but obviously defeats the whole point of what I’m trying to do.  Truth be told, sometimes I don’t either! 😬😂

It felt a little bit like I was cheating to use an actual ice-cream scoop to form the fondant ice-cream.  I did it anyway.

The splatter paint part was the hardest for me. I used candy melts, but they seized so quickly that it was mostly a gloppy mess. I played around with  it a lot and finally got it to work, but I definitely need a candy melt tutorial– or perhaps just use something else entirely if I ever go down the road of making cake pops.

Here’s a shot of the top of the cake and the three cones:  Strawberry, mint chip and bubblegum flavors!

Success!

Despite my horrible drawing skills, here’s what I envisioned for her cake.  The peanut -shaped thing is supposed to be a bathtub.*

* proper perspective (of anything!) not included 😬

Big shoutout to my 11-yr old daughter for making all the Lush bath bombs.  She chose a bunch from the Lush website then made teeny tiny replicas! They looked exactly like the real thing.

Because I wanted the spa girl to be in a bubble bath, I needed to make arms and legs.  But I had to make and remake her hands and feet many, many times because I just couldn’t get them quite right.

Turns out I don’t  have quite the right tools (or small enough fingers) to make delicate appendages, so hats off to the experts.

As a result, my bathing beauty looked a bit man-ish for a 14-year old girl, but it’s okay…the intention was in the right place. Plus, bath bubbles.

Then I painted her fingernails and toenails to make it look more realistic (and if I’m being honest, less man-ish).  I needed magnifying glasses for that.  And a toothpick!

And now the cakes. I baked three chocolate cakes from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties cookbook (actually baked these the night before), but the morning of the party, I stacked them with chocolate ganache in between.

Then added the final crumb layer before layering over the fondant…

The fondant layer…

Here I am piping the bath mat….

Here’s the first look at the finished product.  I wish I had taken individual pictures of all of the things on the cake, but I didn’t.

Here’s a list of what was on it:

• Claw-footed bathtub
• side table
• glittery (sequined) lampshade/lamp
• pitcher of lemon water
• bath bombs
• slippers
• book
• face mask
• cucumber eye treatement
• bath turban
• edible homemade sequins and fondant flowers around the base just for decoration.

Side view…

And at last, a picture of me and my happy,  newly crowned 14 year old

Now I need a deep tissue massage and a long soak in a Lush-scented bubble bath!

There was a lot going on for me this year so instead of making decorations for a full cake or several cupcakes, I opted for a one extra large cupcake in a small flower pot, just for the birthday girl.

We have a 2 year old, VERY ball-focused pup, so this rendition of her seemed quite appropriate.