Long Time No Blog: What I've Been Up To

It would be an understatement to say that it has been a while since I have blogged. I have not intentionally been avoiding my blog it just seems as though time has been going by so fast. The last time I posted a blog was in August and I sincerely cannot believe that August was four months ago.

I have a lot to blog about, but I will sort of summarize it to save time! I have baking to do!

I asked my mom to come home (to Ohio) for the holidays and she agreed. She came out before her birthday. I asked her what kind of birthday cake she wanted and she said she wanted to make an ice cream cake. Have a look:

We first started off by baking white cake and then freezing it. Here is the cake right out of the freezer.


We then put a layer of whipped cream mixed with strawberries in syrup.


The day before we softened strawberry ice cream and spread it in cake pans lined with saran wrap. The saran wrap helps the ice cream discs slip out of the pan when ready.




Another layer of cake.


A final layer of whipped cream and berries.


Here is the final huge ice cream cake. It was very good!

Happy Birthday MOM!

Next subject is more cake. I was asked by a close friend to do her wedding cake. I was so nervous because I had never made a wedding cake. Her wedding was going to be on Halloween and the idea she had for a cake was the look of a spider web from afar and scroll work up close. She came over and I asked her questions from how many guests, flavors, delivery time and other important questions.

I baked the entire cake the day before and started decorating it very early the day of the wedding. Have a look:
I covered the cakes with fondant and smoothed. My mom gave them a final smoothing and then trimmed the excess fondant.


Each layer needed to be supported by wooden dowels to keep the top layers of cake from crushing the ones below.


Here are my smoothed out cakes. By the way the bride chose white cake with Bailey's Irish Cream buttercream.


Here are Ma and I figuring where to put each layer and you can see there is buttercream glue on the bottom layer.


With cake stacking you just have to do it. Do not hesitate or be scared just grab them and start stacking.


More smoothing.


Buttercream piped beads to bring it all together.


I practiced the scroll design and when I was happy I started on the cake.


I started from the top and worked my way down with the vertical lines.


Scroll work is not hard it is just time consuming and takes a steady hand and good eyes or reading glasses!


I filled in the vertical lines and then added some curls and dots.



I have to say that this cake came out better than I could have hoped for.



Here is the cake all boxed up for our trip to Pennsylvania for delivery.


I had to do some on sight finishing touches.


The bride loved the cake and was honored to say she "had the very first Louis Gastelum wedding cake."

Next subject, even more cake.
One of Brian's friends wanted a cake for her Brother's rehearsal dinner. She wanted a Christmas theme cake with with an ornament type design on the top. Ma and I went to work and this is what we came up with.

White cake and Bailey's flavored buttercream seem to be popular. That is what this cake and ornaments are made out of. They were then covered with colored fondant.


We used silver and gold highlighter dust to give the ornaments and iridescent look and then did some painting with more dust.


Ma wanted to add some more finishing touches.



Here is the finished cake. They loved it! I accidentally sprinkled a bit of gold dust on the cake. I loved how it looked so I added some more.


I will make an effort to post on a regular basis and I have plenty more to catch you up on but this is a good start!