My Busiest Week

This past week was the busiest Christine's Custom Cakes has ever had!  There were SEVEN cakes total and an additional one was made with the extra for my family!  My father calls me nearly every day during the week and leaves a message, "Hi there Christine from Christine's Custom Cakes.  I would like ONE cupcake, that is all.  Thank you and Goodbye!"  So, I decided since I had a leftover 6" cake, to send it home to my family when I saw them Sunday!

Of course, as any other business person would know, there were there fair share of mishaps throughout the week!  Broken mixer, bought a new one, broken mixer again, took it back, broken mixer again!!!!  I couldn't believe it!  So, I think it is time I start putting money aside to get the counter top mixer vs the hand version.  It seems that they can't handle the thickness of the icing before you add the milk at the end of the recipe!  Then, of course as I am icing a cake, it sleeps from the counter and ended up on the floor...time to bake a new one!  BUT, all of the cakes came out great!

I am definitely ready for summer when I can accept more orders and hopefully the word continues to spread!  I am enjoying how well the business is going and I cannot wait to see where Christine's Custom Cakes is next year!

Here are a few of the cakes from the weekend:

Well Overdue Update

Hello Folks!

I apologize for the lack of posts!  It seems there are numerous people on the Facebook which has kept me extremely busy....as well as pumping out those cakes!  There are new items added to the menu, including treats for your dogs!

Business has certainly grown since we opened in October 2011 and we have confidence it will continue!  Bookings on average are coming in 1-2 months in advance and then there are the short notice bookings as well which fill up the calendar!  I certainly never thought we would be making 2-6 cakes a week, but we are!  It is fascinating and I love every bit of it!  There have been a few return customers and those who have stated they will return!

You can look at Christine's Custom Cakes menu on the Facebook page by following this link, if you do not have Facebook, I will be updating the price sheet/menu on here very soon!  Christine's Custom Cakes Menu/Price Sheet

Here are a FEW of the numerous items I have done in the past few months!  :-) I hope you enjoy seeing them!

Flow-Riding Surf Simulator

Originally this cake was planned to only be the surf board with the logos on it, until we changed our minds and went with the simulator.  This is a 3-dimensional cake using both yellow and chocolate cake with buttercream icing.  The flow riding board is chocolate cake with buttercream fondant & buttercream icing.

I have never actually watched someone flow ride, but I have briefly seen the simulator before.

Toolbelt Cake

I think this one turned out great!  It was my third time working with fondant and each time gets a little bit easier!  The cake itself is chocolate with buttercream icing and the toolbelt is fondant with fondant tools!

Disk Golf Basket

This cake was a lot of fun!  It was for a friend of mine and it was quite difficult keeping it from him!  He LOVES the sport disk golf and for those of you who don't know what that is you should definitely look it up!  My fiance is starting to become addicted :-)

I am adding in a picture of an actual disk golf basket so you can compare as to what it would look like as well as the actual cake pictures of course!

My Sister's Baby Shower

My sister is having a baby girl!!!!!!  This past weekend we hosted a baby shower for her and I, of course ;-), had the honor of making her cake!  I was so excited to do something different that she would love!  Here are the photos for you!!

Cars Double Character

 This cake was fun to do!  It was my first time baking a sheet cake with two separate flavors in one pan!  Success on the first try!  Half chocolate, half white cake!

Wii Console

 Wii Console, lying down, two regular controllers, one classic controller.

Chocolate cake, buttercream icing!

Angry Birds

This was for a return customer whom I adore!  Her first cake was a gluten free casein free Thomas the train cake!  This time her other son requested angry birds!  My son said, "RIO!"  When he saw this immediately he refers to the movie Rio, which is definitely a favorite for him!  I believe everyone at the party enjoyed the cake, as we also were attendees! 

Monkey Plane with Banner Character

This here is a familiar cake for those of you who had seen my son's cake in December!  It is not identical, but same layout!

This time it was chocolate cake with buttercream icing!

When I had made this one previously, I was unable to give it the dirty icing layer.  Which made it difficult to attach the stars individually as when it would touch a crumb it would come back off as I pulled away.  As my experience grows with each cake, I was thrilled to see that I was able to get a dirty icing layer this time!

It made it much easier and was thoroughly more efficient than December's version!

Usually when I am making a cake I text or email photos as I go along to my customers.  This helps me to assure I am doing exactly what they are asking for and to ease the mind of the customer as they anxiously await their cake!

When I finished this and sent the picture to them, this is what I got in return:  "Awe, I love it, it's perfect!"

I was so happy to hear that and it was truly music to my ears!  I hope Bentley enjoys his cake tomorrow and I look forward to hearing about the final result!

Tangled Sheet Cake

This here is my simple Tangled theme cake!  It has chocolate on the inside with buttercream icing!     

I was really excited for this cake, as I am for all of them!  I adore the movie Tangled and it is frequently watched in our household.  The first step was finding some figurines to add to the top of the cake and I believe this was the hardest step of all.  They weren't in any of our local stores after searching for a few days.  Luckily, when I searched online I was able to find them on Amazon, so if you ever need to go hunting for them, that would be where you can find some!




Decided to go simple with this one and use the figurines with some plastic cones for the trees :-)  I was pleased with how it turned out and my fiance was the one who suggested to put the writing in the river!  I thought it was a great idea!  Addalynn is such a beautiful name, perfect for flowing through a river!

Backyardigans 10" Square

This was a fun cake to do and there weren't all that

many examples out there either!

The Backyardigans is a pretty popular show among the youngsters today (my son included).  I will have to admit, I do not know all of the characters names, but I do know a few and watch the show on occasion with my sweet boy!

We had originally planned to do an 8 inch cake, but decided to fit the full body of each of the characters the 10 inch was a better choice (vanilla on the inside, YUM).  This cake is for FIVE year old Logan who *hopefully* will love his cake!  

Sunken Cake

My first encounter with a sunken cake has finally happened!  I am so used to the cakes having a rounded top, I surely wasn't expecting to pull out a middle that was basically a cave!  I had used a toothpick to check if it was done when I pulled it out, no residue, so I figured it was done!

After thorough investigation of the cake, I realized I had mistakenly under-cooked it!  I guess since it was vanilla, I didn't actually look hard enough for residue on the toothpick!  Now I know for next time!  So, now a new cake hits the oven and I am going to make sure it is cooked this time!  That was a first...personally I think I was distracted by my overly needy child today! 

Today will be a busy day of cake making!  Keep an eye out for pictures soon!

My Very First Cakes

The first decorative cake I made was for my son's first birthday, a monkey, for our little cuddle monkey!  I had bought a shaped pan and followed the instructions on how to decorate it.  It was complex, but not severely enough that an inexperienced person couldn't do it themselves!  I also made a 3-dimensional small sized monkey for him to be able to smash into on his big day!  (Didn't want all of our guests to have to eat a cake that was drooled on and smashed to pieces)

I will have to say that the monkey cake turned out so fabulously that I did it again the next year for his second birthday!  As for the 3-dimensional cake...not so much!  Baking the cake was fine, just baked in a 3-d bear pan....fondant was fine; I used that to shape the bear into a monkey with extended limbs instead of just little paws right next to the body.  I found out that you cannot use icing that is very warm to ice a cake...especially when you are trying to star the cake all the way around!  By the time I was finished my fiance said, "I'm sorry hon, but it looks like you sat his cake in front of a fire!"

I was so disappointed and I didn't want to go to bed the evening before his party because I was so worked up about it.  When I woke the next morning, I decided I was going to remake the 3-dimensional monkey before the time of his party (early afternoon).  It was a close call, but I made it work!!!!!!!!!  I was so proud and happy to show up to his party with two of the most awesome cakes just for my little man!

There was a little variation for the monkey cake at his second birthday party because I didn't want it to be 100% identical.  I got many compliments both years...the first year a few of our guests thought I had bought the cake and when I corrected them, had to go and check with my fiance because they didn't believe me!!!  I found that hilarious and it was a compliment all in itself!