If they can do it, we can do it BETTER

My sister and partner in this SHAM of a bakery, Sydney, and I have been watching Ace of Cakes and Food Network Challenge for a few months now... not to marvel at their creations, but to study their technique and figure out how to do it better. From there, we started baking cakes. It's a new endeavor so these are just our first four.

Cake #1: Sandcastle Cake for Hayley Simms's 22nd Birthday

Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting

In this cake, we were learning how to fondant a cake - and yes, I use fondant as a verb. 

The sand here is made of crushed graham crackers - which we mixed with a little sumthin' sumthin' to make it even yummier.

Everything here is edible. Well, I wouldn't eat the cake board but I guess technically, you could. I've never eaten cardboard so I can't tell you how it tastes.

Cake #2: Altered States Cake for our favorite Blockbuster dude

Vanilla, vanilla, chocolate

If you haven't seen the 1980 film Altered States, get out your Blockbuster card because you need to see it... not because the film is fantastic, but because you'll need the background info to understand this cake.

The flames on the base are freakin' awesome if I do say so myself. This was where we first learned how to paint cakes. Props to Sydney for pulling it off so well on the flames. The 2nd tier represents the scene where the main character takes peote in Mexico. The 3rd tier shows the end of the movie where all hell breaks loose and the main characters turn all lava-y and static-y (woo! 1980s graphics!). The eye on the top... is just really cool.

Cake #3: Ruth Berg's Birthday Cake

Angel Food.

Never again.

Cake #4: Bechstein Piano Cake

Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting - our absolute favorite. Soooo good!

The cake was 18" long and 14" wide.

We were ridiculously excited that this piano cake was our fourth cake. It did, however, take us an inordinate amount of time. We definitely have room to improve there.

Our best yet. We took pictures of Mrs. Berg's piano and made this cake to match it exactly. We took pictures of the piano's insides and duplicated it out of edible goodness.

Cake#5: Surprise birthday cake... coming soon!