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As Time Goes By, I feel more and more confident about my Flower Pot Cakes. Pictured above is one I made for a friend who had a (and I'm not going to tell you how old she is) who had an extremely significant, half-century birthday today.


This one has an open rose in the middle surrounded by 6 rose buds, a plethora of leaves and small white generic flowers. I like the balance, I like the color combination and I like the size. I believe the perfect one will have 5 rosebuds with one center open rose. Stay tuned for that.


What is different about these roses from previous flowers are that the middles are done in a burgundy color and the petals in a light pink that is under-mixed, creating a slight marbling effect that gives depth and a tad more authenticity to each flower. The leaves are likewise slightly marbleized.


Of course, I have no idea what the little white fake flowers around the edge are representative of, but I can tell you that they're staying.


My special birthday friend, Joanie, also received a Macadamia Nut Crusted Key Lime Pie. Who said getting older wasn't sweet?


Happy Birthday to YOU!

Garden Party

Summertime is picnic time here in the mountains of Central PA and I had a request to make a dessert for a coworker for her neighborhood picnic. We looked at some pictures and she was drawn to the teal/white theme. Cupcakes are the latest rage and easier to eat standing up, so I decided to do both a small cake and cupcakes to match.



The cake and cupcakes are lemon with buttercream icing. The cake was then covered with fondant and sugar gum paste daisys and the cupcakes all received a daisy, leaf and some some dragees just for fun.

Above is a close up of one of the flowers on the cake. I painted a little pearl luster on the flower petals to make them stand out.
The cupcakes were both adorable and yummy.
This order was accompanied by a signature Flower Pot cake with hand-painted rose buds that looked much better in person than we could capture on film.

Big thanks to Linda for her ID stakes. I hot-glued one of my business cards on one so everyone at the picnic would know where the amazing confections originated.

Garden Party

I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends

A chance to share old memories and play our songs again

When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name

No one recognized me, I didn't look the same

CHORUS

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.

You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

~~~

Someone opened up a closet door and out stepped Johnny B. Goode

Playing guitar like a-ringin' a bell and lookin' like he should

If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck

But if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck

CHORUS

But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.

You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

Going to Pot

Sorry it has been so long since I have written but the end of May begins gardening season here in Central PA. My friend, Linda, has been sharing her wonderful perennials with us this spring as we build new flower beds here at the house and I was pleased to learn that she would have use for some cute little cakes as Thank You gifts and Birthday Remembrances, so I got to experiment hoping to be able to reciprocate a little. Of course, being two gardeners in early summer, I felt compelled to stick to the theme.

Call me Dr. Frankenstein, but I was a mad woman (as if that's different for me) in the kitchen one night baking cakes in real flower pots after failing to make a fondant flower pot. Live and learn. Even I have my share of dismal failures but this particular one led to a wonderful discovery of a new line of items--my new unique flower pot cakes.

Now, I have to warn you that the flower pots are real, the cakes inside are real and the flowers are made with sugar gum paste, but I wouldn't eat the pot or the flowers as they would be waaaaay too crunchy. You can eat the cake but these little pots are so cute, how could anyone rip them apart for a snack? It would break my heart.

Linda received three pots to give out as gifts: One pot had rose buds, the second had open roses with a "fantasy flower" and the final pot had sugar gum paste daisys with blue forget-me-nots and (in true gardener fashion) a token worm. I weighed the appetizing factor against the cuteness factor before adding the worm and they cancelled themselves out to a neutral on the Gross-Me-Out Meter. The worm stayed.

As a finishing touch, Linda added gardening ID tags to her pots and wrote her messages of Thank You and Happy Birthday on them.

Yeah, I am now a pot(s) pusher.

Vrooom, Vrooom.

The annual Indy 500 race brought a request from a friend for a cake. I don't watch the race (I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch cars drive in a circle for hours) so I had to do a little research before I could start baking.

For example, did you know that the tires on the Indy cars do not have tread unless it is raining and they need them for special traction? Otherwise, no tread gives the most traction. This was disappointment to me because the cake I had visualized had tread, which would have been easy to make on the sides, and because without tread it kinda looks like a plain cake with black icing.

I researched the Indy racing flags and made these out of craft foam and cookie sticks that I painted black with magic marker. Just for fun, I enclosed information on what the flags each meant.

Finally, the interior of this cake was devil's food with an Oreo/buttercream icing filling. Yum.

A good time was had by all and the cake was a hit.

And she gets another checkered flag for good behavior!

Don't worry, it won't last.