Draw a heart on the waxed with a marker that's approximately 3-inches tall for a four inch tall cake. Place the frosting in the pastry bag fitted with the #104 tip, Starting in the center of the heart shape on the waxed paper with the larger end of the tip touching the waxed paper, pip a small round ruffle shape. You will need to turn the waxed paper as you pip. Use a cake turntable if you have one but it isn't necessary to use a turntable if you don't own one. Then pip ruffled rows on each side of the center to until you fill out to the outline of the heart. Make sure your rows from each side meet at the bottom. Using a rounded container that is laying on it's side, place the piped heart on the waxed paper onto round container vertically. You can use any large rounded container such as, an oatmeal or shortening container, soup cans are too small. (see photo above). The curve of the container will allow the heart to set up with a slight curve that will make it easier to adhere to the curve of the cake.  Place the heart on the container into the freezer for 20-30 minutes or until completely firm to the touch.
Put a dot of frosting onto the side of the cake, where you want to place the heart. Gently lift the buttercream heart from the waxed paper and place onto the side of the cake where you put the dot of frosting. I put the heart onto the cake and placed the piece of waxed paper back over it to press it onto the cake. I wanted to minimize the warmth of my hand from warming up the buttercream and crushing any of the ruffles as I pressed the heart on the cake.

To make the heart banner:
Roll out the pink and red fondant to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out 4 small hearts from the red and two medium hearts from the pink fondant. Lay one of the pink hearts with a red heart on each side, leave about two inches of space between each of the heart. Place the twine across the middle of each of the hearts. very lightly press the twine onto the heart.  Place the remaining matching hearts on top of their mate. Press together the hearts, trapping the twine in between. If your hearts don't want to stick together, use a tiny drop of water on one of the hearts to help glue on the matching heart on top. Let the fondant dry for at least 24 hours. Tie the ends of the twine very tightly onto bamboo skewers to make the banner.

To add a little extra sparkle,I added a bit of food safe disco dust to my center heart.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I got this wild brainstorm the other night to make a Turkey Cake. It occurred to me that the petal icing effect that I used on this cake would make cute "feathers" for the turkey. I knew I just had to try it to see if it would work. I think it turned out pretty cute and is fairly easy. It doesn't require any special equipment and would be a fun project for older children. How cute would this cake be for Thanksgiving!

and a giveaway!

This is a super easy festive topper for a cakes or cupcakes that's perfect for the 4th of July! I made these Star Spangled cookies as a centerpiece for the 4th a couple of years ago. I used the same method to make the fondant cake topper. I LOVE how they turned out and thought I'd share this idea with my Half Baked readers. These fun stars will make any cake the star of your 4th of July table!

About a pound of white fondant, gum paste, or a combination of the two, divided into three equal parts (you can buy the colors already mixed but for this small project, coloring a little white fondant is more cost efficient.)
red and blue  gel colors . Regular food coloring will not work.
star cookie cutters that fit inside one another, small, medium, and large.
18 gauge wire or toothpicks
Method:
Divide fondant/gum paste into three equal parts. Knead red food coloring to one piece, blue food coloring to one piece and leave the third piece white. Add enough food coloring to make the fondant a very bright red and blue. How much you need will depend on the amount of fondant you are coloring. Wear plastic gloves or put the fondant into a small ziplock baggie to knead in the food coloring or you'll have festive colored hands as well! 


Dust your work surface and a rolling pin lightly with a little powdered sugar or corn starch. Roll out all three colors of your fondant to about 1/4 inch thickness. I find it easier to thread a wire in the stars if they are not too thin. Try to roll all three colors of the fondant to about the same thickness. 
First cut out your largest star. Cut the center of the large star out with the medium sized star. Next cut out a medium sized star out and insert it into the cut out in the center of the large star. Finally, cut out the center of the medium star with the smallest star cutter. Cut a small star out and put it in the center of the medium star.
*Keep fondant covered with plastic wrap while not using as it dries out quickly. Thread a wire or toothpick into the bottom of the star, pushing it  at least half way into the star.  I let mine dry flat for a few hours and then them stuck them into a piece of oasis to dry completely. Cut wires to desired lengths.  Then I threaded the wire through festive straws but that's an optional step.
If using just fondant not a mix of fondant and gum paste, you may need to let the wired stars dry flat for several hours, up to overnight before picking them up. Gum paste or a 50/50 mix of gum paste and fondant dried fairly quickly and doesn't need as long to dry before you can use them.
Your toppers are ready to use!

We took the these photos at Waterberry Farm.

And now for the GIVEAWAY!

So far this summer has been an extremely busy one for me, fun but busy. Last summer our family farm along with several others in our area joined together to form The Route 52 Farm Trail. All the farms on the trail are open to the public on Saturday's June and July. We sell our produce, baked goods and preserves. This year we've added two local artisans work as well at Waterberry Farm. Fat Bird Designs sells gorgeous hand painted tea towels and other beautiful hand made goods. Beatrice and Lulu makes heirloom children's clothing and many other beautifully crafted items.
Ok so I guess not all of you will be able to visit is at Waterberry Farm. Never fear! Fat Bird Designs and Beatrice and Lulu have teamed up for a giveaway!!

Fat Bird Designs is giving away this stunning original, one-of-a-kind hand painted table runner.

 Beatrice and Lulu is giving away these adorable recycled chevron drink coasters. She makes the absorbent center using her daughters old baby bibs! So cool! Read about how she makes them here on her blog

She's also giving away one of her cute chevron print hats. The winner will be able to get the hat personalized with their monogram in the center!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

These decorations are super simple and don't require any special skills or equipment to make. If you can draw a heart shape then you've pretty much got the skill set needed to make these chocolate hearts. Use them as cupcake toppers or to decorate a cake. They're so cute they'll make you look like a decorating superstar!

What you'll need:

Candy melts, (any colors you want) can be found in the cake decorating section of Wal-Mart or any major craft store.

Wax paper or parchment paper

zip top baggies, or if you want you can use pipping bags and tips but they aren't necessary to make the hearts.

How To:


Place a piece of the wax paper or parchment paper onto a cookie sheet..

Put approximately 1/2 cup of candy melts into the zip top baggie. Melt them in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Knead the bag and heat them for 15-20 seconds until melted.

Push the melted chocolate toward one corner of the baggie. Cut a very small tip from one corner of the baggie.

Fold the top of the bag over and squeeze as you draw some heart shapes onto the wax paper.

If you think you need a pattern, or want them to all to be exactly the same size, you can print out some hearts on paper and place the paper under your wax paper to use as a guide. Alternately, you could trace around some small cookie cutters onto parchment paper, flip the paper over and follow the pattern.

I like to do them freehand. I like making different sizes and shapes.

Get as fancy as you like. Fill in the hearts completely, make curlicues, whatever! Any mistakes are easily to get rid of, just pop it in your mouth and mistake...gone!
Let the chocolate candy heart set up for 30 minutes to an hour. They should be dry enough to pick up easily. If they stick a bit, carefully slide a spatula or off-set decorating spatula under the hearts to lift them up. Try not to handle the hearts too much. The warmth from your hand softens the chocolate and can make them break.

Add the violet food coloring to the buttercream but don't blend it in completely. Let some of the icing be darker and even leave some white bits. This will make your hydrangeas look variegated and more realistic. 



Fill your pastry bag with the violet frosting and pipe stars all over the top of the cupcake. Pipe the stars very close together so that you cover the entire top of the cupcake.

I found these cute metal buckets for $1.00 at Target ! Small terracotta pots or any small flower pots work well too. Cut your floral foam to fit into your container. If you have a wide topped pot/container you may have to extra pieces to fit down into the sides. It doesn't have to fit perfectly, just make sure you have enough oasis to support your cupcakes.


Poke 2-3 toothpicks into the bottoms of you cupcakes. Two toothpicks usually does the job, but occasionally I need three to keep the cupcake in place.

Stick the tooth-picked cupcakes into the oasis in your container. Place the cupcakes as close together as possible. Fitting as many as possible around the top of the container. this will vary on the size of your cupcakes and the container you choose. I could fit 4 cupcakes on this bouquet. Don't worry that there are gaps where you can see the oasis. You will be hiding these with the tissue paper.

Grasp the tissue paper in the center of each square and twist. This will form your tissue paper "leaves". Going around the bouquet add the pieces of tissue paper anywhere you have a gap. I stick the pieces all around the edges and usually one on top. If you have a piece that won't stay in place you can secure it with a toothpick.

Hello world. I know I've been slacking in the blogging department. Yet another reason not to make New Years resolutions. I made a sort of resolution at the beginning of the month to have a schedule for posting to my blog. I don't know what happened but it seems like as soon as I'd made the plan, my whole life conspired against me being able to actually stick to the plan. I won't go into the long list of things that have kept me from posting but I will tell you that I've been making lots of cakes. A baby shower cake, a Tinkerbell cake, Spongebob cupcakes, I even got a weird request for a mountain dew cake. It's been a busy couple of weeks!
This particular cake was for a friends 6 year old daughter. My friend called and asked if I could make a Hello Kitty cake for her daughters birthday. She said that her daughter wanted the cake to be in the shape of Hello Kitty's head and the cake to be "pink velvet cake." She's a girl that knows what she likes!
This was my first Hello Kitty head cake. I hadn't really planned on sharing it here but as I was making it, I thought it was an easy fun cake that almost anyone could do and I decided to post it. It's great for a beginner cake decorator.
So here's a Hello Kitty cake tutorial, of sorts.

Materials

1 half sheet cake (you could also use a 9x13 inch cake)
3 cups of basic white buttercream frosting. (I used butter not shortening)
Fondant for bow, whiskers, eyes, and nose.

Make or buy cake. Wrap well and freeze the cake overnight. It's much easier to carve the cake while it's frozen. Freezing the cake also helps decrease the crumbs, which is very helpful when you go to frost the cake.
My cake was a basic vanilla cake dyed pink, aka pink velvet cake. If you want to go really simple, you could buy an plain, unfrosted half sheet cake from a bakery. I made my own frosting but you could use canned frosting as well.
Hello Kitty's head is pretty easy to cut out freehand. It's just an oval with ears. I didn't use a template but if you want one you can go here and download this one. You need Adobe Reader installed in your computer to download it. Or you could just Google Hello Kitty coloring pages and print the page. You may need to blow-up the picture to get the size you want for your cake.
If using a template, pin the template to the cake with toothpicks and carve around the template. I cut the corners off on the bottom of my cake. On the top of the cake I cut off a little less leaving room to cut out ears. Then I just carved off any edges that kept the cake from being oval shaped.

sorry this picture isn't very good, but I hope you get the general idea!

Frost the cake. You may need to do a thin coat of icing as a crumb coat and refrigerate the cake for about an hour. This will keep the crumbs from showing through when you put the rest of the frosting on the cake. I have never tried this with canned frosting so I don't know if it works well or not.

Decorating:
I used fondant to make the bow, whiskers, eyes and nose, on my cake. If you don't want to buy fondant, you could use fruit roll-ups for the bow, jelly beans for the eyes and nose, and licorice for the whiskers.

For the bow: Pinch off a small piece of fondant. Add  food gel coloring in desired color and knead until the color is incorporated into the fondant. Roll out fondant out to about 1/4 inch thickness. I used a small heart cookie cutter and a small oval cutter. I cut out 2 hearts and put the points of the heart together and put the oval over the points to form the center of the bow.
If you don't want to use fondant, you could cut a bow the same way out of fruit leather and get a similar effect.

I painted my bow with edible glitter!

I made my whiskers out of gum paste dyed black that I put into a clay extruder gun to make long ropes. You also could roll black fondant into ropes by hand and let them dry overnight, or just use pieces licorice.



I cut the eyes and nose from small pieces of fondant but jelly beans would make a good substitution.
Place the bow, eyes, nose and whiskers on the cake. When I finished my cake I realized I should have put the eyes a lower but changing them at that point would have messed up the top of the cake.
I finished off the cake with a boarder of frosting around the bottom edge. This step is optional. Leave it off if you don't feel comfortable using a piping bag.
 This Hello Kitty cake is a pretty easy, very fun project that would be great to do with the kids. The good news is, even if it isn't perfect at least you can eat your mistakes!