All posts by Melissa

Doctor’s Lab Coat Cake

Doctor Lab Coat Cake | Lil Miss Cakes

This is actually my second lab coat cake I’ve made. The first one was a last minute order and I made it in one day.  It came out great, but with a little bit of planning,  was able to make one I loved even more!

Doctor Coat Cake | Lil Miss Cakes

In this version I made a striped neck tie and left off the buttons.  I also added scissors to the top pocket instead of a prescription pad.  I made the collar a few days in advance so it would keep a nice standing shape.

Fondant Necktie | Lil Miss Cakes

Here is a better look at the neck tie. I used my linguini pasta cutter attachment for my kitchen-aid to make the stripes.  The tie itself was just a long strip of fondant that got folded under on each side.  The “knot” was just another strip of fondant folded over the top of the tie.  I made the bottom skinnier than the top to form a triangle shape.  The only difficult part was remembering to place the stripes on the “knot” at another angle than the rest of the tie.

Fondant Pocket With Stitching | Lil Miss Cakes

Here you can see all the stitching detail I added around the collar and the pocket.  I used a roller stitching tool that was originally designed as a sewing tool!

Doctors Lab Coat Sheet Cake | Lil Miss Cakes

This was a 30th birthday cake so I added a number 30 to the bottom of the pocket.  Happy birthday Jonathan!

Fondant Rose Cake

Fondant Rose Cake | Lil Miss Cakes

This cake was made to celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary.  The lucky couple had a party thrown for them by their children.  Their oldest daughter was taking charge of the cake design.  She had tons of great ideas and was really fun to work with.  Often times customers will give me a general idea of the design they want, or they will send me inspiration pictures.  For this cake, my customer knew what she wanted.  She wanted an ombre rose cake.  Easy enough, I’ve done those!  She also wanted a silhouette of her parents and she wanted ruby red on the cake since the 40th anniversary is ruby.  The most difficult request was that she wanted the roses to be fondant, not buttercream.  Now is where I needed to get creative!  I had some ideas, but had a tough time explaining them, so I sketched the design up on my Ipad and sent them over.

Cake Sketch | Lil Miss Cakes

Here is the sketch of the design that she chose!  You can see how it turned from a design into a cake!  She wanted the bow to be fancier than the one I sketched which was not a problem.

Fancy Fondant Bow | Lil Miss Cakes

I added tylose powder to red Satin Ice fondant and made all the parts of the bow.  I let  all the pieces dry for a few days to keep their shape, then arranged them on the cake.  I added little red rosettes to the center of the bow to match the cake design.

Ombre Fondant Roses | Lil Miss Cakes

Here is how I made the roses.  I started with stiff royal icing and used a Wilton 1M tip to pipe some roses on parchement paper.  I let those roses dry for a few days to get hard.  Then I used food safe silicone plastique (a silicone mold kit) to cast the roses in the silicone.  Once the silicone was cured, I had a rose mold!  I actually made three different ones so I would have options and variations on the cake.  Then I used the mold and gray fondant to make all the roses.  It took a long time, which I didn’t mind.  But it also took a whole lot more fondant than I realized!  The cake ended up being so so so heavy and much wider than I expected.  It still came out gorgeous, but a bit different than expected.

Silhouette Collage | Lil Miss Cakes

The heart cake topper had a silhouette of a man and woman and the number 40 to celebrate the cute couple.  But the daughter wanted all their kids to be represented on the cake, so I added their 4 kids and their spouses and kiddies to the top of the cake.  You can see this part unless you are looking straight down from a birds eye view.  I like that this family tree is a bit hidden and a special surprise.  Happy Anniversary!  You can find all these silhouette cutters in my shop!

Elegant Hanukkah Cookies

Elegant Hanukkah Cookies | Lil Miss Cakes

The first time I ever ever made this sugar cookie recipe I was small, and made them with my mom for Hanukkah.  This cookie recipe is a holiday family tradition!  But every year I like to design new ways to use this perfect cookie dough.  A few years ago I made stenciled cookies that came out cute, but the colors were much darker than I intended.  My favorite design to date is my standing menorah made from cutters that I designed!

Menorah Hanukkah Cookies | Lil Miss Cakes

I wanted to make some elegant Hanukkah cookies so I chose a simple color palette of blue, white, and silver.  I used some cute shaped cutters to cut out these shapes.  This small plaque cutter is actually available in my shop.  I iced these cookies with white royal icing, and then swirled in some silver airbrush color to give them a marbleized look.  I used an amazing tutorial from Amber of SweetAmbs which you can see here!  Once the cookies dried overnight, I piped simple menorahs on top.

Happy Hanukkah Cookies | Lil Miss Cakes

These cookies gave me a hard time.  I had an idea that just flopped, twice.  I covered the cookies with light blue royal icing, that was easy.  I had an idea that I saw in the latest  issue of JCreate Magazine to use silver and stamp out the dreidel shape.  I could not get it to look good in edible form!  So I needed a new idea fast.  I decided to stencil these cookies using silver airbrush color.  The only problem was that  I had no stencil!  So I designed one and had my husband print it out using our 3D printer.  It is the best gadget we have ever gotten; we keep coming up with new uses for it!  Once my herringbone stencil was printed, I airbrushed the cookies.  My next idea was to pipe some dreidels, but every design I tried just looked gross.  I was starting to get frustrated.  Then I remembered that I had a “Happy Hanukkah” stencil and tried that.  Now my simple and elegant cookies were actually simple and elegant!  Happy Hanukkah!  Here are some great holiday recipes from some of my best blogging buddies!