How classy is this first birthday girl?  I made little Malka a cake that I would make for myself.  The panels on the bottom tier were all hand cut and dried before applied around the cake.  I learned the technique from Jessica Harris’ Craftsy class: Clean and Simple Cake Design.  I love the texture and dimension it gives the cake.

These baby blocks are the perfect way to display the birthday girl’s name.  I cut 6 white gum paste squares for each block and let them dry for a few days.  Once dry, I glued them together with stiff white royal icing.  To get them a little more even and squared off, I used a microplane zester to shave off any ragged edges.  Then I applied the letters around each block.

The silhouette plaque on the top tier was inspired by the birthday invitation.  I hand cut the gray silhouette out of gum paste.  The little pink bow is my favorite part, it is the cutest little touch!  Happy first birthday Malka!

I was so excited when my friend asked me to make this cake for her Mother in law. I had never made a shoe box or high heel shoe cake before so I was eager to get started!  It was so much fun to make, but way more work than I ever imagined!

I wanted to make the whole shoe edible so I started with a gum paste base.  I cut the shape of a shoe insert out of gum paste and let it dry on a sloped piece of styrofoam I cut to create the high heel shape.  Then while that was drying, I created a heel out of another piece of gum paste.  I ended up wrapping the heel in black fondant which made the heel much chunkier than I originally wanted.  It looked cute but I really wanted more of a stiletto. Creating the actual shoe was the hardest part!  I started by cutting a template out of paper to get the right curve for the shoe.  After a lot of trial and error, I was finally ready to cut nude colored gum paste into the right shape.  I attached it to the sole with sugar glue or water, and propped it up with paper towels to allow it to dry in the proper shape.  Once the lining was dry, I covered it in the same shape with black fondant.

I cut thin pieces of white gum paste out and formed them into these cute wavy shapes before allowing them to dry.  The gum paste tissue paper is probably my favorite part of this cake, it gives a lot of movement and life to the scene.  The cake was not complete without a hand piped logo on the top of the box and a gold hand painted logo inside the shoe.