birthday cakes

Here are a couple cakes I made this weekend. 

I'm super excited about how this one turned out :)

Btw, I colored the red fondant myself. My hands are still red.

I had big dreams for this cake. It was a late notice order, but I came up with a design from examples the birthday girl gave me and was really excited. 

Of course, there are some things that didn't turn out as planned and things I wish were better, but overall, I still like it. Obviously, since I posted a bunch of pictures :)

I've probably said this before, but it's almost annoying how many times I've done this, but things don't always work the same way. Like my buttercream. It always varies a little. Of course, it doesn't help that I accidentally put twice the amount of whipping cream in one batch. Just another reminder that I cannot trust my memory! 

Then my cakes were sticking to the pan. What!? Not sure why, but the two 6" had chunks missing from them. That made me a little nervous working with it. I didn't have time to bake more so I had to make do. I would've taken pictures of what it looked like to begin with (yikes) but I was just nervous and hoping I could make it look normal! 

Getting layers iced and stacked evenly is still a challenge. The middle layer got bigger at the top and I can tell I put a LOT of icing on it. There was 2" difference between each layer but the difference once stacked between the bottom and middle and middle and top was 

obviously not identical, ha. 

And I think that stacking buttercream cakes is tough. I don't think it's possible to stack buttercream cakes without smudging the cakes. I guess going back and fixing it is the only way. I'll take tips if anyone has them.

I wish I'd gotten pictures of the scrolling on the back. I think it looked better.

I was excited that the diamond pattern worked on buttercream. That was a first.

Overall, still not as clean as I prefer it, but practice makes perfect! 

I just baked some cookies! Hopefully I'll get them decorated tomorrow and post about them soon after that!