Grandpa's 90th Birthday Cake/Party

This past weekend was busy with a lot of celebrations! Grandpa Gale is turning 90 this coming week and, so for him, we had a family reunion that involved a huge Birthday party. Friday night was a family reunion BBQ with about 120 of his posterity. There were a lot of his posterity missing, but there was also a lot of them there! Keith and I counted and there were all of his 4 children and spouses there, and all but 4 of his blood Grandchildren there. The main part of his posterity that was missing was Great-Grandchildren, Great-Great-Grandchildren and spouses to the Grandchildren. The reason I am posting this on my cake blog is because I made Grandpa Gale's Birthday cake. He had a party were everyone and anyone he ever knew (who are still alive) was invited. I think we got about 250 slices out of the cake, and we only came home with about 5 pieces left (it was a BIG party!)
Here are pictures of the cake and some from the party (they uploaded backwards, so you see the pictures of the detail and back of the cake before you see the front...sorry!)

My Parents and all but one of their kids (We missed you Emily!) We are in no order what so ever, I think my Mom was just happy to have everyone standing in one spot for a picture!

Can you tell what type of shoes our family prefers?

Me and Grandpa with his cake.

Up close detail of the flowers and the frames. The flowers were Gum Paste and the frames were chocolate painted with pearl dust.

The back of the cake (sorry again that you are looking at the pictures in a funny order!)

The cake front. The bottom layer was Chocolate with Raspberry filling. The top two layers were white cake with Strawberry filling. For those of us who don't like fondant, there was butter cream icing under the fondant. All the pictures were from Grandpa's childhood.

My Sister took some more pictures with her nicer camera, when I get those I will post another picture if you can see the cake detail better.

Basket of Berries

Here is the cake I made this last weekend. It was a white cake, strawberry filling and chocolate butter cream icing. This cake was three, 8 inch round layers, so the cake would cost $20-25 depending on if Strawberries are in season.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

When I first saw this idea in the "Hello Cupcake" book, I thought it was SO cute. At the time I didn't know who I would make it for. But now almost a year later, I decided I would make it for my Dad's Birthday party. My Dad LOVES his garden, and when he moved to Utah he had to adjust to not being able to garden year round...so I made him his new "winter garden."
The Hello Cupcake book has some really cute ideas, but the more I use the book, the less I like their methods for decorating! The directions told me to buy all different kinds of chewy candy to mold into veggies, but I just made one batch of fondant for the veggies instead.
Happy Birthday Dad, I hope you liked your cake!

My second cake with Fondant

This is the final cake for my Wilton course 3 class. It is the second cake I have covered with Fondant, and I think it turned out a lot better then the first one...which is good, because I must be learning. I have another cake in the works right now. It is going to be finished tomorrow night, so I will post the pictures of that tomorrow. For this cake I should have made each layer be two cakes so it would be thicker and not so much of the pillars would show, but I didn't want that much cake at my house, so there are just thin layers, but still the idea is the same.

My teacher insisted that I be in one of the pictures.
The coloring in this one is kind of yellow, but the cake is white.

Triple Chocolate Cream Cheese

The goal with this cake was to perfect a recipe and also to practice my Corneille Lace. According to Keith it was a success. He says it was the best cake I have made to date, and I would have to agree that it was pretty delicious! We still have about 3/4 of the cake left, so if you need a chocolate fix, stop by for a taste! The cake is Devils pudding cake, the filling is chocolate cheese cake, and the frosting is chocolate butter cream...YUMMY!