Cakes Galore!

Lately, I've been making a lot of cakes for graduations and just for fun. Here are the three most recent cakes. All of them use a recipe for white cake from "The Joy of Cooking," which is a cake that is both light and strong enough to hold fondant and other heavy decorations. It really has a great taste and texture. For fillings, I use primarily vanilla or chocolate buttercreams (the Wilton recipes). Because these icings use shortening they seem to hold up longer. They taste great too!

This cake was based on "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss and was made for my sister's graduation from college. All the letters are made from fondant (painfully cut out with a craft knife!) and the hot air balloon was painted with "paint" made by mixing powdered food colorings with small amounts of clear vanilla extract.

This cake was another graduation cake for a colleague who had just completed his Ph.D. I tried to create (from fondant) elements of his thesis while using the Caltech colors to accent the cake. All the decorations are made from fondant and painted with black food coloring "paint."

I call this my celebration cake. It was made for the same party as the one just above it as a graduation cake for a group of graduates. These decorations had to be prepared several days ahead of time, so I used gum paste instead of fondant. This might be my favorite cake so far.