Cakes & Confections by Ashley

Stacked Presents Cake

2009-11-07T21:35:00.000-08:00

One of my mom's co-workers ordered this cake for her husband. I really liked the way it turned out! Bottom tier is chocolate and top tier is yellow. She really like the cake and I think he did as well! It was fun to make!

100+ mini cupcakes

2009-11-07T21:32:00.001-08:00

A friend of mine had a grand opening today for her new photography studio. So I made mini cupcakes for her. They turned out sooo cute! I also made brownie bites with white chocolate ganache, but forgot to take pictures.

All chocolate cake, some with chocolate buttercream and some with original buttercream. Fondant daisy accents.

Halloween Cupcakes for work.

2009-11-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Halloween cupcakes for my work! Yum!! I admit though, I cheated! I used sprinkles!! I just fell in love with this wilton sprinkle mix! So I still made the cupcakes and buttercream icing! Just cheated with the decorations! Oh well.. everyone loved them!

Fall Birthday Cake

2009-11-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

This is a small 9 inch square cake. I was asked to make a small simple cake to feed about 8-10 people and have fall colors. I really liked it! Simple with fall colors, that's all right?

Camo and Tie Die cake

2009-11-07T21:18:00.001-08:00

Camouflage Cake and Tie Die Cake for twin boy and girl birthday.

This camo cake was covered in white fondant and then hand painted. Once again hubby came in handy. He kind of helped me with the pattern. I was super excited when I saw this cake the next day after it had dried completely! I have to give myself a pat on the back! *Just a small one, no big head or anything!!*

I love this fondant cake! It makes me say "groovy" everytime I see it! I handpainted this one as well. I love the big daisy flowers!

National Boss's Day cupcakes

2009-11-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

These chocolate cupcakes were ordered for National Boss's Day. I think they turned out so cute!

Chocolate cupcakes, original buttercream and fondant accents.

Simple and CUTE!

My 1st Topsy Turvy Cake

2009-11-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

This was my first topsy turvy cake and it turned out super cute! Bottom tier is chocolate, middle tier is yellow and top tier is strawberry. The birthday party was for a little girl turning 10 and it was a cosmic bowling party.

This cake was covered in fondant with fondant accents and white chocolate bowling pins.

I had a good time with this cake. The birthday girl originally thought she was going to get a topsy turvy cake. I was too nervous and didn't know if I would be able to do it or not. One reason being I had broken my leg a few weeks before so I have a cast on my leg in a wheelchair doing this cake. But another reason was I was just too nervous!

So her mom told her it wouldn't be a topsy turvy cake but it would look the same with just 3 simple tiers. Well I got up the nerve to do the topsy turvy cake. I called the birthday girl's mom and told her I was going to do it. She decided to leave it a surprise with the birthday girl.

When I delivered the cake to the birthday girl's house she was soooo excited! She had a smile from ear to ear! It just made my day!! I was so excited for her!

1st Birthday 3-D Barn

2009-11-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

3-D barn cake with grain bin smash cake. This was fun to make! It was for a little boy's 1st birthday. ALL CHOCOLATE! My favorite! And the cake board is covered in green fondant.

I had a little help from my hubby on this one. He suggested the grain bin. Brownie points for hubby! My customer was going to put animals around the barn when I dropped it off to her. So right now it looks kind of plain but I'm sure it turned out super cute!

Corvette Cake

2009-11-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

Here is another one of those last minute co-worker's cake. A co-worker asked me on a Thursday if I could have a cake made by Friday for her son who was turning 16. And what was my answer? "SURE!" LOL! No I really didn't mind at all. Honestly I love what I do, borderline obsessed! :) So my co-workers son is in love with corvettes and she asked if I could do the corvette logo. The logo was done by free-hand. I thought it turned out pretty good for being done in 2 1/2 hours! Too bad a real corvette didn't come with the cake!

Wyatt's Barnyard Birthday Bash

2009-11-07T20:44:00.000-08:00

My little man's 2nd birthday cake. It was his Barnyard Birthday Bash. Everything is cake except for the animals. I had a lot of fun making this cake. And the picnic cupcakes were so perfect!

The cupcakes were chocolate and yellow. The grass (sheet cake) was chocolate and the barn was yellow. I was a little nervous about the barn because I had cut it too thin. So now that it was too thin it kept falling over. With support from a few dowel rods we got the barn to stay intact! Thank goodness! The animals are from the Little People Barnyard Set. I love the pig in the "mud"! I was very please with how this turned out! Here is a picture of Wyatt at the end of the night. Do you think he was 'plumb tuckered out' ?? LOL!! This is one of my favorite pictures!

Farmer Wyatt

Diva Girl Cake

2009-11-07T20:31:00.000-08:00

Half chocolate and half yellow cake. This was a last minute order for a co-worker of mine. He had forgotten to order the cake so asked me to make it last minute. I wish I could have done more with the cake but with little time there isn't much you can do. The little girl liked it, that's all that matters!

3-D Basketball Cake

2009-11-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

This is one of the first cakes I made for a paying customer. It is ALL cake! The basketball is cake and the partial hoop is cake. It took me a quite a while to get the perfect color of basketball but I think it turned out good. I found out later that the Dad liked the cake so much that he forced himself to eat it all, he didn't want to throw it away! That's a good customer! :) lol!!

Sports Ball Cakes

2009-10-18T21:34:00.001-07:00

Golden Butter cake with my buttercream icing. Landon is a HUGE baseball fan! Once again, my favorite little, now 2 year old, son wanted to taste test the cake! He just wants to make sure mommy is giving out the best! *wink*wink* He got his finger in the seam of the baseball and I tried to repair. My customer was very understanding! Thank goodness!

Same customer also requested a soccer ball cake. This is a Dark Chocolate cake with buttercream icing. MMM--good! Lets just say the soccer ball had me almost getting angry! But I pulled it off and thought it turned out pretty darn good.

2009-10-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

Basketball Cupcakes! Yum! Chocolate and Strawberry cupcakes with my special buttercream icing. These were a lot of fun to make. (you will hear that a lot from me!!)

Every cake has a story...

2009-10-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

This cake was made for my nephews 1st birthday party! A long story goes along with this cake. I had originally made the same cake for Connor's birthday party (as seen below with the green background), however, my 1 year old son at the time decided to taste the cake. He just wanted to make sure it tasted good, right mommy? WRONG! I absolutely FREAKED OUT! Let's just say things got a little crazy in my house for a little bit! I did not have time to bake another cake, ice the cake, roll out the fondant, cut out the circles in the fondant, or do any decorating of any kind! So I panicked and did what every other 25 year old girl does... CALLED MY MOM! HELP! Luckily we were able to find a very plain decorated cake at Country Mart. So I bought the cake took all of the decorations off and re-iced it using the icing that was left. Needless to say I was in panic mode. I was searching and my mom was searching for fondant in the colors I needed. There was no way I was going to be able to color my fondant from scratch. Finally found the fondant. At this point there was probably and hour or so before the party. I very quickly rolled out the fondant, cut the circles and decorated the cake. In the end, my nephew had a wonderful cake and no one knew the INSANE day I had. Every cake has a story!

If you are wondering about my son, who just wanted to taste-test the cake, he was fine. I did not do everything to him that was going through my head at the time! Haha! I calmly (only because I was in shock and couldn't speak) took him over to my husband and said "take him now, keep him in your hands at all times right now". But like I said above, everything came together and no one really knew the story behind Connor's cake!

This is the smash cake I had made for Connors pictures. My sister in law told me that Connor was intrigued with the dots. He wouldn't smash his cake. He just picked off the dots! Too cute!

2009-10-05T21:01:00.000-07:00

Chocolate and golden butter cupcakes with buttercream icing. These were a lot of fun to make! They were for a golf tournament. And they were all gone in no time!

2009-10-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

This was a cake I made in my Wilton Cake Decorating class. It was a lot of fun. I don't remember the flavor of cake. But it is buttercream icing with royal icing flowers and bird. Not too shabby for my first basketweave!

2009-10-05T20:47:00.000-07:00

White chocolate covered strawberries with milk chocolate swirls. This was for my sister's 30th birthday party. These strawberries were very yummy!

My first post

2009-10-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

I am super excited about Cakes & Confections by Ashley blog. Hopefully I will be able to keep this blog going pretty regularly. I may skip a day or two but I will catch up soon.

This blog is a way for me to show the cakes and confections I make and also describe what is there. Or how I created what I did. I often receive questions of how I do what I do and this is a way to give those answers. I will also be able to let you in on my frustrations! If you have ever watched a cake show on The Food Network or TLC, you know it's not easy! Everyone has their breaking moment. Although I'm not to their level of work, I do get frustrated. And begin to think, "How in the world am I going to get this done!" or "Why did I say I could do this?" When I'm creating a cake and 8pm turns into 11:00pm and then 11:00pm turns into 1am, I start to get a little crazy! But with all of that said I love it!

I love to create cakes! Just read my 'About Me' section. I love to add that special something to each occasion! When someone can walk into the party and know a new fact about the guest of honor, I know my job is complete. Just like a picture can capture so many unsaid words, a cake can pull everything together.

My chocolate confections are just wonderful! I originally started working with chocolate before I had even thought of cake decorating. Chocolates seem to have such charisma about them. They can be left completely alone and still look completely elegant. There is just something about chocolate. Chocolate truffles, gourmet chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate confections, and one of the latest, chocolate covered marshmallows. Yummy!

This post has actually turned into an elaborated 'About Me' section.

I hope you enjoy following this blog. I love to write, even I'm not good at it. You will get to know me a lot better, I promise!

Enjoy!