Cake, Cake and Another Cake

How was everyone's Thanksgiving? We're back home in Kansas now, but we had a great time visiting with my family in Ohio and also with Joe's family on our way through St. Louis. Despite a couple of long days of driving, it was still a fun and relaxing holiday. We did some shopping, ate way too much food and played a bunch of games. But now we're facing a full week of work and I'm not sure how I feel about that haha. Oh well, Christmas break is only a few weeks away :)

I didn't get around to taking pictures of my cranberry pancakes using the brandied cranberry sauce because I forgot my camera's memory card. But I will try again this coming weekend. For tonight I thought I'd share a few cakes I've made in the last few months. Of course, I meant to share these as I made them but that obviously didn't happen. So let's just jump into them now :)

First up is a cake I made for our neighbor's family reunion back in October. Our neighbor's father is one of 12 children and every year the family gets together to visit and catch up. Though all 12 siblings are no longer alive, they all still get a spot on the cake. I had fun decorating this cake since it was all icing work and no fondant. The writing is still a little shaky but I'm getting better. 

Also, I think we should try and bring the name Hershel back. Just sayin'. 

The next cake is actually 2 cakes that I made for our friends' wedding in October. The bride wanted me to make the wedding cake and grooms cake so I happily obliged haha. The groom is a big fan of both the St. Louis Blues and Cardinals so I made a hat for each team to put on top of the cake that was 1/2 baseball 1/2 hockey puck. The Blues hat is dirty looking to match the groom's actual dirty Blues hat. The wedding cake is simple looking but was kind of difficult just because of the size of the tiers. I drove all these cakes to St. Louis bright and early on a Saturday morning after staying up almost all night to finish them. I think I stayed awake on the drive there by adrenaline only haha. 

 
 They all survived the drive and I got them quickly set up and started painting the "All You Need is Love" line (the bride is a huge Beatles fan). Then I went to Joe's parent's house and took a nap before the reception. Overall I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

This last cake is a 2nd Birthday for our little buddy, Aiden. I work with both his mom and dad and they were nice enough to commission me to make his cake. To say that Aiden is obsessed with the movie Cars is an understatement to say the least. The boy loves him some Lightening McQueen and Mater! So his party was all Cars themed. I made a couple dozen cupcakes and then the small checkered flag cake to put some candles in for him to blow out. This cake came together pretty quickly and I think it turned out cute. The hardest part was cutting around the template I printed of his name and the Cars logo. But even that worked out alright. 

I'll have at least one more big cake this year that I'll try and share. In the next few days/weeks I'm hoping to get some Christmas decorating done as well as shopping and baking. I'm sure you all will be crazy busy as well and I hope that you're also getting to have some fun in between. Until next time, have a great night!