Love is in the air

Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovelies! I'll keep this short and sweet with some decorated sugar cookies.

Decorated sugar cookies are one of my favorite things to do - there are so many ways you can personalize your treats, and you can do so with only making a few colors of icing.

Have a happy Valentine's Day!

xoxo,
Clare

A very special first birthday

I had the opportunity this week to do another Icing Smiles cake. These cakes continue to be some of my favorites to do, because I get to bring a smile to someone's face, who is otherwise facing very, very challenging days. It is such a small effort on my part, and it's an honor to have an impact on someone else's day.

This cake was for a first birthday celebration for a little boy who has been in medical care since birth. It was such an important celebration for the family, who has dealt with so many ups and downs over the past year, and I'm lucky to have been a part of it. I was even able to meet the little boy when I dropped the cake off!

No specific theme was requested, so I thought a general transportation theme would be adorable for a little boy.

Final cake! 

Mark's family LOVED the cake, and I'm so happy to have been a part of their special day.

xoxo,
Clare

A Lovely Cake for a Lovely Couple

My wonderful friends Emily and Stephen shared a joint 30th birthday party this weekend. Emily's birthday is in December, and Stephen's birthday is in March, so they decided to co-celebrate at the end of January!

They are a fun, sophisticated, and lovely couple, so they needed a fun, sophisticated, and lovely cake. The colors were black, white, and metallic, so we obviously went with that in a gender-neutral theme. To support the celebration, we of course went with a 2-tiered champagne cake with champagne Swiss Meringue buttercream icing. This gave me the opportunity to try a new recipe, as well as a new decorating technique. I was also able to test out the timelapse function in my iPhone camera! Super fun.

If you don't know about damming your filling, you should - adding an icing dam
around the edge of your cake is critical to ensuring that your filling doesn't leak
out when you stack your layers!

Such a fun and sophisticated theme!

I was worried there wouldn't be enough cake, so I made
cake pops dusted with gold and silver stars as well.
Spoiler alert: there was definitely enough cake!

Check out this spread!

And check out this gorgeous couple!

If you are interested, here's my timelapse. I definitely need to figure out a better setup/location for my phone, but this app is pretty impressive (even with this horrible angle!):

Thank you to Emily and Stephen for inviting me to be a part of their celebration!

xoxo,
Clare