For this Horse Cake, I used a 16 x 3 round pan. I used vanilla cake batter from scratch and filled it with chocolate icing. To make the horse’s head, I utilized a homemade cut out template.

I rolled out white fondant and laid it across the cake. While smoothing it out, I put in creases where definition is needed. I roll out more white fondant and use a pizza cutter to cut out the mane piece by piece. The eye and halter is made of brown fondant. In the creases and mane, I used powder food color for shadow and definition. I also used silk flowers to add some color.

First Name: Kimberly
City-State: Maysville, Oklahoma

This was a two tier strawberry cake I did for an informal wedding reception for my friend’s 2nd wedding. She had butterfly invitations so I bought paper butterflies and roses for toppers. I also used sugar sheets on the sides. I hid the seams by piping on green stems and leaves. Then I piped small roses to match the two paper roses. I placed them above each stem and added an extra pedal on the edge of the cake to connect them to the stem. I finshed by adding a pearl border along the bottom. This is the prettiest cake I’ve ever made.

First Name: Amanda
City-State: Athens, Alabama

Here’s my own take of a Lightning McQueen birthday cake! The cake itself is red velvet since the whole ‘car’ is red. I used the recipe for Southern Red Velvet that I found on the FoodNetwork site.

This whole idea came from the scene in the movie “Cars” where Lightning crashes into the cactus in the desert. The cactus cupcakes as well as its icing are sugar-free to accommodate even those who are diabetics.

The cool feature I added to this Lightning McQueen cake is that it makes a Vroom-vrooming sound if you press the front wheel! I did this by installing an audio recorder device that I used to record the engine revving sound from the same movie.

First Name: Charyl
City-State: San Antonio, TX

For this cooking stove cake, I covered every inch of the cake in fondant. I made use of rice krispie treats to mould the frying pan and knobs for the cake stove.

Early on, I learned how to work with fondant and how heavy it could get so I used a small spring to lift the sunny side-up fondant egg from the pan up in the air. I learned how to suspend cake decorations in the air by my various drawing inspirations a few years back. It is really interesting to duplicate these inspirations in different cake forms.

I love showing my artistic capabilities by decorating cakes and I have been doing this for two years now. I have a small cake business and learn as I go.

First Name: Kathleen
City-State: Canyon Lake CA

This is my fourth time decorating a cake and I apologize if I use the wrong terms. I hope to someday take a course in cake decorating so that I can learn the proper techniques and correct name for all the tools.

The Two-Tier Floral Cake cake was created using an amazing vanilla recipe I found online. It is so moist and has so much flavor. Each tier was divided into two layers and filled with a butter cream icing seedless raspberry jam mixture. The entire cake was covered in butter cream icing, with a yummy almond flavoring. Each layer was sprayed with a almond, sugar, water simple syrup to lock in moisture before the entire cake was covered with white fondant.

Several days before creating the cake, I prepared the flowers to allow sufficient drying time. Made from gumpaste, the center piece flower was created using a heart cutter and a gum paste ball tool to feather the edges. There are three hearts for both layers attached with a watered down gum paste mixture. The center of the flower is a flattened ball of gum paste which I made a pattern using a scratch tool. This flower was placed in a forming disc to dry which gave it the shape. The large leaves on top of the cake were cut out by hand and the veining was scratched on using a gum paste tool. The smaller leaves were cut out and veined using a leave cutter and a gum paste tool.

The larger mauve flowers on the side were created using a cutter and the pattern on the petals was created by rolling a gum paste tool. A smaller cutter was used for the center, which was attached using the gum paste mixture. The orange flowers on the bottom tier were created using the same technique, but with a different cutter. A small piece of white gum paste was flattened and attached to the center. The other smaller mauve flowers on the side of the cake were created by rolling out gum paste and pressing a design board into the gum paste before cutting out each flower. All of the flowers were brushed with a vodka and silver pearl dust mixture to give them a shimmer.

The bottom band was created by measuring the circumference of the cake and then rolling out a gum paste strip the correct length and width required to create the band. A pattern was pressed into this band before it was cut. I used a rolling cutter that cut one side flat and the other side zigzag. This strip was also brushed with the vodka silver pearl dust mixture. The gum paste mixture was used to attach the band to the cake. A scallop border was used on the top and bottom of the second tier.

Before the flowers were attached to the side of the second tier (using royal icing) a simple crisscross drape pattern was piped along the edge.

First Name: Joyce
City-State: Kentville, Nova Scotia

This is the first ever Walleye designed cake I ever made. I learned that working with rice krispies, fondant and molding chocolate wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Painting fondant was so easy and fun too. I made this cake for a friend’s father’s birthday, who is an advent Walleye fisherman from Dubuque, Iowa. So that was my inspiration for making this Walleye Fish Cake. It was a huge hit and tasted great.

First, I made a white 12” x 4” round cake that I frosted in an ocean blue colored buttercream and added Wilton’s clear piping gel on top to give it a wet look. Next, I made some pussy willows branches out of wood skewers that are wrapped in green floral tape and bended them to shape. As for the pussy willows, I just added some Wilton brown paste to some gum paste and mixed just enough colors to give it that marble look. I slid each of those pieces into to the tops of each willow stick.

Next, I made the Walleye by forming the base with 1 batch of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. I made sure that it was very firm by compressing the rice krispies together so to take on the shape of the fish body. I made another batch of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies to form the back of the fish where the tail would be attached later. I set both aside to make some molding chocolate.

I made a batch of molding chocolate by melting 8oz’s of white Wilton chocolate in a melting pot. After it was melted, I turned it down to just to keep it liquid but cooler to touch. I added about 1 cup of clear corn syrup to a pan and heated it until it was boiling and then added it to my melted chocolate. I mixed both together until it became firm to handle. I rolled the mixture into 2 logs, wrapped it in plastic wrap and then refrigerated it for about 1 hour until it was firm.

Since I already had the rice krispies bases shaped into the fish parts, I took the molding chocolate and molded it all over each rice krispie base. I formed the gills and the mouth with the molding chocolate using my hands and a fondant ball tool. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

With gum paste, I made the fins and the mouth of the fish. I added the mouth to the rice krispie base while I harden the fins on tooth picks to make attachment easier. As for the fish scales, I rolled a bit of white fondant on a rock pattern mat to achieve that particular look. The eyes of the fish is also made from fondant.

To give color to the fish, I mixed 2 to 3 drops of vodka to a bowl of food coloring to make them dry faster. I painted both fish bases in green. (Let it dry properly before painting or your fondant could get really sticky and may slide off). I also added more green to areas that I want to make a bit darker. Brown and yellow colors were also painted on the fish as well as off white for the stomach and mouth areas.

Lastly, I added the candles and took some green buttercream and used my leaf tip to add the leafs up the side of the cake and wrote “Happy Birthday”.

First Name: Tiffany
City-State: Dubuque, Iowa

I have always wanted to design an organic-feeling cake and after seeing a little bird’s nest in the tree outside my kitchen window, this cake became the perfect choice.

The Bird’s Nest Cake is a made of two tiers- an 8″ three layer devils food cake with vanilla buttercream and a 6″ three layer vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream. To keep the cake feeling natural, I covered it in a layer of buttercream that has been tinted to a light sky blue color with a little bit of dove gray mixed in.

Next, I rolled sticks of chocolate fondant and laid them across a small glass bowl covered in plastic wrap in a nest-like shape. I left the nest to sit out and dry overnight. The next day, I assembled the layers of the cake and piped on a dark chocolate buttercream for the branches on the cake. At the top, I placed the nest on the last branches and put 3 malted milk eggs inside. The entire cake was dusted in silver luster dust to give it a light sheen.

This cake was donated to our local Ronald McDonald house for all of the kids and staff to enjoy!

First Name: Sarah
City-State: Dublin, OH

This Baby Girl’s First Birthday Cake is a 2-tier chocolate mud birthday cake. It was made using a homemade mud cake recipe.

The decorations were made using white icing that was colored with various food dyes. It was all made by hand and everything is edible including the flowers, little balls and the number 1 at the top. All these were made using tools that I already had in my kitchen. Nothing special actually, I just used a butter knife and some baking paper.

The cake was a huge success with the little kids all loving it.

First Name: Sarah
City-State: Ballarat Victoria

I baked a Genoise cake, filled it with whipping cream and fresh fruits diced, covered the cake with butter cream, and then covered it with marshmallow fondant. The Pooh figure is also edible made of cake, sculpted
it, covered it with colored fondant. The bees and the flowers are made of gum paste.

This cake was made for a baby’s first birthday, the theme of the birthday was Winnie the Pooh. I wanted to make a cake with baby Winnie the Pooh to match with the age of the kid, I made the flowers the same colors used in Winnie the Pooh, which gave me a perfect match, the bees and the lady bird comes
along with the Winnie theme.

I like to make cake. It is my dream to make a small shop, I don’t know if I have enough time left to achieve my dream since I am now 50 years old. I didn’t attend any courses to learn cake baking and decorating, all what I made is my personal efforts from trial and fail.

I learned from cake making that when you have a goal and you work hard to achieve it, finally you will find yourself there. I have other cakes and I would like to submit them in this contest, even if I don’t win, because I am not from US, I will be happy to see my cakes published on the internet.

First Name: Eman
City-State: Kuwait

I started cake decorating in November 2009 for fun with some girlfriends. Of all the cakes I have made to date, this is my favourite as it is the one I would have wanted as a little girl.

The cake itself is two chocolate cakes cooked in 1 litre glass Pyrex bowls. The cakes were neatly trimmed and covered with buttercream. As for the fondant, I coloured them all myself. In Australia, the only colours readily available even in cake decorating stores are only white, black, red and green.

I made the figurine with modelling paste made from egg whites, pure icing sugar and Tylose. As it was the first figurine I have ever made, it took me about 2 hours!

I used patchwork cutters for the butterflies which are also made from modelling paste. The snails and caterpillar were made from hand made out of fondant. I threaded a wire through the caterpillar so he will arch up and not just lay flat on the board.

Metal cutters were used for the petals in the fairy’s skirt, the circles on the toadstool and flowers on the board. I used green royal icing and a piping tip to make the grass around the bottom of the toadstool. The pathway to the front door were ready made sprinkles from the supermarket.

I hope this cake inspires others to try cake decorating as I find it a very enjoyable hobby.

First Name: Briony
City-State: Sydney, NSW, Australia