Tuesday's Tip (#33)

Here's a tip for you:

Buy some birthday candles.

I bake cakes ALL the time. Most of them are hired jobs, but, you would think that a lady who bakes at least one cake a weekend would have birthday candles in the house, right? I mean, come on. I have five kids. Someone is always having a birthday. Alas, I never remember birthday candles. Which is why my eight year old is blowing out a tea light on her cake. Happy birthday from the cake lady who can't be bothered with more details.



Have a tip to share? Or a pack of birthday candles? Feel free to leave a comment below...

...& be sure to check back every Tuesday for a new tip!

The Cake Beast

I finally decided to make a blog specifically for the cakes. I have a few friends (okay, just one) who don't use Facebook, but want to show my cakes to their friends. So, I needed a new place to showcase the cakes. Considering that I make at least one cake a week for someone, it was probably about time. Here's the link. I'll be posting some cake pictures to the blog soon. 

The Cake Beast

If you're wondering about the name, there's a page on the blog that explains it.

~Lissie

Cake favorites

I like to bake. One of my favorite things to make is birthday cakes for my children. Whenever we have a birthday, I post the cake picture on Facebook. One day a Facebook friend who I hadn't seen since grade school asked if I could make the Ariel cake for her daughter and she would pay me. I had never considered making cakes for money. It's since become that thing I do (at 3 am). It's not really a profitable business as each cake takes so much time (I have no training) and so many ingredients (I bake from scratch), but I really enjoy doing it. I've made over one hundred cakes, but I picked out a few of my favorites below:


**UPDATE: If you want to check out more of my cakes, visit me at my other blog - The Cake Beast.

Bob the Builder - he was my first cake & a little jaundiced.

I've made 7 Ariels - thankfully, people have started asking for other princesses, too.

Lucy wanted a "funky girl" birthday cake and I had to learn how to make a fondant bow.

I copied my niece, Regan's "Hippie Chic" decorations for her cake.

A special request from my other niece - unicorn farting a rainbow. She's a little whacked.

I copied my stepsister's wedding invitation for her bridal shower cake.

My boss bought these decorations for her brother's 50th.

This is the disco cake I made to match the plates.

A golf cake for my stepdad.

A special request. For my birthday, I'd like a Harpoon IPA cake. 

My friend - who happens to be an adult - LOVES Hello Kitty. This is her birthday cake.

Sophie's Angelina Ballerina cake for her 3rd birthday.

Sean's 3D Thomas cake. It had a little lean to it, but it tasted good! Rock candy "smoke."

Super Mario...

...with "mushroom" cupcakes to match.

A karate cake for a karate party

A cake for a Wild Kratts fan.

Patrick had a Star Wars birthday.

I struggled with the Scrabble cake!

A cake for some Boston College graduates.

Sean's wild animal 1st birthday.

Lucy's butterfly cake

Patrick & his buddy had a joint birthday and agreed on a basketball cake.

A Fourth of July cake

For a Harry Potter fan - copying the font was tricky!

Patrick wanted a black widow on his cake. I hate spiders. It was a challenge!

I made cake in a bowl to make the spider 3D.

Charlotte had a tiny christening cake to go with her tiny birthday cake on the same day. Poor 5th child.

So, there are a few of my favorites from all of the cakes I've made. If you're looking for me, I'm probably in the kitchen, covered in buttercream at three in the morning.

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The Weekend of Cakes

We had a very busy weekend. There were birthday parties, a christening, and more birthdays to celebrate. All of these events involved cake. I'm pretty sure that there were still bowls of frosting in my sink when I left for work this morning. (We'll discuss the fact that my dishwasher stopped working mid-cycle at a later date. {sob})

Patrick and his friend, Sean, had a joint birthday party for their classmates this weekend. They agreed on a basketball-themed cake.

Cupcakes to match!

A friend had also hired me to make a Belle cake for her daughter's birthday. I was so pleased to be working on a new princess - I've made a LOT of Ariel cakes!

Finally, we topped off our weekend with Charlotte's christening. This happened to coincide with Patrick's 8th birthday (today) and Charlotte's 1st birthday (last week). I couldn't quite figure out how those three events could be represented on a cake that didn't look completely haphazard, so I made 3 small cakes. Of course, in all the chaos that is involved in making our house suitable for company and getting everyone ready (& finishing all of the other cakes), I didn't know if I could pull it off. They definitely weren't my best work, but I threw some designs on them as quickly as I could before we left the house for church!

Patrick wanted Angry Birds

Charlotte's birthday Owl

Charlotte's little christening cake

It worked out to be the kind of weekend that you need the whole work week to recover from.  But - it was filled with fun and family (& cake!). Now, it's time to scrape those frosting bowls and pray to the patron saint of dishwashers...

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At Odd Hours

That's when I get things done. Cakes in particular. If I attempt to work on cakes while the kids are awake, I end up with "helpers." I make buttercream frosting from scratch. No matter how many times I've told them it's all the same flavor, the kids still insist that they must try each and every color of frosting. This is why I do my best work VERY late at night or VERY early in the morning (sometimes both).


This weekend, we finally had Lucy's birthday party. It's almost 3 months late (I can't always get it together)! She did a google search for "funky girl birthday cake" images and found this from cakecentral.com:

This is was my interpretation (to the best of my abilities):

She loved it, but did make sure to tell me that I didn't put green stripes around the bottom of the layers.  Diva.  I'm just relieved that I talked her out of the Hannah Montana cake she had wanted for a while!

I also have to give Jackie from Metrowest Face Painting a TON of credit.  She did a wonderful job painting faces at the party! Here are just a few examples of her amazing work:

In all, the party was a hit.  Maybe she won't remember that we did her 6th birthday almost 3 months late - yikes!

On top of it all, I got to make another cake for this weekend, too!  Very early in the morning (to prevent any interference), I worked on a friend's daughter's cake for her first birthday.  Danielle, I hope those cupcake colors were to your specifications! ;)

All in all, it was a cake (& fun) filled weekend!  Now, if only I could inspire myself to get the laundry done at odd hours.  Then I wouldn't have a pile that rivals the height of Mount Washington.