Opening up another session of the FNCC! Everyone is welcome to come share their week, photos of their work, ask for help or provide help if they can! Hope to see lots of fun photos!

Cat

Hi everyone!

No cakes for me this week. My entire week has been sucked up by making crafts for my family/friends. Earlier in the year our neighbor had their fence redone and they had leveled the wood leaving sections of wood about a foot long by 7 inches wide left over wood pieces. I sucked up about a dozen of those and made signs as gifts. You can see one here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152850247595021&set=pb.154097635020.-2207520000.1386992564.&type=3&theater

Hope that works. Anyways, that's the one I made for us. All of them are holiday themed from a Santa with sunglasses to snowmen to snow families to Christmas trees. My diningroom table has been covered all week!

Tonight I'm working on making a Paintbrush Santa for my husband who collect Santa's. He's out of town on business this weekend so I have time to make it for him without him seeing it.

What have you guys been up to this week?

Cat

I love the fencepost sign!

Today I hosted a cookie decorating party for 8 little first graders.  My daughter had a blast, it was really fun!  I am exhausted though.  

Awww...Norasmom...that sounds adorable! How many cookies did each kid get to decorate?

AI've got a rather boring cake to work on tomorrow for my neohew's birthday party (Duck Dynasty...ecchhh) and spent most of this week finishing my Christmas shopping and making cookies for friends that are just repeats of designs I've already done. I did get to try the cute upside down gingerbread man into a reindeer cookie that's taken Pinterest over, though. I saw Cookies With Character's take on it and she had the best idea! [IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3153495/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

A[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3153499/width/200/height/400[/IMG] I haven't made a cake since thanksgiving. This is the Turkey cake I made for our big thanksgiving dinner.  : I made a pumpkin bread recipe with pumpkin buttercream with 3 layers I carved the cake. For the drum sticks I smashed up the leftover bread and mixed in the buttercream just like when making cake pops and molded the legs. I melted and mixed together the Carmel apple wraps and used them like fondant for the ouside. And chopped up angel food cake and used hot coco powder on some pieces to make them a more brown color.

SPCOhio!!! LOVE the reindeer cookies!!! SO cute! I totally would not have figured out the gingerbread men shape had you not pointed it out. SO cool!

MissBakesalot...that's SO cool! It would never have occurred to me to even try a turkey cake but you nailed it!

Cat

AI wish I could take full credit for it, Cat. I just copied a cookie genius. :) It has inspired some new ideas of my own, though!

I still haven't taken the plunge into trying to carve a cake. Soon I must give it a go.

AThanks cat! I got the idea to try to make one when I seen DQs add for a Turkey cake. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. A few people thought it was a turkey until I told them it wasn't. Lol

Wow, Cat!  So talented!  Not only in cake, but other crafts as well.  Love your sign.  I like to do thinks like that, too.  My Hubby keeps telling me if I take up one more hobby, he's going to have to move me to a warehouse to house all the craft supplies!  I used to do ceramics, still make wreaths and other Christmas decorations, and then took up cake decorating.  All of those hobbies require lots of supplies!!  

SPCOhio, those are cute cookies.  You did a great job!  And Miss-bakes-alot, that turkey cake is fabulous!

Hi Cat and everyone,

Love the Turkey cake Miss bakes a lot , we don't have thanksgiving here, so we don't really have turkey til Christmas Day. 

SPC, I did a demo on using the gingerbread man for reindeers for our club last month I just used fondant though so it could be put straight on top of a cake . . We do a lot of charity Christmas cakes and I think a lot of them are going to have the reindeers on them this time. 

Cat, I am dreaming of a week without cakes when I could craft , the sign looks great. 

Norasmum , that would have been so much fun I love decorating with littlies. 

Well I have had a busy busy week ,I started the week with Cheesecakes for a party, went on to a wedding cake mid-week, then Cheesecakes and Tiramisu to finish. then today I took my Mum to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang . 

I am exhausted to say the least , and I just got a phonecall from a friend that is now arriving tomorrow and staying for a few days. There go my down days before next week's cake. 

This was the midweek wedding , it was White choc and dark choc mud on the bottom , filled with choc ganache. The top two were carrot and walnut, with a spiced chai syrup and white choc orange blossom ganache. 

AChellescakes, that cake sounds utterly delicious. I haven't tried making white chocolate ganache yet, but the pairing you just described makes me want to whip some up today. It's also a beautifully executed cake!

Gerle, I'm a professional photographer too. You can see that work at shutterbugtraveler.blogspot.com  I worked for about a year at a craft store with my sister and the two of us learned every craft there was in the store! LOL! I just lump them all together and say I'm an artist. As for a warehouse!!! That would be a DREAM! My husband just tolerates my messy craft corner. About every 6 months I tear into it and straighten it up...which only lasts till I craft something again! LOL! Poor guy!

Chelle..as I said on FB...LOVE that cake. It's SO beautiful! Hope you get to rest a bit while your friend is her for her visit!

Hope everyone has a great week! I get to start on all of the baking/cooking for edible gifts this week..starting with m&m cookies for my brother in law. I painted him up a Santa Tin and am filling it with cookies! I am also making chocolate dipped pretzel sticks, chocolate dipped spoons, caramel and chocolate covered apples and some sort of loaf bread..haven't quite decided that one yet. So this will be a busy week. I start giving gifts this week so all of this food won't be hanging around long! LOL!

Cat

ALove love love the reindeer cookies! Very good idea. And turkey is awesome! What do you use to get the roasted glazed look? I have been asked for a hog roast cake but I don't want to do it as I'd want it to look as good as yours but I know it won't! Chellescakes that sounds delicious. And I can only aspire to the neatness of your work. Lots of practice needed for me! This week I tried my hand at a castle cake - gluten free for my friends little girl. I went with box mix but cost a fortune because I needed 6 to make the layers tall enough. Quite pleased with it, but it could be neater. Struggled with the fondant and poc marks which has never happened to me before??

AHmm. Won't upload picture....

Ana: the pock marks are from undissolved powdered sugar. This is usually an indication that the sugar you have is old and needs double sifting. If you are not sifting your PS into your melted marshmallows yet then you may want to begin doing so. If you suspect your sugar may be old (look at the dates) then just double sift it into a bowl before mixing it into the marshmallows. Please do post a photo if you get a chance! We love to see them here!

Cat

Sorry, I'm late.  Was feeling a bit down and then I had 2 small cakes to make.  I just love the holidays and love seeing what everybody is making.  I wanted to make a giant gingerbread house this year, Don't think its going to happen.  I haven't even started making cookies or candies.

These cakes were for a brother & sister who celebrate their birthday 1 day apart.  Nothing original about the cake order itself.

A

[IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3153834/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

I think it worked from the PC this time. Stoopid Phone!

Heloo!!!! Been banned.....again. Here is my latest creation.The fondant is still wet but would love other feedback. Not getting anything back from peer review club

Ginn...so the overall party design was Mickey & Minnie? Cute!

Ana...the castle is wonderful!

BatterUp...what do you mean banned?? And the minion cake is just too funny! I love that you did one of the single eyed characters and added so much more personality! Other than toning down the shiny I can't think of anything I would change!

Cat

I've been on here a while and seen so much conflicting info on cc maybe you can help me understand when to make the character cakes and when not to? Some people scream NONONO but so many cleints always want them and I need to make money. If I don't make them somebody else is going to get their money and your cakes are cute and I want to make those kinds to!!!!

Bilbo, Character cakes are a hard one. General "look" or "background" cakes are ok. Just use licensed figurines on them. Of course if you are giving the cake away or this is a personal family member or friends cake then that is ok too. But making copies of licensed figures is considered copyright infringement. Chances are you will "get away with it" but the one time you don't can cost you $10k or more. BUT there is a loophole of sorts. For instance if you are asked to make a Chanel purse you can make it with different looking "c" characters so it resembles but isn't a copy of the actual item. My favorite is to make a background cake (inserted here is my Beauty and the Beast cake as an example) and these are always huge hits. This is what I normally do. Now I do have a Minecraft and a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake in my albums but those were for my own kids and not sold. So it's a fine line that I, personally, try not to cross.  Cat

I love those reindeer cookies!  I may have to try them if I miraculously end up with some free time.

I know I'm a little late to the party this week, but here are my offerings:

This cake was for my daughter's 10th birthday, for her to take to her autism support group.  I used the tutorial that was on the front page here and was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

For her actual birthday party I covered a cake, re-used the unicorn and then let the children loose with some fondant and cutters.  I think they did a great job!

Oh, and I also did a ton of baking for our children's School's Christmas Play baking stall:

I made the vanilla cupcakes and chocolate-covered homemade marshmallow pops you can see in the photo, as well as some chocolate peppermint cupcakes, some candy-cane reindeer and several banana loaves and tea loaves.  It doesn't sound a lot now I list it, but with having to do birthday cakes too, it felt like an awful lot!  I love baking, but I really don't know how some of you can produce the quantity you do - it's amazing!

I was bad so I was suspended. Completely deserved THIS TIME...

ADo tell......

posed a link to a contest for a product I sell...  Bad bad baker