Happy Birthday in Blue &White

This simple birthday cake was made with red velvet cake, frosted with cream cheese icing and trimmed with blue and white cream cheese. Simple but tasty...

Snowman with Penguins

This is a cake I made for my very first cake competition. The mountain mountain was carved out of coconut cake and covered with homemade marshmallow fondant. The penguins were cake balls covered in chocolate with the eyes, beak and bows piped with icing. The snowman was carved from coconut cake, iced with cream cheese icing and coated in coconut. The original intent was for the snowman to have a hat, but the hat didn't make it.

Baby Grayden is Coming!

The theme of this shower was centered around feet and booties and I'm sure when baby Grayden makes his entrance into the world it won't be long for the happy parents hear the pitter patter of his little feet around the house.

This two-tiered cake was strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting covered in blue and white homemade fondant. The cake was then accented with fondant feet and hearts, trimmed with blue and white striped ribbon and topped with blue fondant baby Chuck Taylors.

Fall Wedding Cake

After 15 years my sister-in-law, Tameka, and her now husband, Kenny, decide to make things official and jump the broom. They had an intimate ceremony by a lake, then invited friends and family to their home to help them celebrate their union.

I was honored to make the cake for this event. This four tiered cake is iced in cream cheese frosting and decorated with fall colored silk flowers. The design was simple yet very elegant and the colors went well with the autumn weather.

Congratulations and good luck to the happy couple.

New Birth Celebration

Last year my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma and had to undergo a series of treatments.  A year ago tomorrow, she received a stem cell transplant and today, she lives a cancer free life.  The New Birth was a celebration of her renewed life and the love that exist for her.  Fortunately, my mom's bone marrow was healthy enough that her own could be harvested and a donor was not needed.  Unfortunately, many people diagnosed with lymphoma, leukemia, and other diseases await bone marrow matches that could potentially save their lives.  Becoming a donor is easy.  All it takes is to register and have your cells check with a quick cheek swab.  Check out http://www.marrow.org/Join/Join_the_Registry.aspx for information on how you can register to be a bone marrow donor and potentially save a life.

This past weekend I had the honor of making the cake for my mom's New Birth Celebration.  This cake was vanilla pound cake and chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting.  The cake was decorated purple and lime green, the colors of Hodgkins and Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma awareness.  Around the middle tier are the words survivor, faith, courage and strength.  Each of these words describe my mom and what it took for her to survive her journey with cancer.

Key Lime Cupcakes

Yum...key lime cupcakes...the perfect combination of sweet and tart.  These key lime cupcakes turned out great.  I think I've got a recipe that I'll write down now.  A little less lime juice and little more milk.  I kept the same key lime cream cheese frosting and topped them with a cute little lime zest curl...We have a WINNER!

Strawberry Cupcakes

These strawberry cupcakes are a nice tasty treat.  The strawberry cake is made using fresh strawberries then topped with strawberry cream cheese frosting and garnished with fresh strawberries.  This is one of my favorite desserts to eat.

Three Layer Red Velvet Graduation Cake

This is a three layered red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.  The cap and diploma were made from chocolate, with all the writing and trim done in colored cream cheese frosting.

Key Lime Cake Covered with Fondant

Key lime cake is a favorite of one of my coworkers, but when I searched for a recipe, it seemed they all contained box cake mix or lime jell-o.  I'm not one for using box ingredients, so I altered my vanilla cake recipe by adding lime zest and lime juice to create this moist and delicious key lime cake.  I frosted the cake with a lime cream cheese frosting and covered it with my homemade fondant.  Although making fondant is fairly simple, it is an extra step, but I think it's well worth it since store bought fondant doesn't have the best taste.  The daisies, flower stems and pearls are also made using fondant.  

Although this cake is green, it doesn't have to be.  For those who stray away from dye and food coloring, the green can certainly be left out.

Baby Shower Cake with Baby Chuck Taylors

This cake was truly adorable! It was two tiers with vanilla cake as the bottom tier and strawberry cake for the top. The cake was iced and trimmed using cream cheese frosting and all the additional accents were made using fondant.

This was my first time making shoes using fondant and it was definitely challenging the first go round, but I learned a lot, so I'm sure it'll go a little easier next time. The bow, polka dots and daisies add some added excitement to this cute cake.

I hope this cake provides a good memory for the mom to be.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Birthday Cake

This is a three layer strawberry cake was baked using fresh strawberries and filled with strawberry cream cheese. The cake was frosted with cream cheese icing and decorated using black cream cheese icing and pink fondant. This was my first attempt at working fondant. I had to make the bow twice, but thanks to Edna (http://www.designmeacake.com/id67.html), I had a step by step tutorial that was easy to follow.

Cupcake Cake

This is another cake made during my decorating class. The focus this week was transferring designs on to a cake and dimensional decorating.  The task was to transfer a design onto a cake.  All great cupcakes need a topping, so I topped mine with a cute little cherry.  This was fun and it turned out really cute.

Purple & Gold Chocolate Rum Layer Cake

I made this chocolate rum cake layer cake with chocolate buttercream as my final project for my first cake decorating class. I felt like I owed my husband a little something for being so patient with me while I took this course and since his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, was celebrating their centennial, I used that as the inspiration behind my design.

Although the frosting looks chocolate in the picture, it was actually a deep purple. I piped the fraternity motto, "Friendship is Essential to the Soul" and the Omega symbol with 20 pearls on the top in yellow buttercream frosting. Around the base of the cake are clusters of their official flower, african violets.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Baby Shower Cake

How cute is this?  Daddy and mommy with baby duck in tow...

Not only was this cake cute, but it was tasty too.  This three layer strawberry cake was baked using fresh strawberries and filled using a strawberry cream cheese.  Finally, the cake was frosted with cream cheese icing.  All of the bubbles were also made using cream cheese icing.  To add final touches to the cake, I used a little family of ducks which was perfect for the young couple expecting their first baby boy.

Vanilla Snoopy Cupcakes

I made two dozen of these adorable snoopy cupcakes for a 5 year old's birthday.  All she wanted was a Snoopy cake, but of course that's something hard to find in most retail bakery's, since it's not a popular character these days.  I worked with the mom to come up with a design that her daughter would enjoy and something in the budget.  I'm please to say that both mom and daughter were happy with the vanilla cupcakes, topped with vanilla buttercream icing and a chocolate Snoopy.

Lemon Pound Cake w/ Lemon Glaze

Sometimes simplicity is the best thing.  This is a homemade lemon pound cake with a lemon glaze.  The glaze contains fresh lemon juice and zest.

I made this for a client and it looked so good, I was forced to make another for me and my hubby.

Happy 50th Birthday!

Obviously, this cake was done for a 50th birthday.  The bottom tier is red velvet and the top two tiers are pound cake.  The cake is iced and decorated with butter cream.  The  50 cake topper was made using white chocolate and painted using and edible dye.

Three Tier Graduation Cap Cake

This three-tier cake was made of pound cake and butter cream icing for a graduation.  

Ribbon Wedding Cake with Roses

This wedding cake is made with vanilla pound cake and frosted with cream cheese icing.  The decorations were kept simple with ribbon and roses.

Strawberry Cream Cake

I made this cake for my husband's birthday a while back.  It's a chiffon layer cake soaked with a strawberry rum sauce.  Each layer is then topped with home made whipped cream and fresh strawberries.  The garnish on the strawberries is white chocolate. 

My New Venture

Hi Everyone!

Thanks to much encouragement from friends and family, I've finally decided to start Sonya's Sweets and Treats.  Stay tuned for pictures of cakes I've done and of course I will periodically update with new cakes.  

Love you all and appreciate the support!

Sonya