Finding Nemo revisited!

Well guys, this is the first cake we've done in over a month! Lets do a quick update on our lives before we get into the cutest cake we've ever made. I graduated from school and went through a full internship for dental assisting. After accumulating my allotted hours, I put out ten billion resumes and immediately got a few prospects. Now, I have a full-time (and I mean FULL TIME) job as a receptionist at a truly lovely (and huge) dental office. And DJ still has his full time job at a famous little place in Berkeley, so making cakes has sort of been put on the back burner since we have really no time for life, let alone cakes,

However, when we received a text from my friend's friend, I was more than ready to get back into the cake world. Her adorable little son is turning one, and she wanted to go all out with a Finding Nemo themed cake. 

Now guys, I know you remember the very first cake we ever made together. If not, let me refresh your memory:

                   

Finding Nemo. That was a few years ago, and I guess it never goes out of style. Needless to say, we've definitely improved our cake skills (and our photography skills). We were both really excited to get to revisit an old idea and blow this cake out of the water! So here's the new one:

                                         

I can actually hardly believe we made this cake. It's definitely the coolest cake we've done so far. (But I say that about all of our cakes!) We also added a Nemo in after this picture was taken, boo hoo! But that's okay. Needless to say, our customer was delighted, and I hope her son was too!

This cake was vanilla with fresh strawberries and Italian buttercream. Squirt (the turtle) was made of cake and rice krispy treats, with fondant decorations and food coloring painted on for the spots. The decorations are all edible (duh), made from gumpaste. I think we have a few more cakes coming up, so stay tuned! 

   

Graduation cake #2!

                                        

So this post is way insanely late! We made this graduation cake for one of DJ's sister's coworkers. (We have so many people just promoting our work endlessly, and we are soo grateful!) This cake was fun because the customer gave us basically creative freedom, as long as the graduation cap was on it. Which let me tell you, was not all that fun, but you live and learn. We struggled with how to make the mortarboard stay straight, and after much toil and trouble, we finally did it! Thanks largely in part to my glorious husband, who never ceases to amaze me with his creativity and ability to think on his feet! (Whereas I just crumble into a sobbing she-devil). Overall, the cake was a success with the family, and seeing the looks on their faces was the icing on the cake! (Okay, that was a baddd pun, I know.)

This cake was chocolate and vanilla buttercream on the top, and vanilla/vanilla on the bottom. We heard it was a huge hit! Can't wait till the next one, guys!

2013 Graduation Cake #1!

                                         

So this post is like super way overdue, but here it is, finally! Another cake to add! We made this one for our niece Gabby (who is currently livin' it up in Hawaii, lucky!). This cake was simple on the inside, all vanilla deliciousness. The zebra print I hand cut out and pasted around the cake, and honestly it's one of my favorite designs to date! It was really very easy and soo fun. We'll start taking some progress pictures so you guy reading can join in on the fun times! 

The hat, however, was not so easy and really not very fun. It was difficult trying to make the mortarboard stay stiff, so after much trial and error, we ended up putting cardboard under it (that's cheating, I know). But it was really very frustrating and we were tired, okay? Geez. 

Anyway, stay tuned for our latest cake, another graduation cake with a bigger (and better executed) hat!

Leopard print graduation cake

We made this cake for my friend's sister's graduation! Her favorite colors are purple and turquoise, and she wanted leopard print. The leopard print was actually quite a challenge, as we'd never done it before. We were having some problems, but luckily we have lots of imagination, and we pulled it off! 

This cake was all chocolate (yum!) 

Cute Birthday cakes

We made these cakes kind of spur of the moment for my two close friends at school! Their birthdays are about a week apart, so we decided to surprise them with little cakes. Bianca is a fellow self proclaimed princess, so I knew I had to make it pink with some Hello Kitty thrown in there for good measure. 

Racheal is super funny and loves to quote Spongebob. The little guy on the front of her cake is her cast. She broke her finger and had the cast for about a month, and we named him Paul.

The toppers are just candles from the supermarket, we decided to do these very late at night, and sculpting that late is not a good idea! Either way, they were fun to make, and the girls LOVED them! 

My favorite part about making a cake is definitely the smiles we get from the people who get the cakes! These cakes were vanilla on vanilla. Yum!!

Baptism Cake

We made this cake for one of DJ's coworkers. It was for his niece's baptism, and he wanted to go all out! This cake's top and bottom tiers were red velvet with chocolate filling, and the middle tier was vanilla cake with vanilla bean filling. We also made some delicious cupcakes to go along with this extravagant cake!!

Monster High

We made this cake for another one of DJ's coworkers! We made this for an 11 year old's birthday. This was a Monster High themed cake, all chocolate, of course!! The decorations were made by hand, as always, out of gumpaste. I cut out the little skull freehand, which was not easy! But in the end it all turned out great!

Get well cow cake

This cake was super fun and really easy. We were getting some work done on our house, and the guy doing the work mentioned his girlfriend had surgery recently and that he would be interested in a cake for her. Turns out, she is in LOVE with cows, and this is what she wanted! I had tons of fun sculpting the cute little cow to go on top, and DJ came up with a great way to make the cow spots for the rest of the cake. This cake chocolate cake with vanilla bean frosting.

Ninja Turtle Birthday Cake

We made this cake for the same friend we made the Burn Book cake for. Her son is OBSESSED with ninja turtles, so we made this cool cake for him!

 

Needless to say, those ninja turtles were a lot of work, but it was totally worth it! Chocolate cake with strawberry filling, gumpaste decorations. Here's a closer look at the ninja turtles:

 

 

Dora's Mermaid Kingdom Birthday Cake

This cake was for our friend's three year old. She insisted on a Dora's Magic Mermaid Kingdom cake, so that's what she got! Chocolate cake filled with vanilla bean Italian Meringue buttercream. Covered in fondant with gumpaste decorations.

 

  The Dora was super fun to make, and Alison loved it!

Nursing Program Graduation Cake

We made this cake for my teacher's daughter, who graduated from nursing school in December 2012. The cake was vanilla with Italian buttercream and fresh strawberries! Yum!

This cake was super fun! The decorations were everything on this cake, so we had to make them extra special!

 

This was another one of my favorite cakes! My teacher and her daughter loved the cake!

Mean Girls Burn Book Birthday Cake

We made this cake for a friend. Her and her best friend are obsessed with Mean Girls (the movie), so she wanted a Burn Book cake for her friend's birthday. Now, if you haven't seen Mean Girls, the Burn Book is a book where the girls write horrible things about everyone else. Here we have a side by side, real book from the movie, and cake:

Left Side is a shot from the movie, right side is the cake

 This cake was red velvet with cream cheese filling. All the decorations were made piece by piece out of gumpaste, and the drawing was done with edible pen. This was the first cake we made for someone that wasn't a family member, so making it and then letting it drive off wasn't easy. These cakes are our babies! It's still a struggle, but we're getting better! 

Animal Baby Shower Cake

 

Now we're talking! This has got to be one of my favorite cakes EVER. We made this for DJ's sister's baby shower February 2012. (Hi April!) The whole cake was vanilla with vanilla bean Italian meringue buttercream. The fondant was Satin Ice, and the little animals were sculpted completely out of gumpaste.

 

 I really got to test out my sculpting skills with this cake. (Yes, those are my man hands above.) 

I made four little animals:

 

I drew inspiration from different designs I saw online and duplicated them. I dyed the gumpaste before-hand and sculpted them with special little tools Wilton sells. This was the first time we were making a cake that lots of other people would see, so the pressure was definitely on.

Thankfully everything went according to plan! The only thing that we didn't make and isn't edible is the brown ribbon around the bottom tier. 

Since it was a ladies only baby shower, I got to go along with the cake and see that it got there safe and sound, and I even got to cut and serve it! We got awesome feedback. Like I said, probably my favorite cake we've ever made!

Glittery birthday cake

 

We made this cake for the same sister that wanted the Finding Nemo cake. Kind of a short notice cake, so we just threw together something cute and girly. This is the first cake we used regular fondant for instead of marshmallow. The glitter is edible and safe, and can be applied to any cake! Decorations out of gumpaste and fondant.

Lemon Flower birthday cake

This was a fairly simple cake we made for my grandma on her birthday October 2010. My grams really digs lemon, so we made vanilla cake with lemon curd filling. Marshmallow fondant and gumpaste decorations. There's a story that goes along with this cake too, so get ready!

This cake is actually a recreated, re-envisioned version of a cake we made for her a year before. We were just getting started and didn't know a single thing about making cakes. It was horrible. We stacked the cakes, but didn't trim them, so they were all catty-wompus, not straight. It gets worse. Like I said, my grandma likes lemon, so we decided to put lemon slices on the top of the cake (where the cute little flowers are on this cake). Well, the acidity in the lemon ate away the fondant, and it was a disaster. We're too embarrassed to even put up a picture, so you'll have to envision it. Let's just chalk it up to lack of experience, shall we?

Wacky Birthday Cake

Hi again! This is the second cake we made together in September 2010 for my other sister. This is the first 2-tiered cake we ever made!

 Again with the bad picture, I'm sorry! I promise they get better!

The cake was chocolate with vanilla buttercream, same as the Finding Nemo cake. The fondant was marshmallow fondant, and we dyed it two different colors when we made it. The decorations are all made out of the fondant this time instead of gumpaste. 

There's also a funny (kind of messed up) story that goes along with this cake. We wanted to keep it a secret, so we went to our friends house in Berkeley to make the cake. We were there about four hours making the cake, and when we finally finished and made our way out to the car, we found out it had been broken into! We had a backpack in there with a computer, a GPS, and an iPod. All stolen. So technically, this is the most expensive cake we've ever made!

 

Finding Nemo Cake

Hey, Wendy here! This was the first cake we ever made together way back in June 2010. I have two younger sisters, and the youngest one was turning 3. Guess what she was obsessed with at the time? You guessed it. So, without any prior decorating experience on my part (and very little baking experience on DJ's part), we brazenly set forth to create a delicious and lovely cake! Here was the final result:

 

As you can see, our photography skills needed some work. Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time to recapture this fabulous cake with our fancy DSLR, so this is what we got. Regardless of the horrible quality of the picture, I think we did a pretty good job.

The cake was chocolate with vanilla buttercream. On this cake, DJ actually made the fondant out of marshmallows! It definitely tastes better than the type you buy in stores, but it's wayyy more difficult to work with, so we rarely work with it anymore.The little fish and cute little decorations are made out of gumpaste, which is just basically sugar with more sugar that's easy to mold and shape. You probably don't want to eat much, but it's my favorite thing to work with (alternatively, you could use modeling chocolate, but I find it melts way too fast.)

Stay tuned for more posts! 

-Wendy & DJ

Welcome!

Welcome to Bay Cakes! Let's do a little background for our first post!

 Bay cakes is run by us, DJ and Wendy McCoy.

DJ bakes the yummy cakes and makes the delicious buttercream fillings,

and Wendy decorates them with edible goodies.

Bay Cakes began with one cake:

DJ made this cake for Wendy as a surprise gift, and the rest is history!

Not bad for his first one, right?

 

So far we've made about ten cakes, and we improve with each one!

Stay tuned for more posts!