Cakes & Cupcakes

For my birthday I got a Cricut Cake. Oooh the possibilities :) I love decorating cakes. Mostly I love icing, but for me that has translated into a love of using the icing to decorate cakes.

This cake I made for Mandaline's 16th Birthday. It was so fun to make.

We were unsure how many kids would come so I decided to make a batch of cupcakes to compliment the cake and this is the cuteness that insued!

 I could very nearly die of cuteness - if that were at all possible, haha!

These are my first expirement with my new toy. I made them for Dawnie's Bridal shower. Orriginally I wanted to have a simple D & R on the cupcakes, but there is quite a learning curve with the machine so this is what resulted. I think they are darling!

Dawnie had some cute little metal tags that made all the difference in the packaging. I made them as a favor, not as a dessert so they needed to be portable.

A few notes on using Cricut Cake:

-For the sugar sheets that you buy at the craft store it worked best to not cut all the way through the sheet but only score it with the machine. This did make it so you had to finish punching the shapes out with your hands or a small knife but the success rate was a lot higher than when I cut all the way through because it would crack and chip and I would throw out most of the cuts. So I had it on medium presure and low speed.

-Also with the sugar sheets I left them on their plastic sheet and just stuck the plastic to the cutting mat with a little butter. This kept them from becoming to soggy with butter and made it so I didn't have to work so fast before the sheets became too soft to move.

-On my second try I just rolled out fondant instead of sugar sheets. The fondant is so much easier! Besides being more pliable you can also reuse the extra or the mistakes by simply re rolling it out. So this was better for me because I wasted much less.

Due to this I think that next time I use the machine I'll only use the fondant. I can easily dye it to any color I need, and I know I'll waste less.

The icing I love the most is here: Favorite frosting