Happy Birthday & conGRADulations!

Thailand might not have a chance in the Euro Cup... mostly because they're not in Europe..but anyways my Thai friend Thip is a huge fan!  He recently had a birthday, his first in America, so my husband and I wanted to give him a special cake for the occasion.

The second project was to celebrate the recent high school graduates at West Shore Church. My husband heads up the youth group at West Shore and had a special morning planned at church for recognition of the graduates and of course cupcakes! 

First the birthday cake.  The soccer ball was clearly the center of the birthday cake.  I wanted to try to make it look as accurate as possible.  My biggest challenge with that was attempting to mimic the very precise and symetrical pattern of the ball.

I don't know the exact numbers but the general idea is a ball with black pentagon shapes surrounded by slightly smaller white hexagons. The actual ball came together really nice and round with some cake-ball molding. Then it was just a matter of trying to secure fondant shapes to the ball as uniformly and exactly as possible. The best thing about creating  a round ball was I could pick the prettiest side and use that as the "right"side.

After that the cake was quick.  The top of the cake was in true Thai colors.  I covered just the top with a layer of fondant. Then I tried to use edible markers to color in the flag colors but it wasn't working right so I ended up using some icing gel and a small brush to paint it on.

 Happy Birthday Thip!

ConGRADulations! Get it?! ... it's for the graduates!! My husband said everyone would think I couldn't spell but I was willing to risk it! I made six dozen cupcakes total, Red Velvet and simple Yellow Cake cupcakes.

I love Red Velvet cake.  I like it becuase it's tasty and delicious.  I love it because it's stunning and dramatic. I use a lot of icing gel to color everyting from cakes to fondant so I assumed I could use it in my red velvet recipe.

I very quickly found out good old liquid food color was a much better option.  The gel didn't get the brilliant deep hue of red velvet and once baked tasted really off.  Once I used liquid food color, the cupcakes were a breeze.  

For a few I tried only putting color in half the batter and swirling the two together. 

I cut out fondant letters and a simple swirl frosting in the grads colors finished off the cakes. The picture isn't quite clear but I think everyone got the conGRADulation message!