Sculpted Cakes ⋆ Biscuits to Brownies

Cakes, cakes, lets make a cake!!! Soon after I started my pastry career, I became so passionate about cakes. However, it was a skill that I was not too good at but wanted to learn to become better at Boy, was I a work in progress…. Thanks to one of my very patient pastry co-worker, the journey began. After I started my home cake business, sculpted cakes became something I enjoyed doing because of the little challenge they brought to the table.

You can find some of the cakes below, as well as other favorite creative cakes, here.

First Cake Rodeo

My first encounter with learning to make professional cakes came during culinary school in my “Wedding Cake” class. Learning to stack and build cakes, decorate, and flavor combinations was foundational. Loved every minute of it. By the way, tasting all the teams cakes was the best part!

Amateur Cake Baker

Let me back up a bit, in my first profession I was a Medical Technologist and amateur baker. Almost every week, I would bring in cakes for my co-workers. They loved everything I created, and I guess you could say, the passion really began then!

You ever look at cakes and wonder how in the world do they get their icing so smooth? I remember thinking that too. I even attended a Michael’s Cake Decorating class. Honestly, that was one of the best classes in learning basic techniques and making flowers.

Tables Turned

My second job after culinary school was working in the bakeshop in one of Washington D.C.’s catering company’s. There were two cake decorators, one just happened to work on the other end of my table. Daily I watched them create simple to masterful works of art. I think then, my inspiration was raised to conquer cake.

While there, I was like a sponge, taking in and learning everything each day. Wished they had camera phones back then…..

Looking back, I chuckle because I couldn’t even ice a cake smoothly. But you have to start somewhere, right? After almost two years in the bakeshop there, I decided to branch out on my own and start my home-based business.

Sculpted Cakes-Beginner

Venturing into my cake business, I decided to try my hand at the cake show circuit. One of the biggest and popular shows in the NE region was “The National Capital Area Cake Show.” It was really amazing place to be. Surrounded by so many incredibly talented cake artist. Young to old, beginner to professional and everything in between. Even Food Network pastry chefs competed and judged.

My first trip to the cake show, I was so inspired by all the amazing sculpted cakes. Wow, I wanted to give it a try, so I made some really pretty easy cakes to enter over the years.

Not only was it amazing to walk through table after table seeing all the beautiful cakes, but equally exciting visiting all the vendor booths. Seriously, I think I bought so much stuff each year and had fondant in just about every color imaginable.

I decided to go for it and enter in as an intermediate cake decorator. Had no idea what I wanted to do but decided on the sculpted cake category and it seem to all come together after that. As the years went on I competed up to the semi-professional category.

First Sculpted Cake-Flower purse

First time out stirred my creativity a bit, decided on the purse but ended up with so much more. Flowers entered into my creation, and this is what it came out to be! Surprisingly, it did really well and took second place. Hey, it wasn’t perfect by any stretch but to have it place totally made my day! Attention to detail is something I need to work on. (sorry, didn’t have camera phones back then….)

Cactus Cake

sculpted carved cake into a cactus figure

This is one of my favorite cakes and pretty simple to create. Inspired by my two years living in Tucson. Love the southwest so much and especially loved the climate! For sculpted cakes, this one was pretty easy. I think the pink flower on top totally makes it.

Converse Shoe Cake

Second up is a cool converse sculpted shoe cake. This was inspired by my daughters shoes at the time and she was totally into converse. I love pink, so I decided to decorate it all things pink and white. Actually, this was quite easy as well to sculpt. I try to stay on the simple side but use color to really bring the cake out to pop. I just use a simple yellow and chocolate cake that carves up easy.

This cake was entered into the Great American Cake Show in Maryland, and took first place!!!! 🙂

First place pink sculpted converse shoe cake at a cake show — It was a very hot May day and you can see the fondant was starting to suffer 🙂 The show was located inside a barn

Sunflower Hat Cake

Love, love flowers! Yellow is one of the perfect colors for spring and decided to go all yellow with a sunflower theme for this easy sculpted cake. The cake is carved into a round shape and draped with yellow fondant and decorated. The flower and leaves are made from gumpaste.

Baseball Hat

Shout out to my son for this one, when he made All-stars, I made this for his team. Super fun to make and looked just like the real thing! 🙂 The boys loved it.

Rainbow Fish

Ok, this one was just done for fun and didn’t require too much sculpting on this one. However, it was super fun to color with an airbrush. The sand is just brown sugar but one of my favorite cakes to make. The shells were made from candy melts in mini molds.

sculpted fish cake covered with colorful fondant

Wine Box Collection

I’m not quite sure where I got the idea for this cake, maybe magazine or book? This one was a bit more of a challenge as it had more detail in decorating and even some writing. But I love the rustic look of it and additionally, love the colors.

Stacked Cake and Cupcake

My love of cake and cupcakes is inspiration for this fun cake. The layers were fun to make and using different colors for each tier of the cake makes it a bit whimsical.