{Flutterby Bakery} Chocolate and White Chocolate Dippsed Strawberries

Okay, so I did decide to go ahead and post specifically about making these little guys.

I'm not sure/don't remember what got me on the idea of having dipped strawberries in the bakery, I guess I was just looking for/thinking about other things beside the cakes and cupcakes that the bakery could be offering and somehow decided that it just had to be dipped strawberries.  Around the same time I watched a youtube video where someone made some 1:12 scale strawberries and it seemed to go pretty easily so I thought sure I can do that 75% smaller...... lol {keep in mind here that I don't really know what I'm doing so much working with clay, I'm just kind of figuring it out as I go along} after looking at a bunch of different images of real life dipped strawberries I realized that they typically still have stem on them (duh, to make it easier to dip and eat them) so I thought okay, I can use wire for the stem and also use it to hold the berries as I make them.  I still wasn't sure if there was anyway these were going to turn out at all, and/or how difficult they were going to be to make, but I bought some red clay and figured I'd give it a go.  When I was looking for the smallest gauge wire I could find, I realized I already had 26 gauge green floral wire, and I couldn't find anything really smaller than 26 gauge anyway so I decided to go with that.

So to start I rolled a teeny tiny ball out of a sliver of clay and pressed the end of a piece of floral wire into it and then pressing the other side of the ball to a soft point (when necessary, a lot of time just holding it while I pressed the wire into it formed it pretty well).  Then I laid them out on some parchment paper to bake.

I did realize at about this point that I wasn't sure how the coating on the floral wire would hold up in the oven, if it would melt or anything, but I went ahead and gave it a try (really hoping it would work since it is already green and everything). It ended up being fine.  Granted the clay doesn't bake at a very high temperature and they were only in there for 15 minutes, so I have no idea how it would work under different circumstances. Hotter or longer might be a problem.

After they came out of the oven and cooled off a bit, I moved on to adding the leaves.  I knew they needed to be pretty thin paper, but I thought tissue paper would be too thin so I colored both sides of a little piece of notebook paper with a green sharpie to use. Then I cut tiny little slivers, dipped the end in glue and stuck them around the stem of the strawberries.

At first I was holding each one until the glue dried, but then after the first one I realized that a foam ball with one side flattened (which I actually for some reason already had even lol) would hold them nicely while they dried

Once the glue on the leaves was dry I just dipped them in a tiny bit of brown or white paint using the extra long stem to hold them, and once the paint was dry (I laid them flat this time to dry so it didn't drip down the top of the strawberries or something) just clipped the wire to stem length with a pair of nail clippers and glued them into a pan.

So overall, what I thought was going to be a really difficult project that I wasn't even sure was going to work ended up being pretty easy (okay the leaves were pretty tedious to do, but not overly difficult) and turned out well.  I do think they may be ever so slightly bigger than they probably should be for this scale, but I don't think I could have made them any smaller, especially, the leaves, and I have seen some HUGE real life dipped strawberries so I think these are fine :)

{Flutterby Bakery} Cakes, Cupcakes, and Goodies, Oh My!

As promised, I didn't post each individual cake as I finished them lol.  But now I've gotten a bunch done (probably still have a few more cakes and maybe some other stuff to make though), and it's been a little while since my last post so I thought it was time to show them off!

There's not really much to say about them as a group, but just a couple of things to set the scene, so to speak.....

For one, I want to give credit where credit is due..... pretty much everything was made using molds and other supplies and materials from Stewartdollhousecreations.com . And I have to say, there is no way I would been successful in stocking this bakery without them!

Really the only other thing I would add about the group as a whole is that almost all of the designs were inspired by pins I saw in Pinterest.  Most of them are on my "bakery in a cake dollhouse" board, although there may have been some that I didn't end up pinning or that were already on my regular "cupcakes, cakes, and such" board and I didn't bother to repin to the bakery's board. If you want to take a look at the inspiration cakes/pins you can check out my boards by following this link: Bakery in a Cake Dollhouse or my Pinterest Profile

So..... here's a gallery of all the cakes, cupcakes, and goodies I've made so far.

I'm pretty sure this is the same picture I posted on the post about making this cake, but I figured I'd throw it in here again ;)

again pretty sure I already posted this one, but here it is again anyway.....

Mermaid themed cake with the tiniest real sea shell I could find on top

apparently I didn't take an individual picture of the purple 2 tier cake, but it was the next one I made, and I did take this picture of the first 4 together

this little one tier cake ended up being one of my favorites I've made so far

and so I made some matching cupcakes for it

a little bit closer look

I decided that this cake and it's matching cupcakes were perfect for one of the 2 tier pastry stands that I had for this project, and the light pink one was the perfect color to go with them

color/lighting isn't great on this shot, but so you can see it from a little bit of a downward angle too

Made a batch of chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and little purple flower decorations (I realized that I hadn't made anything chocolate yet for the bakery..... probably because I both don't like and can't eat chocolate - not without a migraine anyway- but of course since most people love chocolate, the bakery needs some chocolate stuff lol).  Then I put the chocolate and yellow rose cupcakes on their trays, and they posed for a picture with the first tray of cupcakes I made months ago.

and of course I had to set them in the display case and see what they looked like

super cute.... but I needed another batch of chocolate cupcakes for the bottom shelf

took a picture with a 2oz craft paint bottle sitting next to/behind the display for size reference.  Also I'm not sure that those 2 cakes will necessarily be what's under the counter there, but I put them there for pictures, just so that there was something there.  I'm about 99% sure that that's where the cake/cupcake display stand will be going though

my next edition was a little tray of tiny french macarons

you can see them a little better in this picture..... I dropped one of them trying to glue it to the tray and could not find it, so IDK if I'm going to make just one more, or leave it as is, like maybe they already sold one....

I worked on these teeny tiny chocolate and white chocolate strawberries, yesterday.  I was really unsure how these were going to work and turn out, but they actually went pretty easily.... I might even end up doing a post just about the strawberries, because I did take some pictures of the different steps in the process, but not sure yet lol

as tiny as these are I think they are maybe slightly big for the scale, but they are okay, and I have seen some HUGE real life dipped strawberries, so I think they work out...... plus it was hard enough cutting out little slivers of green paper and getting them glued on for leaves on this size, I think even slightly smaller would have been a no-go for that lol

not sure if that's where they are going to go or not, but they do fit in nicely there

they turned out so cute from the side view with them glued onto their tray!

and my other batch of chocolate cupcakes...... Oreo cupcakes..... chocolate cupcake with white frosting and an oreo cookie garnish.

I know the flash looks bad, but it was almost midnight last night so the lighting wasn't good to see the details without the flash, so the flash it was to show off the detials

I started this cake last night and finished it earlier today, and I think it may be my favorite so far.  It is a Chocolate Naked cake with scraped frosting and "fresh" flower decoration.

The flowers are dried Gypsophila (Baby's Breath) buds {carefully} painted the colors I needed and {carefully} glued in place, with a few tiny green paper leaves added.

I still have a few more cakes to make for sure and I have another display case like the one the cupcakes are in so I haven't decided exactly what's going in there so I might possibly be making some more cupcakes or something too (although I think I may just put a few smaller cakes in that one, but not sure yet)

I'm also not sure yet whether after I get the baked goods made if I'm going to take a break on the bakery and go back to the Art Studio right away, or if I want to just go ahead and completely finish the bakery first since I'll be so close.  I do have a list of when I want to have certain steps on the Art Studio done in order to make sure I have it done in time for the contest, so either way I will definitely be going back to that seriously soon.

{Flutterby Bakery} Second Little Cake

I decided on a design and made the second little cake for the bakery last night.....

It is a 2 tier square modernish cake with an offset top tier and a "watercolor" flower design spanning both tiers on the front and one side of the cake.  This one wasn't really inspired by any specific cake that I saw.  I did see some cakes (both round and square) with the offset tier and I kind of liked the look of that for a slightly more "modern" cake and then a while ago (before I was even looking for mini cake ideas) I saw one with a large food safe watercolor stylized flower similar to this one on it that I really liked the look of, so I ended up kind of combining those two inspirations for this cake design.  I'm hoping to get a bunch more cakes done in the next few days. (but don't worry I'm not going to give each one its own individual post lol............)

{Flutterby Bakery} Got some goodies in the mail, and made my first cake!

While I was at work yesterday my latest order for the bakery - a mold to make cakes and a "star tip" for doing icing in 1:48 scale from Stewart Dollhouse Creations -  arrived in my mail (I actually stopped by the house real quick as I was moving some merchandise from one of our sites to the other since I'm only 2 blocks from the one because I knew it should be there and couldn't wait to open it up!). The last batch of cupcakes I "baked" were waiting for the star tip so that I could do the frosting in rosettes and of course I've got a bunch of cakes to make for the bakery as well.  While I did make a few baked goods for the North Pole Tea Room, I hadn't done anything as involved or detailed as whole 1:48 scale cakes.  Of course, me being me, I didn't want just nice plain pretty colored cakes.... oh no, I pinned cakes with fondant decorations and fancy piping and all sorts of stuff.  I did try to be a little realistic in what I thought was even conceivably possible for me to do in that small of a scale, but even at that apparently I have high expectations for myself.......  Having said that, being the stubborn headed crafter that I am, I decided to do the most difficult one as my very first cake.  In the long run, I'm kind of glad that I did because now they should be much easier and less frustrating to make (so I think anyway...... we'll see......). This particular cake was a 2 tier round cake with fondant  pink rose petals covering the bottom tier and the upper tier white frosting with white curly cues piped onto it and a pink fondant flower set to one side at the top edge.  So of course that meant making teeny tiny "fondant" petals out of clay (which I should probably preface all of this by saying I've worked with clay a little bit before but not much.). Seemed easy enough in theory, however in practice it became a lot more frustrating than I thought it might be.  In the end I ended up making the petals a bit bigger compared to the overall cake size than in the picture of the real life cake I was modeling it after, but I'm still happy with how it turned out.  I went through several different trials and errors before I finally figured out how to make it work...... my initial idea about how to do it was to form the little petals then bake them, and then glue them to the pre-baked cake form.  I was having a horrible time getting these tiny thin pieces of clay from the mat that I was forming them on to a piece of baking parchment to bake them without destroying them.  So then I thought maybe I can form them directly onto the cake and then bake them in place, I figured those few extra minutes wouldn't hurt the cake.... but then that did not work at all either trying to get them to look right forming them on the cake.  Finally I figured out that if I used the bottom of one of the molds I have I could form them and bake them on the same surface and then glue them to the cake.

  This is what I ended up doing for the final product, but even that took a little bit of figuring out how best to get them formed just right (and also to accept that if I wanted to not go crazy I was going to have to settle for fewer, bigger petals lol).

  The original cake also had the petals smoothed over the top edge and covering the top of the bottom tier as well, but I knew that wasn't going to successfully happen here so I just painted the top the same light pink as the petals. Then it was on to the top tier.  I wasn't too concerned about piping the curly cues..... I'd already had some practice with the syringes for the mini baked goods and of course tons of experience piping real life frosting designs.... and that went easily, as I expected, but then I was back to needing to form the clay to look like fondant decoration for the flower.  This time I went straight to using the bottom of a mold to form the pieces on and without too much trouble ended up with what I thought would be an okay sized flower, baked it and then glued it in place on the cake.  And I have to say I am pretty happy with how it turned out.... .definitely pretty proud of myself for my very first 1:48 scale cake.

I also used the star tip to finish off the cupcakes that I had already made and were just waiting for their frosting.  I used the star tip to pipe little rosettes in yellow frosting, which turned out cute as well, so I just have to get another tray painted and glue them on and they will be done.

  I'll probably do at least 2 more batches of cupcakes for the bakery, I'm just not sure exactly how I want them to look ("flavor" of the cupcakes and color and technique for the frosting).  As of right this moment I have a bottom and a top tier already baked for a white square cake, so I have to figure out how I want to decorate that cake and then make some more cakes and decorate them.

I really really want to have some fancy cookies in the bakery as well, but I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish that.  I made just round cookies for the Tea Room so I could do that again, but I really would like to have some cookies in fancy shapes...... I'm looking into the possibilities of a couple different possible options for that, so we'll see what I can come up with :)