First, a little luck o' the Irish:
I love the technique used for drawing the clovers: you drop three dollops of liquid green icing into the white, and then draw a pin or toothpick through to give them the classic heart shape. Aren't they just perfect?
And here's some fondant-free fun:
By The Dairy Berry
This one, too!
Also by The Dairy Berry
Check out that "foam" on top: amazing!
And finally, a wee tiered beauty:
By Ava Sweet Cakes
SO. CUTE.
Ah, but we're not done yet! Since I haven't featured any Mardi Gras Sweets, here are a few masquerade beauties to make up for it:
Pretty paisley.
By Small Things Iced
Gooorgeous. And the mask and flower on top are sugar paste!
This one was spotted at the "That Takes the Cake Show" in Austin:
Photo by Amanda SG, made by Daniel Keadle
Such a cool design: it was split down the middle!
I always love color, but sometimes an all-white design really lets the detail shine through:
By Black Flour
Beautiful. The mask is also made from gumpaste, and would you believe those lower feathers are cut from rice paper?
And finally, hold on to your hats, 'cuz yes, this really is cake:
By Highland Bakery
There are no words. Just "WOW."
Hope you enjoyed your double dose of Sweets, all!
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OMG soo sweet
I hate beer, but I'll gladly have my Guinness like that! That first pot of gold is amazing!
That last one reminds me of Jambi from Pee Wee's Playhouse for some reason even though it doesn't really look like him. Oh, well. Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho, anyway!
Oh, Jen. You BET I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it good.
I seriously thought the Mardi Gras sweets would include an impeccable King Cake
I'm squeeing at the bright rainbow on that last St. Patrick's Day cake. And of course the mask at the end is phenomenal!
Will see if I can get you the baker's name for the one from the Austin show...
Nice, although this thing about St Patrick? he was really Welsh you know! and how about giving St David's day March 1st and St George's day April 23rd and St Andrew's day (not sure)equal publicity?
and masks are just creepy and wierd also whaT do you mean paisley, no paisley pattern anywere. so apart from being biased and scary..quite clever I supose. :(
I am so in love with the last of the St Paddy's cakes! It reduced me to high-pitched baby chatter, it's such a cuty-wooty widdle cake, yes it is!
WV: fackslit.....I'm just not gonna do it. The itty bitty cake might hear me.
double Sunday sweets makes my day!
wv: prounros- part of speech used to replace the word cake in a sentence
The level of skill and patience these must take is amazing. Thanks for sharing them.
The little bearded leprechaun sitting on the cake, with the black-eyed susans (not to be confused with daisies!), appeals to me the most.
I love the multidimensional green shading on that first cake - it's my favourite of the St Patrick's day cakes. Some of the others are very well done but still a bit tacky!
The last cake is amazing, but would we expect anything else from Highland bakery? Those people must have sold their souls in exchange for their mad skills with baked goods ;)
Wow. Seeing as I'm Irish and I've adopted Mardi Gras as my own personal awesome holiday that no one outside of Louisiana cares about, THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY DAY.
I have a St. Patty's Day birthday and I would LOVE to get one of those cakes as my bday cake! So awesome!
Why can't bakers get it right? Shamrocks ALWAYS have 3 leaves ... clovers can have 4 ... a 4 leaf clover is an English symbol of luck. A Shamrock is Irish and connected with St. Patrick.
Ok,I already hate myself for this, but here goes...
The first cake is a four-leafed clover, the cookies are shamrocks.
Sorry, but it's my St. Patrick's day pet peeve. St. Patrick used the shamrock (three leaves) to demonstrate the holy trinity.
Thanks, now I feel better, and worse. EPCOT!
more mardi gras! the one with the small cake and all the cupcakes is really amazing! and i also was wondering if there would be a king cake. maybe next time...
Beautiful cakes, and as a side note, thank you.
I know this week was a wee bit trying (understatement of the year) but despite the multiple epcots, you and John are rocking it.
Keep the cakes and the laughs coming!
Going to agree - the first cake is a Clover, not a shamrock - the whole point of the Shamrock was St Patrick (who was indeed Welsh, however is the Patron St of Ireland due to the fact he drove away all of the snakes...) used it to show the Pagan masses how three things can be seperate (The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit) but also one thing (God).
Also, please please please America and anll other countries - it not St Pattys Day. He is not the Patron Saint of Burgers - yes Patrick is commonly shortened to "Pat" but more commonly "Paddy" hence St Paddys Day.
Believe me, I'm from Ireland, I know xD
I love knotwork and masks, so the first cake especially blew my mind, and the last few finished off the remaining brain cells!
I'm pretty sure that last one is a picture of Prince Poppycock. ;)
wow, such talented cake decorators! Gorgeous.
Wow, that all-white cake is gorgeous. Just exquisite.
I love the Sunday posts, but I especially love this one with the gorgeous cakes for 2 of my favorite holidays.
(And yes, the first cake is a 4 leaf clover, not a shamrock. But it does have the Celtic knot as flair, so I forgive it.)
What about Pi Day? (That's tomorrow, by the way.) Do you have anything for that?
That last one would impress even a jaeger, ho yez!
-RO
Wow indeed! That last one was amazing. Very nice sweets!
Wow those cakes are just amazing. That one leprechaun on Mom's cake looks like a perv. I think someone should keep an eye on him. I'm just lucky to not burn a cake that I make with a mix. Those cookies were just adorable.
I believe the word you were looking for was Wibbity Squibbity on that last cake.
The last cake's headpiece reminds me of Michel Ocelot films. If you haven't watched 'Prince and Princesses' or 'Azur & Asmar', you have missed a visual feast.
Wow those cakes are gorgeous, I especially like the cute leprechaun sitting on the cake.
By the way, some people DON'T really care if Jen mistakenly got clover or shamrock or whatever wrong. Just go with it people!
One of the best Sunday Sweets EVER!
My birthday is on St.Patricks day and I would LOVE it if I got any of those cakes for my b-day.
Thanks Jen.
These cakes are amazing! Around how much do one of these cost?
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-Shay
#1 The Celtic knots tie it in (see what I did there?) sufficiently for me.
#2 Awesome. If I tried to do that, I'd probably be seeing shamrocks everywhere I look for the next three days.
#3 What did the previous 59 moms get? (I couldn't resist.) Nice flowers, whatever they are.
#4 Finally, a shiny cake that doesn't give one pause. Note the wee little leprechaun on the mushroom. Guys don't 'squee', but... maybe just this once. Look away, please... (squee)
#5 I'll forgo the otherwise obligatory Rainbow Man reference. Suddenly, though, I want corn flakes.
#6 Another clover, but since the character isn't meant to be a depiction of St. Patrick, I can get past it.
#7 Amazing.
#8 Cool, except they left out indigo. Hey, I can show off, too.
It must have taken real fortitude for Jen to post the next set:
#10 Are those cupcakes, er, you know, uh, cooked in hot oil? [ducks and runs]
#11 That *is* a cool design.
#12 Classy, and no oil in sight.
#13 I'll have to see the video of this exhibit being made to verify that it really is cake and not something that might be confused with cake. After all, we can't be too careful here. (Actually, we can, but that's a whole other encyclopedia.)
@Juliana: You *really* don't want to go there. Trust me. Better to stick to nice, safe topics on which there is broad consensus, like politics.
love the mask cakes & that first shamrock cake kind of looks like stained glass.
Just looking at those St. Patrick Day cakes made me feel just a "wee bit of the Irish." All the cakes were awesome.
The mask cake is real showstopper!
Awesome cakes! I just love Sunday Sweets!!! Thank you for the Mardi Gras cakes - it's good to see pretty cakes associated with the holiday. They made me go ***squeee***!
And then I see a Girl Genius reference in the comments and I went ***double squeee***! What a great way to end a Sunday!
wv: coull - this post was so very coull - if it was any coull-er, I'd have icicles on my nose!
That first cake is beautiful. That traditional knot work is VERY tricky to do, so kudos to the bakers.
Coin cookies= WANT!!! So super-duper cute!
i LOVE that first 'pot of gold' cake! Beautifully done. And so shiny!
Beautiful Mardi Gras cakes! And that last one? Makes me think of Prince Poppycock!
Great stuff!
Any cake that has a rainbow on it done this well makes me happy. I love the cute pot of gold one too. Just plain too pretty to eat.
The last cake is so beautiful, but I still don't 'get' eating cake in the shape of a head (or any other body part, for that matter). "Would you like a chin, ear, or part of the cranium?" It reminds me too much of the Dish of the Day in Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Love that last St. Paddy's Day cake! (High five to Karasu--Padraig is Gaelic, which is where the nickname Paddy comes from. Here's a non-Wiki link to "prove" it...b/c we all know that a cake humor blog is the best way to educate people.)
And kudos to Cake Wrecks for showing some Mardi Gras sweets to restore balance to the force =).
Thank you, Cake Wrecks Team, for all that you do. You make me smile six days a week.
The pot of gold cake is awesome, but I have to know who Snow W. Is? Because I'm Snow W. Also! I thought I was the only one!
Simply lovely! Wish i could get my red to be as vibrant as that on the rainbow cake with the leprechun hat on top.
As said - shamrocks, 3 leaves.
Diddlymaz - roughly 10% of Americans are of Irish descent (22 of our 44 presidents, even Barack Obama, have been of Irish descent).
When the Welsh come over here in such numbers and have such a profound effect on us, we'll be happy to celebrate St. Davy's Day.
St. George can stay home with his namesake, George III.
I love the first shamrock cake...I have a tattoo that looks almost identical to it
glad you are able to work through the hard parts of running a large blog- because you sure make a lot of people happy.
I know that there is a certain amount of comfort with being an total wiener that comes hand in hand with the anonymity of the internet- and people forget they are dealing with real people- who have lives and long days and heart breaks all on the other side of the computer screen..
and for as much as you have to shovel through the crap- please remember that on *OUR* side of these screens are thousands of people who also have very bad days and heart breaks and real life traumas- you are a fine point in the day where we can put it all aside and just smile at something light and fluffy and often hilarious.
maybe not the right spot for this comment.. but here it is none the less
Absolutely gorgeous, all of them! I think all those pretty lagniappes were pretty useless, but if they can be made in cake form like that last one...I want one.
Kate FYI There have been at least eight U.S. Presidents with Welsh ancestry including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and James Garfield. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was also of Welsh extraction.
The proportion of the population with a name of Welsh origin ranges from 9.5% in South Carolina to 1.1% in North Dakota. Typically names of Welsh origin are concentrated in the mid Atlantic states, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama and in Appalachia, West Virginia and Tennessee. By contrast there are relatively fewer Welsh names in New England, the northern mid West, and the South West.
and loads more actually the thing is the Welsh were mostly protestant and assimilated unlike the irish who were catholic and stuck out as different giving rise to modern comercial opertunities.
St George is actually of Palestinian origin or possibly Turkish.
St David is Britains only native main patron
also George III didnt loose America,his government did and seeing as it was costing us so much to defend from thr French in a war started by a certain george washington we were well rid of it!
@ hawkfeather- couldnt say it better than that! Thanks!
The mardi gras cake from That Takes The Cake (Austin) is by Daniel Keadle. It won 3rd place in Show Cakes.
Not sure if you got my mail so just in case: the one from the Austin show is by Daniel Keadle from San Antonio.
@Juliana- That is assuming that there is such a thing as a well done King Cake...