As I was slapping together the cake to take to this year's double whammy awesomeness annual Halloween party/Saints game madness, I realized that a year ago I was making my first decorated cake. I mean yes, there were cakes before last year, but that Nightmare Before Christmas cake marked a turning point when I actually put pen to paper and drafted up a sketch of one of the many crazy ideas flying around in my head and challenged myself to make it look the way I envisioned.

I look back on the past year and all of the late nights, crazy plans and disastrous messes with great fondness. It is so exciting to think about how quickly a year flies by and how we spend our time and who we share it with. It also makes me laugh at my own insanity and appreciate my husband so much more for putting up with me.

On more than one occasion, I've had someone feel bad when they picked up the cake and after the initial awestruck I can't believe you made this moment passes and they ask, "How late did you stay up working on this?" ....yea... Let me just put everyone at ease. While I can be an irrational and quite unpleasant person when I don't get my beauty rest, I'm actually part insomniac/total procrastinator and get some of my best work done under pressure at two in the morning.

Please enjoy this recap of some of the craziness I've whipped up in the middle of the night with the dog and cat watching and wondering what the hell daddy's going think when he wakes up and sees this mess... And make sure to check Crumby out on Facebook to keep up with what I'm working on.

Crawfest 2010:  Looking back, I know how I could have supported this cake better and had I made it today, it wouldn't have been falling apart upon arrival to the party, but you live and you learn and the design was such a success that people really didn't care much that the back end was falling apart. Making this was so much fun and a huge learning experience since I had never really made something quite this ambitious yet.

LSU: I made this cake for one of my husband's coworkers who's child was graduating from LSU. I was really happy with the look of the cake. I tried to make sure both the letters and the Mike the Tiger really looked the part of the LSU logo. I didn't blog about it because I was not as impressed with the red velvet cake recipe I used. I even attempted another recipe for my birthday cake this year, and while vastly improved, I still haven't find the perfect red velvet recipe...so if you have a good one, make sure to send it my way.

Strawberry Cupcakes: I still day dream about how delicious these cupcakes are and I can't wait until strawberry season rolls around again so I can pick up some Ponchatoula strawberries and make these bad boys again! The pink girlieness and sweet silky strawberry buttercream hit just the right note for Anne's lingerie party.

The Goonies Cake: I had the idea for this cake months before my husband's birthday and kind of let it wander to the back of my mind. Three weeks before he big day, he decided he didn't want anything big, just a night out at Gennaro's for the best karaoke in town. As soon as I realized how close it was, I started putting pieces together. The ship is made of rice krispie treats and fondant and the characters are fondant. The treasure is a mix of sugar pearls, fondant gold coins, gold sprinkles and the jems are crushed jolly ranchers. The cake was half dark chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and raspberry filling and half classic white cake with swiss buttercream and strawberry filling. I wanted this cake to make a statement and boy did it. The details like the clothes on the characters, root beer candy barrels, pirate treasure, sandy brown sugar beach and the crashing waves really sets this cake off.

Maddie's Birthday Cake: I actually put this cake together all in one day. From baking the classic white cake to sculpting the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Ecto-1 and fire house, I spent about 7 hours on production. It really made me appreciate how far I've come from taking practically a whole week working on the Nightmare Before Christmas cake. Plus, it totally made my niece's day. She loved it!

Katie's Birthday Cake: This behemoth of a cake was my first three tiered cake and the design is based on the invitation. I loved the challenge of putting this together and I was pretty excited with the way it came out. I would have liked the stripes to be a little straighter, and working with black and white was such a pain, but in the end I was really glad I pulled it off. The top and bottom tiers were a new chocolate fudge cake recipe I was testing out (and I LOVE it!) with chocolate swiss buttercream and the middle tier is classic white cake with swiss buttercream. Special shout out to Sean Spansel for the truly awesome pics!

Crumby Chocolate Cake: After finishing up the last sewing details on le husband's Dr. Horrible costume, putting together my costume and finishing Katie's birthday cake, I really didn't have it in me to do the cake I had dreamt up for this Halloween, so I settled for a scrumptiously crumbly chocolate fudge cake (what a way to settle!!) It might not have been anything pretty to look at, but it was damn delicious. I guess I'll have to put that design idea in the vault to use in the future, but I will most definitely be posting the delicious recipe now that I'm finally catching up on my very long list of posts.

Thanks to all my fans and a very special shout out to the only one who could ever understand me AND put up with my crap, le husband, Craig; my super special baking assistant and awesomest little niece, Madalyn; and my mom for always being there for me.

Happy Baking! and don't forget to follow Crumby on Facebook for more cool pictures and recipes.