Icing Smiles!

Icing Smiles is a WONDERFUL organization that was started by Tracy Quisenberry as a nonprofit organization that provides custom celebration cakes and other treats to families impacted by critical illness of a child. Icing Smiles understand that the simple things, like a birthday cake, are luxuries to a family battling illness. Their goal is to create a custom cake for the ill child or their sibling that will provide a temporary escape from worry and create a positive memory during a difficult time.

I first discovered this organization in it's beginning stages through Pink Cake Box, a bakery in New Jersey. I immediate signed up to help! I thought wow, what a difference a cake can be to a young child battling an illness or a sibling who wants some sort of normalcy against all the choas that might be their life right now.

When I got the "Call to Action" for a cake, I jumped right on it and said YES! Within a week I was contacted again to do another and again I said YES! (normally a baker does not do two in one weekend) but I was thrilled and willing to help!

The first cake is for a sibling whose younger sister has had some health issues since she was a baby. He was turning 7 and wanted a spider cake...not spider man, a cake with a spider on top. Now I must first tell you I fear spiders, I am scared to death of them, only since having kids have I had to come to terms with them. But still, big or small, they still scare me! Well, when I looked up ideas for this, I couldn't even look at them online, but I mustered up and managed to finalize a design after talking with the mom and here is what I created.

And everytime I passed by (after making this) I shuddered...scary...those eyes!

But the young boy was shocked, seeing his expression was priceless, all he could say was "AWESOME", and "Way cool", and "Can I eat the spider?" And yes, he could, the spider was made with rice krispie treats covered in fondant. However due to traveling with the cake I went to pipe cleaners for the legs, but he was still pretty cool!

Then, my next family was for a young boy who was turning 6, he has had health issues since he was a young boy. All he loves to play with is firetrucks! So mom was going to have a firetruck come to the party and I was asked to create a 3D firetruck. But we needed it to feed a few more people so added in a big sheet cake too!

The number 6 on the truck was for his age, and the date 8-10 is his birthday which is on the backside of the truck.