Cake Endeavours

Tomorrow is my brother's girlfriend's b-day and he asked me to make her cake for him.  Yay!  He requested a Cleveland Indians themed cake and no fondant.  I thought, great, something different from fondant for a change.  Do you know how hard it is to ice a chocolate cake with white icing and not have crumbs showing?  Not easy.  Nor is it as easy to make it all nice and smooth like everyone else in blog world!  It also doesn't help that we're on the 20th floor with no a/c yet and the first heatwave of the year!  I went to do the grass border and realised that my grass tip is MIA.  I phoned Geoff who was on the way to pick up the cake with Kendall and begged them to stop at a Bulk Barn to pick up the tip.  Kendall had no idea that the cake was for her.  :)  I made the letters with candy melts.  Lots of fun!  The logo I made with fondant and used an edible marker for all the detail. This shows you how hot our condo is tonight with the sweat coming off the fondant

My friend Lori's husband special ordered a cake for her birthday.  She loves purple and dragonflies.  I made the body of the dragonfly with fondant and the wings with candy melts.  Candy melts are lots of fun to work with and super fast.

Peanut butter and chocolate according to my bestest bud Lindsay is the perfect combination.  When I came upon this cake while browsing through Whisk Kid's amazing blog I knew I was going to make it for her birthday celebration. After realizing that the heaven and hell name came from two layers of angel food cake and devil's food cake I also came to the conclusion that it was hell to make and heaven to eat.  The layers of peanut butter mousse in between heaven and hell was totally worth the pain. I went into making this cake expecting to have to problem with having a smooth finished looking ganache. Ha!  Oh well.  I gave up that dream fairly easily after I started pouring it on.  Also, I would make two individual 9 inch layers for each cake rather than baking one 10" layer and cutting it in half after it's cooled.  Too many crumbs to deal with and the angel food cake sunk in the middle.

So, I made 6 dozen of these for a co-worker's going away get together.  They were a BIG hit!  I have to say they are pretty amazing cupcakes.  Thanks to Confessions of a Cookbook Queen ; I took inspiration from her.  Seriously, she has some amazing creations. They were handing out Gerbera daisies at King station this morning so I had to showcase them in the picture as well.

This is my 2nd cake for this birthday boy.  His request was to have a space ship and a rocket.  His past three birthday cakes have been all about Pablo from the Backyardigans.  The plan was to put Pablo's face on the side of the rocket, but that was not working out this morning.  After a quick check with L's mom I got the go ahead to scrap that plan.  Thank goodness!  I put a big 5 on it and paid homage to Pablo with his propeller beanie hat on the side of the 5. For the rocket I used the Buzz Lightyear rocket from the Toy Story Cricut cartridge.  I've yet to try using Cricut to cut gumpaste so I just cut out the pieces I needed and traced out the pattern on the fondant.  For the stars I have the amazing little cutters that even have a spring loaded release button.  It's awesome!  I was able to cut out 60 stars in minutes.   Cake:  Versatile Vanilla Cake x 2 recipes for 2 10" square pans Filling: Chocolate Mousse