Cake Endeavours

Lately my friends and co-workers have been keeping me quite busy with orders, My little hobby has turned into so much more than I ever expected.  Our small galley kitchen is exploding with baking supplies.  Display nooks that had toys now have various cake stands in them. I've taken over some shelves, okay most of the shelves, in one of the hall closets with trays, boxes and cake pans.   Recently, after 10 years of condo living we discovered that our balcony is a excellent extra fridge. On the 20th floor you don't have to worry about animals running off with the food.  Come the warmer weather I don't know what we're going to do.  Mr. T was lamenting that we are going to need another fridge.  Yikes!  It's time to do some serious organizing. Another discovery, is our convenience store that we have in the building. I've never appreciated it before.  In the last few weeks I have sent Mr. T and Miss E down to get eggs, sugar, milk, etc. all ingredien...

My director a couple of months ago booked a cake for her daughter's 16th birthday.  Her request was to have teal and purple (these are the colours of Meaghan's dance studio), two tiers, and the rose design on the top tier.  The rest was up to me.  So, with that, the bottom layer is a 3 layer chocolate cake with salted caramel filling, chocolate icing, then covered in fondant.  As I was about to do the flowers I wasn't sure if I wanted to do daisies or the 5 petal flowers.  I texted my 17 year old cousin Kim for her opinion.  She came back with the 5 petal flowers as her choice.  They turned out great!  Not to mention that they are a lot easier to punch out than the daisies. For the top tier I made a 2 layer vanilla cake, but dyed the batter teal; then covered it in purple buttercream icing.  Purple dye and I have not been on good terms for the last few cakes, so I was leery on how it would turn out.  Thank you AmeriColor soft gels....

This is my new favourite cake.  I had so much fun making it.  It's a 2 layer 6" inch lime cake with buttercream icing.  Jenn's only request was polka dots. But she is a major book lover and I've seen some really cool Very Hungry Caterpillar cakes in my travels on Google.  I really wanted to do my own version.  I did keep to the polka dot request though! I used the marble effect (not blending the dye completely into the fondant) and my edible markers to make everything look like it was painted.  I was actually sad to see this cake go; I would have admired it all day.  I'm just glad I don't have to be the one to cut into the cake. :) Enjoy blowing out your first candle Liam!

This cake is a 2 layer 10" that is half strawberry and half vanilla.  It was not as easy to get the two halves to come together and be even.  Usually I am pretty good at getting the cake to be even all around.  This time there was a definite difference from one side to the other.  The "top" of the cake is probably a good half inch higher than the "bottom". At least I didn't take out a ruler. Hopefully by the way I decorated the top of the cake it will look like I meant to do it. According to Miss E Yoshi is not the real Yoshi because the bottom of his shoes are supposed to be yellow and not brown. She demonstrated the inaccuracy by pointing out the yellow soles on her Yoshi stuffy.  I tried to explain that I was using my artistic liberties.  I think she rolled her eyes as she walked away in disappointment.

My lovely coworker is having her nieces over this weekend and spoils them rotten.  So, to add to that she asked me to make each girl a mini cake that they could take home with them.  The smallest cake pan I had was 6" and cupcakes were too small.  Originally I was going to make a 9" x 13" slab and cut out 4" circles, but then Mr. T had a brilliant idea to check out Caynes .  Sure enough they had 4" spring form pans, which worked out perfectly. Again, the Perfect Chocolate Cake was requested. While at Caynes I bought the Wilton 101 Cookie Cutter set , which includes the alphabet.  I debated on this set for a long time.  Now I am so glad I bought it.  There are some great cutters.  I used the alphabet letters for the girls' initials and surrounded them with dragees.  Of course I covered everything in shimmer dust.  I also made a 6" inch cake for her son, who's nick name is Poppy.  He turned 18 in December.  I decorate...

I made this cake for a friend of my in-laws who is a magician.  Miss E is fascinated by magic and got a magic kit for her birthday from her grandparents.  Doug showed Miss E how to do some of her tricks.  She was very excited.  The first time Miss E met Doug and his wife she was told she was going to meet Grandma and Grandpa's friends Doug and Bambi.  When she was introduced to them she asked, "So, where's the deer?" This was a 2 layer 8 inch cake. Chocolate cake, with vanilla icing.  One day I will perfect smoothing out icing or I will find Decorating Triangle I bought to add different effects and will make life so much easier! The rabbit coming out of the hat was made with fondant and "sprinkled" with shimmer dust by Miss E; she had lots of fun with that as you can see.

I am behind in posting my latest cakes that I've made.  This one I made for a New Year's Eve birthday celebration. The house was decorated in black and silver and that's how I decorated the cake.  I made a three layer Perfect Chocolate Cake but with salted caramel icing instead of the whipped cream filling.  Covered in grey fondant then heavily dusted with silver shimmer dust.  It was Kostas' 40th birthday so I put 40 stars on the cake.  I also made 3 dozen cupcakes to go along with the cake.