Cake Endeavours

I spent a few days trying to decide how I was going to decorate this cake.  The birthday girl's request was to have Cinderella and a chocolate cake.  Her mom had given me these really cute little mice figurines from the movie to incorporate into the decorating.  I really wanted to use them.  Actually I really want my own set and so does Miss E.  She was coveting them all week.  She was very good about it though, knowing that Zoe's mom had bought them special for Zoe's cake. Originally I was going to do Cinderella in her pink dress that the birds and mice make for her before the fairy god-mother comes.  But I chickened out on all the detail, rather tiny detail I would have to do.  Then early this morning inspiration hit and this was the result:

This was a 6 inch 4 layer chocolate cake with peanut butter filling.  Of course it was the Perfect Chocolate cake, with the Perfect Chocolate cake icing.  Then I got super fancy with using chocolate molds for some decorations.  I didn't have any candy melts so I just used chocolate chips.  They work well, but you have to be quick with them because they melt really easily.  Without the decorations the cake was almost 5 inches tall.  I made this for a co-worker's husband. Thankfully the heat wave had broken so I was able to decorate this cake without having to constantly stick it in the fridge.

It was unusually hot this week for March and extremely hot when you live on the 20th floor facing West!  It was crazy.  Fortunately, I only had this one order during the heat wave.  The icing got soft really fast and the fondant flowers sweated immediately. I made these for a co-worker's daughter's 16th birthday. Red velvet seems to be all the rage.  It's something I don't get at all.  I think of red velvet as a watered down chocolate cake with red dye.  However, lots of people love it!  It is paired with a cream cheese icing, which is the main attraction.  However, lots of other great flavours work with it cream cheese icing, like carrot and pumpkin... All red velvet recipes are basically the same and I forgot that it needed oil.  Normally I substitute unsweetened apple sauce for the oil and it works great.  Normally, I make carrot cake and pumpkin when I'm substituting.  What I learned from this experiment with red velvet, it'...

The birthday boy loves Cars and loves Lightning McQueen and Mater.  As long as those characters were on the cake, the rest was up to me.  I had to search a while to find colouring pages that weren't too detailed for me to copy. They are pretty detailed characters.  Thank goodness for edible markers, they really help with the details.  I kept checking with Miss E to see if the McQueen and Mater looked right.  I trust her judgement on the cartoon characters. The cake itself is a 2 layer vanilla with lemon curd filling.  I also did a dozen chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing.

A while ago I bought the doughnut silicon cake pan set from Avon.  I knew for sure that I would make a Simpson's Doughnut cake for Mr. T's next birthday. Miss E was quite excited about the idea too and wanted to keep it a surprise for him.  He did know about but was playing along until Miss E told him anyway.  "Secrets are for telling." as she tells me.  I baked the cake yesterday evening, when it came time to releasing the cake from the pans it was a big mess.  I assumed that I didn't need to grease the silicon pans, WRONG!  Half the cake was left in the pan.  Reluctantly I had to make another one.  I begged Mr. T to go out and get more eggs and butter.  Fortunately our convenience store was just closing and he was able to sneak in to buy the ingredients without having to leave the building.  Phew! The cake was made from the Perfect Chocolate cake recipe (half recipe).  Filling was the icing from same recipe.  The cake w...

Vicky's sister-in-law ordered this cake as a surprise.  Vicky is a co-worker of mine and I have done several cakes for her before.  It was really hard not to say something at work last week!  The request was for silver and blue with shoes.  The bottom tier is vanilla with butter cream icing and the top tier is coconut lime with lime butter cream icing, Vicky's favourite. The bow on top barely made it on.  It completely came apart when I went to put it on the cake.  I was all set to go without the cake, but I gave it a try putting it back together and was completely surprised that it was able to go back together and stay together.   For the kids I made a dozen Oreo cupcakes.