Cake Endeavours

Miss E's school concert was last night. The parent council did a bake sale and the teachers organised a raffle to raise money for a family going through some hard times.  I donated cupcakes (pictured in a future post) for the bake sale and a cake for the raffle. I was excited to get to do a Christmas/winter themed cake of my own choosing.  I went with an 8" two layer cookies and cream cake.  I love my snowman. Miss E was super excited that I was doing a cake for her school.  She was disappointed that we didn't get to take it home though.  Ha!

Yesterday we celebrated Andrea's birthday with the Perfect Chocolate Cake.  Dahlias are her favourite flower so I decided to see if I could make one out of fondant.  There were several tutorials that I found on line, but this was my favourite:  how-to-make-sugar-dahlias .  I can't imagine doing a large number of these, but it turned out pretty good.  Wasn't as easy as it looked on paper!  However, the birthday girl was impressed.

It's unbelievable that Alexander is going to be six years old.  These kids are growing up way too fast.  Even though I was dog tired from Miss E's party yesterday, I got up early to make Alexander's cake for his birthday party.  He's just too cute to disappoint!  His request was for a Super Mario cake as he has discovered playing the classic game. Again, a cake not covered in fondant as per the request of the birthday boy.  Not a bad thing since I haven't replenished my supply.  This was a 10" chocolate cake.  I am learning if I'm not going to cover a cake in fondant, I have to make it the night before.  The cake really needed more time in the fridge before I covered it in icing because it was so soft and there were so many crumbs.  Made it really hard to get a crisp edge.   I am so thrilled with how Mario turned out.  The edible black marker makes all the difference. Miss E said me as we are going into the party tha...

Miss E's birthday is actually October 12th.  Given that October was a CRAZY month for us we moved out celebrating her party to this weekend.  She went back and forth on what she wanted for her cake.  She finally decided on a Cut the Rope Cake. I was able to order online a cake kit that included Om-Nom (the funny green guy), a candy ring and the Cut the Rope sign.  This saved me a bit of time for sure.  My favourite thing about this cake is the "plate" I used.  I had Mr. T buy a 12" x 12" plain white ceramic tile from RONA for $4.00.  I picked up some felt pads and green ribbon from a Dollarama for an additional $2.00.  Glued the ribbon around the sides of the tile and VOILA, a really nice cake plate for $6.00.  Can't beat that! The cake was a 10" two layer cookies and cream cake covered in butter cream icing and fondant decorations; all to Miss E's specifications. Hosting a party for 21 kids is not for the weak!  Even thou...

For Catherine's cake I made an 8" inch two layer chocolate cake with salted caramel filling.  Decorated with a Little Mermaid theme. I used  Wilton's Sea Life Fondant and Gumpaste mold  to make the decorations around the cake.  You definitely need to use a bit of oil or non-stick spray on the mold otherwise you will get very angry and waste a lot time trying to get the fondant out of the mold. When used it's amazing how much more pleasant it can be.  It's still time consuming but well worth the effort. Normally I use FondX fondant but I couldn't get out to  Flour Confections  this week to get a new tub.  Instead, I went out to the Bulk Barn and bought Virgin Ice fondant.  It is really easy to work with but it cracks so easily when you're covering a cake.  It's really annoying.  I mixed the white with some different shades of blue that I had on hand already but didn't mix all the way through to get the water effect. ...

For Terry's family celebration of his birthday I made 9 x 13 cookies and cream two layer cake.  To make the jersey sleeves for this cake I trimmed off about an inch from a short end and then an inch from the long side so that I was left with an 8 x 12 cake. On the sides of the arms I added the number 12 for the age he was turning.  I've got to find some smaller upper case letters for cakes like this.  A slightly smaller set would have looked more authentic on the leaf!

Terry and a bunch of his friends went to see Catching Fire on Friday as part of his birthday celebration.  His mom ordered this cake to have at the restaurant before hand.  The top is the mockingjay pin with fire all around.  This was a two layer chocolate cake with buttercream filling. The cake went over really well with Terry and the restaurant employees.

Today's cake was for a baby shower.  They didn't know the sex of the baby so I decorated the cake in pastel colours.  I even went against one of my own rules; never use more than one colour per word.  In hindsight I should have just done the word "BABY" like that to have a better impact.  To read more easily and a better impact with the decoration.  Oh well!  Lesson learned.  I think it still looks cute. This cake was a 9 x 13 two layer chocolate cake.  I add onesies and bibs around the sides of the cake as well.

Last Saturday was my father-in-law's birthday.  He LOVES chocolate.  He loves the Perfect Chocolate Cake.  Whenever I make this cake for Mr. T's family Bob always has two pieces, no matter how big the first one is.  I don't even ask what kind of cake he'd like.  I know. We met up at  The Works  on the Danforth.  Another love of Bob's and Mr. T's for that matter, burgers.  So many combinations to choose from.  I've not had the same one twice.  They were very kind in letting us serve the cake at the restaurant.  They waiter even brought it to the table with a candle.  All their burgers are served up in a tray so they don't have plates and that's how the cake was served.

I was asked to make some mini muffins for our team meeting today.  Since it was Halloween I figured I would do the icing in orange but then I didn't want a lot of left over orange icing in my fridge with nowhere to go.  Then I remembered seeing fang cupcakes in my travels on Google.  Of course I decided to do this at 10pm last night.  I didn't have any type of gel or cherry pie filling, ideas I saw from other examples.  I did have strawberry jam.  So, I added a bit of red dye to that and with a tooth pick (wonderful tool) added the "bite" marks.  Super fun and easy to decorate.

Nelson's mom, Joy, gets a great thrill out of me doing a challenging cake.  Her boys seem to pick a challenge on their own without any assistance from Joy!  So when Nelson asked for a Skylander cake of course I was going to do my best.  Nelson doesn't do fondant and he wanted his cake to be vanilla even though we all wanted chocolate, he would not change his mind.  I can never get my vanilla cakes to be as moist as chocolate.   His favourite Skylander currently is Fright Rider.  I didn't realise that he was blue until after I was done.  Grr! I took some light blue dye and water with a paintbrush and hoped for the best.  I added the eight magic elements around the cake.  I have no idea what any of this means but all the kids at the party (and some of the big ones too) knew what they were and didn't dispute my interpretations.  I added the star pattern with cookie cutters.  I don't know why I don't use this technique more often...

This cake which I thought was going to be a piece of cake, haha, had the last laugh.  The bride's request was for bottom tier (10") to be chocolate with butter cream and the top tier (8") to be vanilla dyed navy blue, then covered in champagne covered roses.  The chocolate was no problem.  Getting a navy colour out of the vanilla was another story.  I used the whole bottle of dye and it just would not get to a true navy blue.  Hopefully it wasn't too off the bride's look that she wanted. Then came getting the butter cream the right shade of champagne. When you Google champagne, you get a very wide range of colours from ivory to rose to mushroom.  I knew what the bride wanted and no matter what I was doing the colour was way off.  After about an hour I finally settled on the colour and hoped for the best.  I was really panicked that it was going to be off.  A huge lesson learned for me, test out a small batch first before dying the entire tr...

My lovely co-worker Gina put in another last week, this time for her sister.  Fortunately, it was the exact same order as last week, just a different name. :)  I didn't mean to add the lettering so high on the cake but I didn't plan out the execution of how they would go in advance.  Oops! Good thing the roses added some extra height.  I did change up the dragees to the multicoloured ones as well.

This cake was for the very adorable Chloe who I met last year at wedding.  She turned two on Saturday and her parents asked me to make an Elmo cake but with lots of pink.  No problem! The cake was a 10" two layer cookies and cream with pink, fuchsia and red polka dots.  I did the big "2" similar to a T-shirt that Chloe was going to wear.  Surprisingly, there were lots of pink Elmo cakes to browse through on Google for inspiration.  I love for cakes that any colour combination works.  It's so much fun to go outside the box with colours.

Last Friday my co-worker asked if I could make a cake for her niece.  She assumed it was too late to put in her order and it probably was given that I was making two already last week but I couldn't say no to her, especially since she was one of the first to order a cake from me several years ago.  When I said I could do the chocolate cake with roses as I had everything I needed if she was good with that, it was a done deal. Making the Perfect Chocolate Cake is never a chore.  I could do this in my sleep.  I know exactly how long I need and have the steps down.  The only difference is with the icing to do the roses, I make a recipe and a half.  I love when you open the box a waft of chocolate comes out and it smells so good.  Still my favourite cake. :)

A few months ago I donated a cake (or cupcakes) to the silent auction to raise funds for some co-workers who were taking part in the Weekend to End Women's Cancers.  The winner of the cake cashed in last week.  She ordered a cake for one of her co-worker's birthday that they were celebrating at their team meeting.  Their boss often refers to Tom as Tom Terrific, a cartoon from the 50s.  So, she asked me to make a Tom Terrific cake. I decided to stick with classic black and white with red accents for the decoration rather than doing Tom Terrific in colour.  The cake itself is an 8" two layer cookies and cream cake.   Normally, I Google the theme of the cake for inspiration and ideas from other cakes that are similar, but I could not find one Tom Terrific cake.  A first for me!  

Miss E's birthday always falls around Thanksgiving so I asked her what she wanted for dessert for Thanksgiving as her birthday celebration.  Eventually we will be doing a real birthday party to celebrate her 8th birthday, so this is part one.  Her favourite My Little Pony (currently) is Apple Jack so I found a recipe for apple cupcakes with a cream cheese icing. I added caramel sauce on top and printed off her favourite Pony family, taped them to a toothpick for toppers. The icing and caramel were amazing but I did not like the cupcake.  I very rarely use recipes with oil in my baking and wherever possible I change it out with unsweetened applesauce.  I should have done this with this recipe.  I didn't like the flavour at all.  I'm not sure if it was the oil or the apples that I chose or a combination.  I really love all things apple so I am disappointed with this recipe.  Miss E wasn't impressed either. :(  Good thing there is a part ...

A few weeks ago Mr. T, Miss E and I went to a wedding in Collingwood.  Mr. T was an usher, Miss E was a flower girl and I was the cake baker.  It was a beautiful wedding and we had lots of fun celebrating the marriage of two very special people. A few months ago Adam and Andrea came by to try out different flavours for their wedding cake.  The both loved the pumpkin spice and cookies and cream.  They settled on the pumpkin spice for the entire cake and cookies and cream for cupcakes. The Thursday evening before the wedding I baked everything.  This also happened to be when our condo corporation decided to turn off our a/c without notice.  Yay!  It was so hot in our condo.  Fortunately, I took the Friday off work to get us ready for the wedding as I was able to decorate the cake and finish before noon.  Facing west I was able to get everything done before the sun started shining through and getting hotter. The cake was a 10", 8...

Yesterday I made this cake for a family friend's parents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration. This was a three tiered cake with a 10" chocolate cake, 8" vanilla cake and a 6" lemon cake.  All had butter cream filling.  I've never used ribbon before and let me tell you, it was embarrassingly easy.  For the first two tiers I joined the ends where the silk flowers are to hide the seam.  On the top tier I used two white push pins to finish off the join.  The ribbon works really well to hide any spacing between the tiers. The silk flowers I added some gold shimmer to.  It's hard to seen in the pictures though.  The lettering I added edible gold shimmer.  I was worried that it was a different shade.  But at the hall they had yellow flowers on the table so it didn't look out of place. Originally for the 5 and the 0 I had made them out of a fondant/gumpaste mix.  But it didn't work out.  So, half an hour before I was to delive...

This week's installment: Coconut Lime.  I haven't made these is a long time but when a few people at work asked when I was going to make these again I thought, "How about next week?".  So that's what I did. I put in some pink food colouring to the coconut in a Ziploc bag and shook it about.  Then sprinkled over the cupcakes. All 6 dozen of them. Next week's will be the 3rd installation for our fundraising.

My last cake this weekend.  It has been a crazy weekend of birthday parties.  Miss E went right to bed and was asleep within a few minutes.  Swiming, Laser Quest and Zero Gravity Circus in one day will do that to a girl. Keaton's request this year was for the Incredible Hulk.  When I saw a cake with orange background, I had my inspiration.  Keaton's favourite colour is orange. This was a 10" 2 layer Perfect Chocolate Cake with buttercream filling. I really have the best friends.  They pick a flavour and a theme and have me run with it.  As a kid I always loved getting a card with my age on it.  I felt so old and grown up moving into the next digit.  Having what was once an unusual spelling for my name, it was even more exciting to see my name on anything with the correct spelling.  For a kid's cake I always try and get their name and age on it for this reason.  

Angry Birds is definitely in this year for me.  This is my third one.  I have to say it's kind of nice to do a repeat cake.  Taking away the planning and scouring the web for the perfect picture for inspiration saves a lot of time. When Noah requested this cake I was more than happy to oblige. This was an 8" two layer French vanilla cake with sprinkles throughout.  I just can't to a plain vanilla cake.  :) I really love making cakes for kids.  I getting to see their faces when they see their cake for the first time.  Noah had a big grin on his face.

Owen is probably one of the most awesome kids I know.  So, I had to make sure he had a really awesome cake.  I admit that I had a vague idea of the Avengers but never really thought about who they were.  Of course I Googled "Avengers cake" to see what was out there. Starting at the top we have Captain America.  I added the 7 for Owen's lucky number seven birthday.  Next going clock wise is the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Thor.  I love the club that represents Thor.  That was a big hit with the boys at the party.  Many were vying for the club with their piece of cake but it went to the birthday boy. This was a 10" two layer Perfect Chocolate cake with buttercream filling.  Around the sides of the cake I did a cityscape. Happy Birthday Owen!

At work it is Think Pink Week, the kick off for fundraising for the CIBC Run For the Cure.  This is year I joined the committee for our department.  So of course we're selling cupcakes to raise funds.  For the first week I made these awesomely pink chocolate cupcakes. On the weekend I bought the awareness ribbon mold and made the pink ribbon toppers with it.  It was super easy.  They went over really well and sold out. Stay tuned for next week for part #2 of 3 in my series for fundraising.

I am becoming an expert in working with Tiffany Blue.  It certainly seems to be the colour of the month for me right now.  It really is a gorgeous colour. A few weeks ago I was asked to do a small cake for cutting and cupcakes for a wedding.  I was very happy that I was free to do this.  This is my 2nd wedding that I've done where I've been recommended on word of mouth without having sampled my baking.  I am quite honoured to say the least. The cake is a 6" two layer chocolate cake with the Perfect Chocolate Cake icing as the filling, covered in fondant.  Along with the cake I made 4 dozen chocolate cupcakes and 3 dozen vanilla.  Both with buttercream icing.  I tend to do more chocolate as they seem to be more popular.  The fact that my PCC recipe makes a lot out of one batch is the bonus.  When I went to make the icing this morning I had a little panic attack wondering how I was going to accomplish Tiffany Blue.  Th...

Yesterday we had a celebration for one of my coworkers and pod mates who retired this month.  *sob*  We were all very sad and envious to see her go.  For her celebration I knew that I had to make a chocolate cake.  Marianne can never resist chocolate.   For her cake I made the Perfect Chocolate Cake (three 9" layers) with salted caramel filling, another favourite of Marianne's.  I had intended to put the roses all around the cake, but I continually underestimate how much icing you need in order to cover a cake this way.  You can't just whip up another batch of this icing either.  Since you have to melt the butter and semi sweet chocolate before you combine it with the cream and icing sugar it will take two hours to cool in the fridge to the consistency you need for icing. We had a really nice lunch with the team at Mercatto for Marianne finished off with the cake being served.

A few weeks ago Clover hands me a sketch of the cupcakes she'd like to order for her birthday.  She wanted half chocolate and half pumpkin.  Given that it was her birthday she also wanted the whipped cream filling in the chocolate cupcakes.  Not to mention the Tiffany Blue flowers and quilted decorations.  Geesh! However, I do think for your own birthday you should be able to get exactly what you want, at least cake wise. I had leftover cupcakes that Mr. T and Miss E got to enjoy.  They both LOVED the filling in the cupcakes.  I warned them both not to expect that every time I made chocolate cupcakes!  Mr. T called them homemade Hostess cupcakes.

The first time I met Meghan was at my surprise 16th birthday party.  She was 8 years old, the daughter of my uncle's new girlfriend.  Sadly, they parted ways eight years later.  During that time Meghan and I spent lots of time together.  She would sleep over in my room at residence and my apartment.  Fond memories of Boxing Day sleep overs! It is hard to believe that more than 20 years later (yeah, 20 years!) from my birthday party Meghan got married. I was very touched when Meghan asked me to do her wedding cake.  She sent me a picture of the cake she was interested in having.  I scoured the web for ideas on how to do it.  Fortunately, I was able to find this fantastic step by step  Birch bark tree tutorial  and went from there. Last month Meghan and a friend, who is also a bride to be, came over for cake tasting to decide on the flavours.  Meghan decided on lemon and lemon cream cheese icing.  My fridge smelled heavenly y...

We were super busy this weekend with two weddings we couldn't go to Desmond's birthday party.  However, I couldn't not do his birthday cake.  He's the youngest of our gang and I can't believe he's 3 years old!  Unfortunately, he was very insistent on having another Thomas cake which meant his mom, Joy, couldn't stump me with a "difficult" cake.  Ha! For Desmond's cake I made a 6" two layer Perfect Chocolate Cake, then covered it in fondant for the face of Thomas.  I also made two dozen chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing.  Joy, wisely skipped ordering vanilla.  The crowd is VERY happy with the chocolate.  I wonder how many she hid away this time? A mom needs her secret stash! Mr. T was my delivery guy Friday evening while I worked on the wedding cake for the next day.  

A while back Tracy asked me to do a cake for her husband Sam's 40th birthday.  She specially requested a Tardis cake.  Never heard of Tardis before, ever!  I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who before, so it would explain my poor education on the show.  All I had to do was Google "Tardis Cake" and a plethora of pictures and links popped up. Fast forward to three days ago, I started really looking to see how I was going to create this cake.  Fortunately for Pinterest I was able to find this FANTASTIC  Tardis Cake Tutorial  and I was set.   Amazingly, I read through the whole tutorial far in enough in advance that I had time to do the base of the cake.  I used a 12" thick white board from  Flour Confections  and followed the instructions in the tutorial.  This took me 15 minutes to do on Thursday night.  I was super excited with the results.  I put it away from the wandering paws of the cats dry for two d...

Yesterday we made our annual trek out to Indian Point, about 20 minutes outside of Picton for a gathering of friends and family from St. Paul's.  Sunday there is always a potluck lunch.  I usually bring chili, which I did, so that we would have leftovers to put on our hotdogs and dinner time.  Yum!  I also made some mini cupcakes with leftover batter from Jim's cake and cupcakes.  I also had left over black icing. After I piped that on I decided to add some decoration as they looked a little Halloweenish. Of course at 11pm I decide that I'm going to put on the ladybugs on a leaf. I cut out 24 leaves with my cutter, that was at least quick.  For the ladybugs I made 24 red balls for the body and 24 smaller black ones for he head, joined them with a bit of water.  I pressed a line down the middle of each body then added black spots with edible marker. 

Ever since I can remember poking fun at someone hitting a milestone birthday has always been a favourite past time of mine.  I know this will come back to bite me since I am getting closer and closer to celebrating my 29th birthday for the 11th time but until then I will enjoy the ride. Joy's fiance is turning 40 and we celebrated this past Saturday.  We all joined in at poking fun. There are so many fun getting older cake ideas on the internet, but I went with the "older than dirt" theme.  The chocolate cake was supposed to be covered in the PCC icing but when I made it, because I did a batch and a half, I think I forgot a cup's worth of icing sugar.  When I iced the cupcakes first the icing was too runny even stone cold and I had a lot less left over than I anticipated.  So, I added more icing sugar and combined some butter cream icing I had in the fridge.  This turned the icing into a pale brown.  I added some black dye to make it darker but ...

Last week was my brother's birthday and when we were growing up my parents would have a big family get together to celebrate.  It was really just an excuse to get everyone together during the summer.  These parties were always lots of fun.  It wouldn't be complete if Geoff didn't run into the house crying at least once when he heard a train whistle go as a train was going through town.  It was a riot! These days it's pretty hard to get the family together. In the past years we haven't been able for even our immediate family to get together for his birthday.  This year it worked out even with some bonus visitors. Since I've never actually made a cake specifically for Geoff, I thought I would at least ask what kind he would want.  He went with cookies & cream.   Normally I like to use whipped cream to ice the cake but with the heat and traveling I wasn't sure if it would hold up so I went with butter cream instead.   Bei...