Cake Endeavours

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...