Cake Endeavours

Okay, this cake was so much fun to do.  I think the theme song from Saved by the Bell was playing in my head the whole time.  I Googled 80s wallpaper theme and this is what I came up with as my inspiration: So 80s right?  And so reminiscent of Saved By the Bell or even late Facts of Life. This was an 8" two layer chocolate cake.  For the "BAM" around Happy 40th I did two layers of fondant so I could put tooth picks in between to be able to have them stand upright on the top of the cake.  I added a bright yellow ribbon around the bottom as trim.

It's hard to believe that my old neighbour turned 100 yesterday.  Our family gift to the celebration was the cake and cupcakes. For the cupcakes I made 4 different flavours; 2 dozen regular and 2 dozen mini.  Carrot, lemon, vanilla and chocolate.  I did up a legend on the side. Red dot meant carrot, yellow: lemon, brown: chocolate and white: vanilla.  The carrot and lemon had cream cheese icing while the vanilla chocolate had butter cream. For the cake I made a 6" two layer chocolate cake.  Bud is a Lion and I believe he is the oldest member in Ontario, maybe even Canada.  Outside the Lion's Centre (Clarington Older Adult's Centre as it is known today) are two lion statues.  Originally I had planned to do two lions on the cake but then it didn't look quite right. Bud had 5 or 6 rose bushes growing in his front lawn.  Growing up the last thing you wanted to have happen is a stray ball land in those rose bushes.  You did not want to ...

For this cake I was challenged with making actual roses for the first time with fondant.  I had bought a couple of rose petal cutters a while ago in preparation for the decorations on this cake.  YouTube is a great resource for tutorials.  I watched several ones before settling on what I thought would work best for me.   Once I was done I sprayed the red ones with some edible gold glitter.  Not bad if I do say so myself! This was a two layer 9 x 13 vanilla cake with buttercream filling.  I decorated the cake based on a couple of pictures I was sent.  I love using these letter cutters.  When I first got these several years ago I had no idea how to use them.  It was so hard to get the fondant out.  Then I watched a YouTube video and it make so much more sense.  Now my reject letter pile is much smaller when I'm tapping them out.

Today we celebrated Easter with my Dad's side of the family in North York.  I volunteered to make the desserts (shocking, I know).   Cheesecake always goes over well with this family.  Normally I shy away from the no bake recipes and go all hardcore where you need to start at least a day in advance, but I had run out of time since I only started this morning on the desserts. I found this  recipe  on Pinterest and saw that it called for sweetened condensed milk and was intrigued.  I topped it off with fruit spread with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.  This was really good cheesecake!  I highly recommend trying this recipe, it is not your typical no bake cheesecake. For the second dessert I made a vanilla cake using the vanilla my parents brought back from the Dominican. This was a 3 layer 9" cake with buttercream filling and icing.  I decorated this pretty rustically with some multicoloured dragees.  Both de...

I've known Hannah my entire life.  We have been best buds since birth.  We grew up 3 houses away from each other on our little street.  We have bonded a lot over chocolate cake.  Tonight her husband had a birthday party for her at the New Massey House in Newcastle.  When we got the invite I volunteered right away to do the cake.  Of course it had to be chocolate. I baked a two layer 8 inch and a two layer 6 inch cake out of one recipe of the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe with the chocolate ganache for the filling.  I went for a sea-foam green colour for the icing and made it lighter for the 2nd tier. The ribbon effect takes a lot of icing, but it is very simple to do. I love making these flowers.  It's not a huge amount of work for a big impact.  I dyed the fondant a coral colour which I know is a favourite of Hannah's. Happy birthday my dear friend.  

Yesterday my old high school, BHS had a cake auction for Relay for Life.  My grade 8 English teacher (she was actually the core French teacher but I was in French immersion so I guess she was my "core" English teacher) asked me to do a cake to put in the auction.  As I mentioned in my Instagram post, who can say no to Mme Romanchuk?? I found this  cake  on Pinterest that I thought would be perfect.  It's French themed and in my school's colours.  I made a 3 layer 8" chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling.  I made the flowers on Sunday evening so that they had lots of time to dry.  After I covered the cake in fondant I rolled out more white fondant and traced the general shapes of the landmarks before painting on the details with slightly watered down black gel dye.  All the swirls were added with royal icing. The first landmark, the Eiffel Tower. The second, the Arc de Triomphe.  Didn't realise I didn't a full s...

I was asked to make a cake to celebrate last Sunday's confirmation service.  There were eight girls being confirmed.  Originally I was going to do the decorations in light pink, but then since every girl was at least 13 I thought I would make it a little more colourful using one colour for each name. The cake was made up of two 9 x 13 cakes.  One was chocolate with chocolate filling and the other vanilla with strawberry/raspberry buttercream filling.  The cake was so big that I miscalculated how much fondant I needed to roll out so I ended up putting a yellow ribbon around the base of the trim cover up that math error! I also made six dozen mini cupcakes for extra in case they ran out of cake.  It was originally going to be eight, four each of chocolate and vanilla.  However, the vanilla ones got a little too well done.  It's such a fine line between underdone and a few minutes later they are toast.  :(  This is why vanilla cake and...