Cake Endeavours

How amazing that for a second time this year I get do a cake for a 100th birthday?  Pretty amazing. This order came through by way of my cousin, Lorraine, to do a cake for her nephew's (also my cousin) grandmother's 100th birthday.  Of course I wanted to do it but it was for the day after my in-laws big party.  Fortunately, they were very open to options.  Even more fortunate for everyone, they wanted to do the cupcake stand with the cake on top.  Since their party was going to be roughly the same size as  Bob and Peggy's I was able to do 4 flavours (vanilla, chocolate, carrot and lemon) of cupcakes for both parties.  Normally, for 4 dozen cupcakes, I would do up to two different flavours.  It is a lot of work to do multiple flavours for only 1 dozen each.  This way I was able to give both parties lots of variety. For the 6" cake that would go on top, I did a two layer vanilla cake with butter cream filling.  In the birthday girl'...

In August my in-laws will be celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary.  Also known as the sapphire anniversary, my birth stone and also my favourite.  We celebrated early so that Miss E could be there as she will be away at camp for their actual anniversary. It was an awesome surprise party.  I think they were actually surprised too!  We had the party in our party room.  We invited them over under the guise that we were having a family picture taken and the party room (newly renovated) was a perfect spot to do it.  However, when the security guard asked who they were visiting, they gave him our suite number, he innocently asked if they were going to the 45th wedding anniversary party.  Ha!  Why yes they were.  Too funny.   We had  Krumbs Breadery  cater the savoury dishes for the party.  We had meat, cheese, and pickle trays with fresh buns.  A lovely green salad with lots of yummy surprises as one g...

Last week I made some strawberry rhubarb sauce.  A lot of it.  It is so yummy.  It's my favourite combination fruit, even though I'm not sure what category rhubarb actually falls under.  I had fresh Ontario strawberries and rhubarb that was going to go bad if I didn't do something with them right away. I decided to go with sauce.  It was super easy to make.  I took 8 cups each of strawberries and chopped up rhubarb, zest of half a lemon plus 2 T of lemon juice, 1.5 cups of sugar and mixed it all up in a bowl.  I let it sit for a few hours then I poured it into a pan and added 2 T of cornstarch.  I cooked it on medium until the rhubarb was soft.  Let it cool and then ran it through the blender.  SO GOOD!  It's great by itself, on toast or on top of cheesecake. Along with Clover's crack fudge (though it's not exactly a good idea to call it that at work, that's what we refer to it as) I made mini cheesecakes topped with the s...

These are amazing bars.  I was stumped on what to bake this week for the sale and Clover suggested these. I made two pans and Clover made two pans of fudge.  We were sold out within an hour.  Yay! I thought I had my own picture of these bars without the packaging but after too long searching I couldn't find one.  So, instead I'm using the picture from  Cookies and Cups .  This is where Pinterest lead me originally when I first made these a few years ago.  She has a very detailed step by step recipe on her website.  The most tedious part of this recipe is unwrapping the caramels.  Especially when you're doubling the recipe! I got up super early to package these this morning.  I have a box of waxed paper already cut to sandwich size wrapping that I rarely use.  I thought that this would be best way to package these buttery treats.  It worked really well.  

A former coworker of Mr. t's asked me to make this cake for her fiance who had just received his Masters in Science.  She had sent a few pictures of what she wanted on the cake.  The most important was to have the molecule fluvastatin on the top as this was what his M.Sc was on.  Also, to have the ECG around the side of the cake.  I'm telling you I am learning more about science doing cakes than I ever did in high school! This was an 8" 2 layer chocolate cake with mocha filling.  I forgot how good mocha is!  So did Mr. T.  He made a request that his next birthday cake have mocha icing.  I made little pills out of fondant to cover up the seems from on the trim.  Thank goodness for edible markers.  I was able to do the molecule and ECG with them on the cake.  Afterward, I realised I made one small error on the molecule.  I wonder if he noticed.  In the hexagon by the F (I have no idea what any of the letters or lines me...

Yesterday as I was at my friend's enjoying patio life in her back yard my mom called to see how things were going for the cupcakes I was doing for the 50th wedding anniversary that were due for today at 12:30.  I told her that I hadn't started yet.  Then there was a pause. I quickly added that I had it all under control.  What I had forgot to take into account was my dad's birthday cake and when I was going to decorate it. I had two 6 inch chocolate cake layers in my freezer from left over batter from the week before and I had a third layer from extra batter from yesterday's.  Thankfully I remembered to do the icing as soon as I got up because it takes a few hours to cool down enough to become thick enough to spread.  this year my dad's cake was extremely rustic!  I thought I would have a lot more icing than I did but the sides were a lot taller than I had anticipated.  My brother found this sad candle in my mom's stash that we thought would be hi...

I was asked to do cupcakes for a lovely couple celebrating their 50th anniversary from my home church in Bowmanville, St. Paul's United.  So, I went with my standby of chocolate, vanilla, carrot and lemon cupcakes.  2 dozen each in regular and mini. I did up a legend again, this time I used hearts on the cupcakes and the background I did golden hearts.  I had run out of mini cupcake liners from Flour Confections so I had sent Mr. T on a mission to get some from the Bulk Barn, but no such luck in finding anything suitable.  He went to Michael's next and found gold ones which was perfectly suitable for a 50th anniversary party.  I forgot how much I don't like using these kind!  They are hard to separate and when you finally get them separated they are out of shape.  Lesson learned, this is why I like to stick to black liners to be neutral no matter what batter you're using.   This was the first time I've used the cake stand where I didn't...

Last year my co-worker Clover and I were the champions for the fundraiser in our department.  To raise money we did a bake sale almost every week for several months.  CRAZY!!!  We swore we were not going to be the champions this year, but we would donate to any bake sales.  Ha!  We tried.  Oh well, so on to our first bake sale.  We moved to a new building last month, just across the street.  Some of our former floor mates rejoined us and we have to people as well.  We knew we could hit up lots of people to donate to a worthy cause for baked goods in return. Clover made her famous fudge which almost always sells out.  She's going to her grave with that recipe, I swear.  She found these adorable jars at the dollar store.  I think they were 4 for $2.50.   I made 3 dozen vanilla cupcakes.  I had made the raspberry mascarpone icing for a previous cake I had a lot leftover.  It was perfect for these cupcakes...

For Grandma Joyce's birthday party I went with the formula that worked well for  Grandma Winnie's 90th birthday  and for  Bud's 100th birthday  party. I printed up a legend that matched the invitation to the party and each cupcake had a fondant flower on it to identify which flavour it was.  I made 2 dozen regular and 2 dozen mini of each flavour.  The classic four flavours that go over well: chocolate, vanilla (with butter cream icing), carrot and lemon (with cream cheese icing).  Half of the cupcakes went out on the first run and then we replenished as needed. For Grandma's cake, I made a 3 layer carrot cake.  It's one of her favourites.  She also LOVES her garden, so I did a garden theme.  I picked up the fence cutter a few weeks ago at  Flour Confections  knowing it would be perfect to use for this cake.  Grandma's favourite colour is yellow, so I did up the 90 in a bright yellow for her. I like doing ...