Cake Endeavours

It's Christmas Eve and I am finally done all my baking.  Phew!  This last bake fest was for another coworker.  25 vanilla mini Christmas cakes, 2 pans of Salted Caramel Butter Bars and a pan of Lemon Bars.  Doing the bars were so quick and easy to do compared to the cakes. Since I ran out of the red glitter pen and gold spray I had to change things up.  For the berries, I took some clear alcohol, red dye and shimmer dust and painted them.  For the holly leaves with the gold glitter pen highlighted the vein down the centre. Mr T and I delivered these up to Aurora and now we're doing a mad wrapping session before heading out to my parents' to relax. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I was asked to make this cake for my good friend Joys birthday.  She's a Christmas Eve baby so it's important to celebrate her day.  At least that's what she says.  Ha! Miss E and her have a special bond with the love of Hello Kitty.  Joy is also a fan of pink.  I am so happy to do something that isn't about Christmas at this point.  Normally, I am longing to do Christmas baking, but I'm over that for this year. I made Hello Kitty's head a few days before so that it could harden.  I made two paws for the front and two for the back.  I set them really close so that you could easily take off her heard for traveling.  That worked out well. It's hard to tell but the bottom row of roses is a darker pink.  Of course I included some bling for Joy around the middle.  This was an 8" two layer chocolate cake. Happy Birthday Joy!

On to my 2nd co-worker who decided on 25 chocolate flavoured mini cakes, 2 pans of lemon bars, a pan of salted caramel bars and a "pine cone" cake. I had just enough gold shimmer spray and red shimmer pen for this order.  I sent Mr. T on a mission to get more gold spray.  It was no where to be fond at this time of year.  I'm not sure what I am going to do for the third order but I will figure that out later on.  Ha!  The chocolate cakes were a lot harder to cover in a crumb coat than the vanilla.  Good grief.  They looked like globs of cookies and cream ice cream.  I did manage to bring my time down to just over an hour to cover the 25 in fondant. This cake was an 8" two layer chocolate cake.  This went together pretty smoothly.  Mr T delivered these out to the west end and of course picked himself up a Slurpee on his way back. On to the next cake...

One of my coworkers asked if I could to do mini-cakes for her mom's 80th birthday party.  I had a perfect idea in mind that I had seen on  Pinterest .  She thought it was great and also liked one with a rose on it so it wasn't just Christmas.  I told/warned her that I had no idea how long these would take me as I had never done petit-fours before but I was up for the challenge.  What I didn't account for was that she would show other co-workers what I was doing.   My order of 50 ballooned to 100.  Two other co-workers wanted 25 each.  Good thing I took the week off before Christmas.  Though it's not turning out be the relaxing week that I had planned! So, to make these cakes these are the steps I took: - baked four 10" vanilla cakes. - with a 1 7/8" round cutter I was able to get 25 rounds out of each layer. - filled with vanilla butter cream and sandwiched two rounds together, set in fridge for 20 minutes - covered in butter cream e...

For the anniversary of a former co-workers store, she asked me to do up a cake with their logo on it.  This was an 8" 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I think it's her favourite flavour. :) I don't have the exact alphabet font that I needed in cutters to replicate the logo so I trimmed off the extra fondant on each letter to make it work.  It's still less stressful than trying to pipe it out with royal icing.

Miss E picked these cupcakes out for me to make for her school Winter Concert bake sale.  I made two dozen chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla butter cream icing. For the Santa belts I cut out 24 red 2 1/4" circles, strips of black and then used by square cutters to make the belt clip.  They went over well and were all sold by the time the sale was over.

I've had this cake pinned on  Pinterest  for a long time.  This year I vowed I was going to try making it.  I made the Perfect Chocolate cake  in 3 9" layers with whipped cream as the filling.  I was up super last night working on these pinecones which were not the easiest to do. In the original instructions the pine cone bases were made out of fudge.  I just used brown fondant and shaped it into 5 ovals.  Instead of melted chocolate to glue the almond pieces on, I used water instead as the melted chocolate was just making a mess.  I did use the melted chocolate for the tips of the slivered almonds as the pictures in the instructions still showing the almonds with the skin on it.  This worked out really well.  Thank goodness I only made 5 of these as they took a really long time to do.  At least I was entertained by watching Scrooged on TV. For the sprigs of "pine" I used fresh rosemary and then added some sugared cra...

Miss E's birthday is in October and falls just around Thanksgiving which makes it difficult to plan a birthday party.  So, we ended up celebrating her 10th birthday with her friends almost two months later.  The theme of the cake kept changing as did the flavour.  Eventually she settled on chocolate and a mermaid tail. For the cake I bake two 10" square cakes and one 10" round.  I put the square cakes together to form a 2 layer cake for the body of the tail.  The round cake, I cut in half and put them together to make a half moon for the fin.  Then I cut away at the cake to make the tail shape.  To decorate, I punched out a gazillion circles in Miss E's colours of choice. After I was done decorating the cake I dusted some silver shimmer all over the cake.  The pink star fish was to Miss E's request for an extra "splash of colour". She loved her cake and so did the guests.  Thanks to everyone who helped out to make her belated c...

For twin 2 celebrating his 30th birthday the choice was Molson Ex bottle cake. For both cakes, they didn't want them covered in fondant, only the decorations.  The Molson label was fun to make.  I'm getting better at letting go that it doesn't have to be exactly as the original.  Though I'm still ticked that I didn't curve the "MOLSON" letters across the top, but I am the only one who is upset?  I hope so! This was a 9 x 13 cake that I cut out the top corners form the stubby bottle neck.  Chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing.  I also added the 30th anniversary edition "sticker" on the neck as well. Originally I was going to add Happy Birthday to each cake but in the end I like the way the cakes look and though it would make them both too busy.

I was asked to make a cake for each twin for their 30 birthday.  The first was a replica of his license plate for his Audi. I think the plate could pass for the real thing!  This was a 9 x 13 two layer carrot cake with cream cheese icing. I dyed the cream cheese icing black.  Yikes!  It looks cool as this is the colour of his Audi.  I find with cream cheese icing it's hard not to see the cake through the icing no matter how much you layer it on.  There is no change in taste but it will stain your teeth, tongue and lips temporarily.  There is no sneaking a piece of this cake without getting caught.