Cake Endeavours

This is the 2nd cake for my coworker that Mr T is on his way to deliver and on time! I made a couple of these last year and forgot how much of a pain it is to make these pine cones!  Fortunately, this was the most stressed out I got this year. This cake is a 3 layer 8" cake with chocolate filling.  The pine cones are made from fondant egg shaped balls, then covered in sliced almonds.  They are very finicky to "glue" on.  You can use melted chocolate or water.  Either way, you need very little otherwise the almond keeps slipping off.  Mr T had to go to several stores to find the fresh rosemary.  But the cake came together just as expected. Now we're off to enjoy the Christmas festivities.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

When my co-worker asked me to do a cake for her son's birthday with a plumber theme I first sent her a picture of a plumber's butt cake.  I thought it was hilarious but not what she was going for.  Before I would show her a picture of the cake I knew she would want me to make I watched a few YouTube videos first to make sure it was possible.  Ha!  Of course she loved it.  Her son is doing his apprenticeship to become a plumber. I swore that this Christmas I would not be running around getting everything done at the last minute so Mr T and I both took the week off before the school break.  This way by today, Christmas Eve, it could be be pretty relaxing.  All of the presents are wrapped, all the food is prepped and Miss E is already at my parents' enjoying getting things ready for tonight's festivities.  Me, I was I able to enjoy finishing off this cake and the next one to post.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing this cake. This is an 8" two l...

I made two dozen cookies and cream cupcakes for Miss E's school's bake sale for the holiday concert tonight.  Lots of red icing; just in case they didn't have enough energy. :) Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the concert.  Mr T's parents picked me up from downtown; it took them an hour to get me and then it took us 7 hours to get back to our place thanks to the snow!  We were at a complete standstill for almost two hours because of one hill with 3 lanes where two lanes were blocked by trucks that could not get up the hill.  What a disaster! Thankfully, the cupcakes were a hit and Mr T was able to attend the concert and take Miss E out for dinner while we stared at cars.

It's hard to believe that 3 years have gone by already since Maria and Dave started their business venture.  This year's celebration cake included a big 3 made out of Rice Krispies.  I love how my friends like to throw in a challenge every so often so I don't get too complacent. For the big 3 I made a double batch of Rice Krispie squares with some orange dye and pressed it into a 9" by 13" pan to cool.  I took a template and steak knife to cut out the 3.  I leveled off the bottom slightly so that it could stand.  Fingers crossed that it stays standing! The cake itself is a two layer 9 by 13 chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I had once chance to get the logo on centred and completely blew that!  So I added the extra decorations to offset it; to make it look like I meant to do that. I made 6 dozen mini cookies & cream cupcakes covered in orange buttercream icing and dipped in coarse sugar to look like snow. Mr T was kind enoug...

For this cake I was given cart blanche on the decorating. They knew it was going to be a girl so I went with doing pink roses in vanilla buttercream icing.  I had just enough icing to cover the cake! This cake was a two layer 10" round; half chocolate/half vanilla flavoured.  I'm always pleasantly surprised when both layers are the same height and I don't have to do any trimming. I cut out the letters the night before and while they were still soft carefully stuck a toothpick in so that I was able stand the letters up. To hide some of the gaps in the icing I added some fondant flowers in white, pink and yellow. I love how this cake turned out.  So sweet!

I was asked to make a cake for the volunteer appreciation dinner for Black Dog Rescue .  I decided on Cookies & Cream for this 10" two layer cake. As the name of the organization is Black Dog Rescue I went with doing black silhouettes of different dogs then adding paw prints in different colours. I did seven different dogs around the cake.  My favourite is the scruffy dog above the logo.

For Miss E's 11th birthday she asked for an ice cream cake and a sleepover party.  Again we are celebrating her birthday late, but this time only a month later.  The sleepover was a great success and so was the cake. I made one layer of chocolate cake in an 8" round pan and sliced it in half.  I lined the pan with cellophane wrap and place one of half of the cake back in the pan.  I softened a litre of vanilla ice cream and mixed in chopped up Oreo cookies and Skor bits then spread it over the cake.  I placed the second half over the ice cream and covered in cellophane.  The cake was kept in the freezer until we were about to serve it. When we were ready to serve the cake I covered it in chocolate ganache, whipped cream and Oreo cookies.  Miss E loved her cake!

For this cake the request was for a Mike's Hard Lemonade theme and the flavour chocolate mint. First I made the logo along with some "lemon" wedges.  The wedges helped to cover some mishaps with the black fondant! To make this cake I made three 8" round layers of chocolate chocolate chip mint cake.  I then cut each layer in half and stacked them on their sides to make a half can.  In between the layers I filled it with mint buttercream icing.  I had just enough black fondant to cover this cake thankfully. I finished off the ends by painting them silver.  Then I splattered the cake with clear piping gel to make it look like the can was "sweating".

Krumbs  asked me to decorate some Halloween cookies for them earlier this month and in turn they gave me enough cookies for Miss E's  class and the left over icing. Even with only having to do the decorating it took me several hours to do 3 dozen!

Owen is one awesome kid and I love doing a cake for him.  This year he asked for a video themed cake that was vanilla with strawberry filling. I had to go retro with Pacman.  This was an 8" 2 layer cake.  For the filling I cut the strawberries down to all the same size, placed them on the first layer and filled in all the spaces with whipped cream.  I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the cake when it was cut. Oh well!

The wedding was at the most beautiful venue;  Hernder Estate Wines .  Our ride out the estate was more eventful than I would have liked though!  I have never been so stressed out delivering a cake. For this cake I made a 2 layer 10" round pumpkin cake with cream cheese filling; a 3 layer 8" round lemon cake with cream cheese filling' a 4 layer 6" round with two layers of pumpkin and two layers of lemon.  The bride and groom are keeping the top tier for future so it has both flavours.  I also made a 10" square slab cake of pumpkin and one of lemon.  I had the cake all ready the night before to ensure it was nice and cold for the drive out to St. Catharines.  As it was covered in buttercream the cake couldn't travel in pieces.  In hindsight I should never have put the cake on the stand until we got to the venue and I should have added a 3 layer to the bottom tier. This was a family wedding that we were going to and Miss E was going up with m...

This cake was booked over a year ago. I had to go searching for the original paper with the details on it when it came time to make the cake and cupcakes. Mr T delivered the cake and 8 dozen cupcakes tonight to  Krumbs  for the wedding tomorrow.  I left a space on the top of the cake so that they could place the cake topper on without hurting any of the flowers. The bottom tier is actually an 8" Styrofoam dummy.  It was my first time covering a Styrofoam dummy.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.  This made the cake top heavy!  The 6" top tier is a two layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling. Congratulations Jarrod and April!

We had two Thanksgiving dinners this weekend.  One at my parents' with my dad's family and one at our place with my mom's family.  For both dinners I made these desserts. I saw these cookies on a Facebook post from I am Baker;  Pumpkin Rose Cookies  with a cream cheese filling.  These are very easy to make and very tasty.  They do not come out like a typical cookie.  They are more of a muffin texture than a cookie.  I was able to get 22 sandwiches out of one recipe.  They went over well at both dinners.  I am Baker never disappoints!  She is amazing. :) The 2nd dessert I made I found on Pinterest from the Domestic Doozie's blog;  Apple Fritter Cake .  The most painful part of this recipe was peeling and cutting up the apples.  Otherwise it was easy and really good.

This cake is for the little sister.  She chose Cookie Monster and pumpkin cake.  Now I'm fully acquainted with Cookie Monster!  He's 50 years old. I love Cookie Monster and I love how the cookie decorations turned out.  Too cute.  I did Sofie's cake first and realised after that the "street sign" I should have done in a different colour from the cake.  Also, I added the lettering on the sign before I put it on the cake; not a smart idea.  It made it heavy and hard to handle while trying to avoid cracks from happening. Oh well!  Fortunately the stars covered up the worst of it.

Chloe is the older sister of the two girls that I get to do their cakes every year.  I think this is my 3rd year doing their cakes.  It's so much fun.  Chloe chose to have a lemon cake decorated with Abby from Sesame Street.  Abby is a new to me character even though she's been around for 13 years. I got some new letters from Flour Confections called  Cake Star Push Easy Cutters  and used them for the first time on these cakes.  Going through the new items can be really dangerous.  As soon as I saw these they went in my cart right away!  They are awesome and very easy to use.  Though they do take up a lot of real estate in my baking pantry that I haven't quite figured out how to get everything to fit with these added cutters.

For this cake I did an 8" tier and a 6" tier both in flourless chocolate.  The cake is more like a brownie.  It's really good but not a light dessert!  I haven't ventured passed this recipe for gluten free, mostly because they call for ingredients that I don't normally keep on hand. Decorating this cake was so much fun.  I love these flowers and I love purple.  I added about an inch of silver beaded ribbon around each tier first, then started with the largest flowers first.  They had their own topper to put on the cake so I added only a few on the top and had them sweep down the front and to the side.  I finished it off with some silver dragees and purple dots.

This was my first time doing a Jays cake.  Originally I was going to do the bluejay all in fondant but after the maple leaf it did go so well.  I abandoned that idea and went with painting it on. The red accents were done with edible marker.  I'm forever on a quest to find circle cutters that are larger than 4".  No matter how hard I try I just can't get a clean circle cut out by tracing it. Luckily I had a Tupperware container that was the perfect size for the logo. This was a 6" chocolate cake.  I love how the little baseballs turned out.  Mr T was kind enough to be my delivery boy for this one.  While I finished up the next cake that was due for pick up in a few hours.

I was apprehensive to do these shoe cupcakes before because I didn't really like the look of them myself.  However, I am a changed woman.  A friend of mine in our building wanted to do something special for one of her friends that was turning 50.  She loves shoes and wanted my help in making some sort of Louis Vuitton black shoe. I had some extra cupcakes from the previous order that I had set aside.  Guida brought up the Pirouline cookies for the heels and the ladyfingers for the soles of the shoes.  I pretty much took over from there.  Thankfully Guida had no issue with this.  First I added the red soles in red fondant to the back of the ladyfingers and set them aside.  I dyed the buttercream icing black and piped the icing on the cupcakes.  I also lightly covered two Pirouline cookies in icing then in black fondant and finally the red to finish off the classic design for LV. Putting them together I added a dab of icing to the bottom...

I was booked to do this cake and cupcakes months in advance.  I was so honoured to be asked as well.  They still had their original cake topper and wanted to use that as the topper for the 50th anniversary celebration. The original cake was square with the leaves and rosettes on the corners.  It was hard to tell the colours as the picture I had for reference was black and white!  I decided to add some gold accents, which actually looked more like copper in the end.  This was a 6" chocolate cake. It was a beautiful sunny day but difficult to take pictures when facing the windows!  I made 12 dozen cupcakes in four different flavours; chocolate, vanilla, carrot and lemon. Each flavour had a different coloured fondant heart and the guests could use the legend to decide on which cupcake to take.  Hopefully there were no surprises! The hall was decorated so beautifully.  Love the flower arrangements on the dessert table.  There ...

This cake was a last minute request that I was able to squeeze in for a surprise party. As this was a last minute cake, I had to work with what I had on hand.  The ask was that the cake be black and white with lots of silver bling.  This was a 10" and an 8" two tier brown butter and salted caramel cake. I only had the 2" black ribbon from the previous cake so I folded it in half and wrapped some silver beading around it.  This is the only part that is not edible. I was able to make the flowers the night before so that they had time to dry out.  I should have done the silver lettering too as it was still pretty flimsy.  Originally the "50" was supposed to be silver too but both numbers fell apart when I lifted them off the drying rack.  I went with black which I liked better in the end anyway. Normally I would have used a black or white board but only had silver on hand for this cake.

Saturday my cousins had a surprise anniversary party for their parents' 30th wedding anniversary.  Of course we arrive and are walking with the cake when the bride and groom pull up in their driveway.  We tried to discreetly turn around as if we would suddenly disappear but we were spotted; thankfully not before they saw the reserved parking sign for the bride and groom. The theme of the party was black and white.  Originally we had the brilliant idea of replicating their wedding cake but in looking at the picture we figured it was best to leave 1986 back in 1986.  Instead we went with the colour theme. For this cake I did three different flavours.  For the 10" base it was chocolate with chocolate filling, then lemon with cream cheese filling for the 8" tier and for the top brown butter cake with salted caramel filling. I used a two inch satin ribbon band around each tier with 3 big flowers I made the day before on the side.  I cut out the 30 by ha...

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to make an anniversary cake for me and Mr. T but instead my coworker snuck in a request at the last minute and I couldn't refuse.  Thankfully she wanted the same flavour and size so I already had the batter ready to go. This was a 6" 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I need to practice adding a band of fondant around a cake.  It is very tedious and not good for a Type A personality to work on.  Good thing with the right lighting and the right camera angle I can make it look like the band is on fairly straight! While we didn't get our own anniversary cake we did enjoy the cutoffs. :)

A former coworker asked me to make this cake for a 60th birthday celebration.  I contemplated doing the cake in the shape of a can but then I'd lose a lot of the cake by rounding it out. Instead I went with the logo and painting the cake in silver. This was a 9 x 13 chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I covered the cake in white fondant; next time I would dye the fondant grey first and then paint it over in edible silver paint.  While the "paint" was drying I dropped the logo on as centred as I could get it in one shot.  For the mountain in the background I took a clean brush and brushed away the silver paint.  The ampersand was supposed to be more centred but I only had one shot and missed! I doubled the recipe to make an anniversary cake for Mr T and I.  :)

I was very excited to be asked to make Jaxson's birthday cake again this year.  This year his request was for The Flash.  Of course I had to look who he was up first.  Then I tried to figure which comic he was from.  The things I learn when making a cake!  I remember my brother having bed sheets with Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonderwoman, and as he reminded me, the Flash too.  All from DC comics. This was an 8" cake with buttercream filling.  After I finished the cake I thought it looked pretty bland so at the last minute I added his face on the side.

I was very excited to be asked to make a Tardis Cake again.  Even with my cousin's wedding last night I was able to squeeze in the time to do the cake. I baked the cake the day before.  I did two 8" square pans of a flourless chocolate cake.  It's very dense and very chocolatey! First thing in the morning I decorated the board to make it look like space.  It was fun to do but I didn't realise I was out of white dye so I had to wake Mr. T up early to go out to the Bulk Barn for me to get it. This cake was not as daunting as the first one I made given that I had been through it before.  Also, this one was 8 layers for 4 x 4 squares instead of 6 x 6.  It went together fairly quickly.  The windows were the most tedious to do. I don't have a fancy printer with edible ink to print on rice paper so I just regular paper and ink for the "Police Public Call Box", the sign and the logo.  These are the only parts that are not edible in the cake. ...

It's hard to believe that my "little" cousin Zack got married today. It was a beautiful ceremony and a great reception.  My cousin Alexa and I worked on the cake as a team effort.  She does amazing cake work herself but as a bridesmaid and wedding planner she was a little busy.  She baked the cakes on Thursday and brought them over to my place to put the cake together. As we were covering the cake only in buttercream we needed to build the cake and ice it all at once.  We wouldn't be able to bring it to the venue in pieces otherwise there would be gaps between the tiers.  The 12" and the 6" tier were both carrot cake with cream cheese filling. The 10" and 8" tier were both a vanilla butter cake with salted caramel filling.  Once put together the cake was so heavy.  We just had to pull out one shelf in our fridge to get it to fit.  I had a panic attack at about 5 in the morning worrying that the shelf wouldn't hold the weight of the cake, b...

This cake was for a former coworker's husband and friend.  Her request was poker theme.  This was a cake where the decorations came to me as I built the cake. First I made all the chips, and the decorations a few nights ago.  It was pretty tedious but easy work while watching Netflix. I made nine of each colour. I made a 9 x 13 chocolate cake with chocolate filling and covered in black fondant.  It didn't quite reach the edge on the one side which is why there are chips along the bottom of the front.  Rather than hide the mistake at the back I hid it in on the front so the back didn't need to have chips on it as well. I think the cigar is my favourite.  I rolled out some brown fondant added some white on the end and dotted black edible marker to make it look like the lit end. I painted it darker brow to make it look more realistic.  I did the same with the "wood" around the table. Hope the birthday boys enjoy their cake!