Cake Endeavours

These cute little cupcakes are for grade 8 graduation.  The school colours are black, white, silver and gold. I made 5 dozen vanilla and 5 dozen chocolate mini cupcakes in black liners.  Each was covered in white butter cream icing.  Mr. T found these awesome silver and gold Wilton stars at the Bulk Barn.  He is the best procurement manager. :)  I will definitely be using these again. 

I love doing a cake that is tailored to the birthday girl's like.  Isla's party was going to be a beach theme and she loves pandas.  So, I made an 8" vanilla gluten free cake with a panda snorkling under water. I had some green fondant and blue fondant that I mixed together but not completely to give it a watery look.  I added 8 candles around the cake for extra decorations and to cover any marks on the fondant. The purple flippers are my favourite part.  So much fun.  Mr T and I delivered it Isla's party.  I love that I got to see the birthday girl's reaction to seeing her cake.  So glad that she loved it.  

To celebrate Father's Day and my Mom's birthday I wanted to do something different.  I came across this  recipe  on Pinterest.  Over the top fun! To start off, I bake three 6" layers of chocolate cake as per the recipe.  Followed by the Nutella flavoured icing and then the ganache.  I added the toasted walnuts (they really do tasted amazing and completely different toasted!) and marshmallows into most of the ganache.  I save some ganache for dripping down the sides.    To assemble the cake I piped the icing around the top of the first two layers to form a dam.  Then added the ganache mix and stacked the layers.  After it set for a while in the fridge I covered the cake in the icing as smooth as I could get it. Finally topping the cake with the plain ganache and allowing it to drip down the sides.  To finish off the cake I piled the rest of the ganache mixed on top and then added more marshmallows and toas...

To celebrate Father's Day and my mother-in-law's birthday I decided to do a white cake.  But I couldn't not have chocolate as that is my father-in-law's favourite.  Thanks to  I am Baker  posting this recipe that incorporated brownie and cake I thought it would be perfect. I even tried my hand at doing a Swiss meringue butter cream for the first time.  The taste is very unique but it's a lot more work than American butter cream.  An inside shot to see how the cake was put together.  You take two 8" pans and bake the brownie mixture first and let it cool.  Then you add the cake mixture on top, bake and let cool.  To assemble, I made a mocha filling between the layers.  It was quite good if I do say so myself. :)

Kendall's boyfriend and family did a surprise 30th birthday party for her and asked me to do her cake with a beach/luau theme. For this two tiered cake I made an 8" two layer vanilla with confetti cake and a 6" two layer vanilla with confetti cake.  I covered the bottom tier in blue fondant and the top in a light brown fondant.   I covered the top tier with lots of graham cracker crumbs to make it look like sand. Originally there was supposed to be a palm tree but it collasped. *sigh*  Instead I had these awesome surf boards that did the trick.  Fashioned some flip flops from a silicon mold. For the greeting I cut out a frame and hand wrote it with edible marker.  Add some more graham cracker crumbers along the top of the blue tier.  Added some hibiscus and leaves as well.                                               ...

Ava was having a spa party so her some sent me some pictures of ideas for the cake and cupcakes.  This was lots of fun to do.  As usual, I made the cake and cupcakes first.  Both vanilla with confetti added for some fun.  Then I set about doing the decorations making nail polish bottles, eye shadow and lipstick.  Too much fun. My favourite is by far the sleep mask.  I love the ruffle around it it.  I covered the cake in white fondant and trimmed it with some black ribbon. I used the black ribbon for the ties of the mask as well.  Then I added the spilled nail polish.  Love the colours and how they turned out. Once the cupcake toppers had dried over night I added them on top of the butter cream icing as the final touch.