Cake Endeavours

The request to make this cake came in months ago.  I was happy to mark it in my calendar.  This was a two tiered chocolate and vanilla cake. I love painting fondant in gold.  One day I will do the decorations much further in advance to give them lots of time to dry otherwise they are tacky and hard to handle.  The number one turned out amazingly well.  Don't look too closely at the stars.

A friend of mine asked me to make this cake for her Christmas Eve gathering.  I've made this one before and I love how it turns out.  The making of the pine cones is a pain in the butt though.  Getting the slivered almonds to stay on can be a night mare. This was a 3 layer chocolate cake with whipped cream filling and chocolate fudge icing.  I treated myself to a new cake stand from Walmart of all places.  Love the Santa cake stand.  You can't see his boots in this photo though. When making the pine cones this time I tried a new method.  For the base I divided a tube of marzipan into five and formed them into egg like shapes.  Then I painted them with melted chocolate; while it was tacky I added the slices of almonds.  This method went smoothly and much quicker than previous attempts.  Afterward I added melted chocolate to the tips of the almond slices.

I was so excited for Meghan when I found out that she was pregnant.  I was super excited to get to a gender reveal cake for her.  Regardless if it was a boy or a girl the cake would be lemon flavoured.  We picked up the sealed ultrasound results from her mom a few days before.  I opened it before we even drove away to find out.  I didn't have to wait, like everyone else did. Ha! Doing a gender reveal cake is so much fun.  Even better that it's a Christmas themed one.  I love how this turned out.  I can't wait to see the reveal.... Of course I couldn't reveal what colour the cake was until they had the reveal. Scroll down to see what the cake revealed.... Congratulations Meghan and Adam!  Jaxson, you're going to be an awesome big brother!

Joy and Eason were having a combined birthday party so we went with vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. For Eason I did super hero themed cupcakes.  I have no idea if they are Marvel or DC.  I don't keep track.  Eason was happy and that's what matters. For Joy's cupcakes I did L.O.L. dolls.  Miss E is past this stage so I have no idea what they are really.  They look super cute.  :)

I was thrilled to be able to make this cake for one of my childhood friend's mom's birthday.  The request was for a chocolate cake with quilting the main theme as her mom is a quilter also that she was into fall colours and flowers.  This gave me lots to work with. The cake was a 3 layer chocolate 8" cake with chocolate filling and covered in butter cream.  The "quilted" blanket was originally larger and I wanted it to drape further down the cake but the fondant kept cracking and didn't look right, so I shortened it and covered up some of the mess with spools of yarn. My arms got a real workout dying the different colours of fondant.  I love fall colours but they are pretty dark and can take a lot of dye to get the colour you desire.  In the end all the colours turned out nicely and the birthday girl loved her cake.

Ilene, a very good family friend and my father-in-law share the same birthday and as we were tagging along for the birthday dinner I thought I would bring a cake as a suprise.  I figured as long as it was chocolate Bob, my FIL, wouldn't care how it was decorated.  So, I decorated toward Ilene's taste.  The cake was a 3 layer 8" chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling. Ilene has always been so kind in commenting on my cakes on Facebook and how she wished she could have one for her birthday one day.  She even mentioned over dinner longingly that maybe one day she would get one of my cakes for her birthday.  I was SO glad I brought her one and she was delighted!  Of course Bob was good and didn't complain about the decorations. :)

Rarely do I get to do a Halloween themed cake.  When I was given cart blanch on the decorating I knew I wanted to do the marshmallow goo spider web affect.  It isn't as easy as it looks. Definitely need to be very patient with it and not to rush it.  Of course, watching a few YouTube videos helps. This was a 3 layer 8" chocolate cake with whipped cream filling covered in chocolate ganache that I added black dye to.  The Happy 50th sign I cut out in red vinyl from my Cricut and added it to card stock. For the spiders I used leftover icing and piped them on adding red dragees for the eyes.  Lots of fun!

For some strange reason I always thought I didn't like German chocolate cake and never thought of making it.  For our 2nd annual Coles Family Oktoberfest Thanksgiving, I thought it would make a great addition to the spread of Oktoberfest themed food. Of course I turned to Pinterest to find a recipe and came upon  this recipe .  I didn't make any tweaks to it; simply followed the instructions.  Every component of this cake is delicious; the cake, filling and chocolate icing, they are all decadent.  The cake is so rich that I couldn't finish my piece.  Though I am sad that I didn't save it for later. 

Miss E had been asking me for a few years to do a galaxy cake for her.  Finally I bit the bullet and went for it.  I made the Perfect Chocolate cake with salted caramel filling and covered it as smoothly as possible in chocolate ganache. There a multitude of YouTube videos available to choose from to use as a tutorial and recipe.  It's a lot of prep work for 1 minute of work and for one shot!  It turned out pretty good.  In some light you could see that the topping was melting the chocolate a bit and it was coming through, otherwise I was pleased and most importantly Miss E loved it.  I was surprised that the covering added very little flavour to the cake, which is a good thing.  I saved the left overs of the glaze in the fridge to see if I can reuse it for a later date.  Stay tuned...

I love doing cakes for these sisters each year.  I'm always excited to see what the theme is going to be.  This year was mermaid.  I went to Amazon to but the chocolate shell mold which were super fun to make!  I also had got the mermaid silicone mold several months before.  Each cake was a 3 layer 6" cake with flavours of their choosing. One was red velvet with salted caramel filling and the other was lemon with butter cream filling. I woke in the morning with a terrible migraine so was late starting.  Thankfully Mr. T was willing to deliver the cakes later in the evening.  Of course he was able to score himself a Slurpee for his hard work. :)

For this wedding cake Kendall, the bride sent me a picture of what she was looking for.  Four tiers, in white, grey and black.  The 2nd and 4th tier are real cakes and the other are dummy cakes.  Fortunately we were able to travel with this cake in two pieces so that the centre of gravity wasn't completely off kilter. The two edible tiers were covered in grey fondant to look like marble. For the dummies originally I was going to use strips of grey fondant but it wasn't working out, so I decided to paint silver lines on. In retrospect as these tiers that were not going to be eaten I could have used silver ribbon which would have been a lot faster and easier to do.  Next time.  There was a cake topper, but it hadn't arrived by the time we had to leave. When I'm going to be decorating the cake with fresh flowers, I ask that the florist leave me a bucket of leftovers to use.  These were the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen at a wedding....

For this cupcake cake the original design going off of a picture was to have 36 cupcakes on the board.  The "diamond" would have been have had the bottom layer of cupcakes in the ring instead of the 2nd.  However, there is no pre-made board big enough do so; so I improvised.  There were two extra cupcakes left over that couldn't fit.  The vanilla cupcakes were covered in buttercream icing.  I tried to get the grey icing to look as much silver as possible.  Adding some shimmer dust helped with that! For the lettering I used my Cricut to cut out vinyl.  I love doing this as you can size the lettering exactly how you want it and then print, in any font.  It's quick and clean!

For this cake, I was given a picture to replicate.  Sometimes, that can be intimating, sometimes it can be crazy and other times it can be lots of fun.  Thankfully, this cake fell into the latter category.  This family loves their lemon cake. :)  This was and 8" 3 layer cake covered and filled with cream cheese icing. For the decorations I went to Amazon.  I was able to purchase the burlap ribbon to make the banner and also picked up a pack of  artificial succulents .  I used some of those along with some silk flowers and leaves I had already.  For the banner I cut the lettering on my Cricut using HTV vinyl and ironed the letters to the burlap ribbon.

Sonya's mom sent me a picture of the cake she wanted and I did my best to replicate it.  For Skye and the Paw Patrol logo I printed them off on card stock and laminated them.  I always thought it was fun to have something to keep from a cake, plus it is less time consuming for the decorator! This two tiered cake, 6" and 8", both 3 layers were chocolate and vanilla.  The most time consuming part is making all the pebbles to go around the base of each layer.  Usually I don't make enough on the first go around.  As you can from the picture I had a few extra.  The paw prints were done with circle cutters if various sizes.

For this family BBQ we celebrated my brother's 40th and my Uncle's 60th birthday, which combined turned into a 100th birthday.  Carrot cake is a family favourite so I stuck with it. I kept the decoration simple for this cake with a couple of beer mugs to cheer them on. The birthday boys of Ireleand Street!

At work we had a potluck fundraiser for CIBC's Run For the Cure and I of course volunteered to bring cupcakes.  You can tell how humid it was by how shiny the chocolate icing is.  Somewhere I have a chocolate mold for the ribbons but for the life of me could not find them so I improvised and made "ribbon" out of strips of pink fondant.

It's hard to believe that my baby brother is turning 40 this year!  So, when my cousin planned a big family BBQ I decided to bring a carrot cake covered in cream cheese icing as one of the desserts and to celebrate this milestone. The intent of the icing was to have an ombre effect on this 3 layer 8" carrot cake using lots of cream cheese icing. I know it's one of Geoff's favourite; any vessel to cream cheese icing really. He's a huge Star Wars fan and saw this idea for a cake topper which I knew would be perfect.  I cut out 3 layers of card stock on my Cricut machine and glued them together and finished it off with a couple of skewers to stick it in the cake. One of my favourite pictures!

This 10" 2 layer cake was for the day after the wedding for Alli and Spencer.  I am so late in finally updating the blog that I can't remember what the flavour of the cake was.  I do believe it was lemon with cream cheese filling; that's my best guess! Hopefully, this will teach me not to get six months behind in updating. :( Mr. T and I delivered this one to Alli's parents' house.  I love going along with Mr. T sometimes for deliveries as we get to venture into areas of the city we may not have been before.  This took us to Broadview south of the Danforth.  The century homes are so beautiful with tall trees shading the streets you forget you're in the city.

I love how this cake turned out!  I love doing wedding and anniversary cakes.  I also love adding bling. For this 25th wedding anniversary cake the 8" bottom tier was 3 layers of chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling.  The 6" top tier was 3 layers of vanilla cake with butter cream filling. As much as I love that it's finally getting warmer here, I do not enjoy the humidity.  As soon as you bring the cake out of the fridge when it's covered in fondant it starts to sweat and you have to be so careful not get anything on the cake.  Thankfully, it was too humid to finish decorating the cake.  All the non-edible decorations are tacked on with pins that are easy to take out when you're ready to serve.

For the grand re-opening of a school I was asked to make 12 dozen vanilla cupcakes and 1 dozen gluten free.  Below is a small sample from the assembly line! Thankfully, one flavour in this quantity goes much faster to get ready versus different flavours.  It helps that the batter is the perfect consistency for scooping into liners.

For Mother's day this year, I wanted to try something different.  Apparently, different means, crazy multi-step, multi-ingredient and time consuming. This dessert required the following: - Phyllo pastry, used store bought - Chantilly cream, made fresh - Macaroons, store bought from  Charmaine's Sweet Studio  (highly recommend) - Meringues, made myself.  Note:  Only use fresh egg whites, not from a carton or you end up wasting your time and ingredients to start over! - Chocolate ganache, made fresh  - Brownies, store bought 2 bite brownies - Strawberries, not Ontario grown :( They aren't ready yet) There are numerous YouTube videos on these types of cakes to follow.  I chose to use Phyllo pastry instead of using a cookie recipe because I didn't want to worry about it breaking and how it would be difficult to cut without breaking it. It was a lot of work!  But totally worth it for my mom and me!  It was really good....

It's always fun to do something baby themed.  For my friend Gina I made 4 dozen cupcakes, 2 each of chocolate and vanilla.  Both with vanilla buttercream icing then topped with fondant decorations. Sometimes, I surprise myself with what I have in my stash of baking supplies.  I thought I was going to have to trace 48 elephants and cut them out, but I found that I had a baby elephant cookie cutter.  Woohoo!  For the eyes I used black dragees.

For the Coles family Easter dinner I went with the classic carrot cake with cream cheese icing.  It's a family favourite.   With the leftover icing I dyed it orange and piped on the tops of carrots then cut up green straws for the greenery.  Each person got a "carrot" with their piece. Geoff was excited for his piece and didn't want to wait for a plate of his own.

To celebrate Adam's permanent residency in Canada I was asked to make this cake.  I love how it turned out; if I do say so myself! :) Each tier was 3 layers of lemon cake with cream cheese filling.  The family's favourite.  The bottom was 8" and the top, 6".  The bottom tier is covered in red fondant with black and red squares to give the look of a plaid shirt.  For the top tier, I dyed the icing beige and dark brown to look like a tree trunk. For the trees I piped the trees out on squares of parchment paper and put them in the freezer for 20 minutes and then transferred them on to the cake.   For the maple leaf I had some older red fondant that I tried to revive then I painted it over with red dye mixed gold and all the cracks in the fondant came through giving it a weathered realistic look.  I will probably never be able to replicate that again!  I used my Cricut Explore Air and vinyl to do the lettering and stuck it to the ca...

For Molly's 5 birthday she asked for a unicorn cake.  She likes to look over my Instagram account  @klcoles14  to see the cakes I've posted.  I love it!   Molly's cake was a 3 layer 8" chocolate cake, her mom's pick, covered in buttercream icing. I love how I was able to get such vibrant colours for the icing.  It's usually an epic fail for me.  Final touch was a sprinkling of gold dust. Happy Birthday Molly! 

We had an impromptu family dinner midweek to celebrate Grandma Winnie's birthday at her favourite restaurant, A-One Delights Chinese Buffet in town.  She loves lemon cake, so I made a 4 layer 6" lemon cake with cream cheese icing.   There were 10 of us at the restaurant and we still had leftovers.  With the leftover cream cheese icing I coloured it pink and green to decorate the top.  Grandma's favourite colour is pink.  Grandma Winnie with Miss E. :)  Hope we can all look as good as she does at 95!

I wish I had kept track of how many times I've made this cake in the last 20+ years.  It's the first cake I ever made for Mr T when we first started dating.  So of course for his birthday I had to make it for him.  I had one 8" layer in the freezer left over as extra from a previous cake that I needed to use up.  This cake ended up being a 4 layer cake instead of the usual 3.  I also double the icing recipe to account for the extra layer and I used it for filling between the 2nd and 3rd layer.  The other layers are filled with whipped cream. The cake was over 6' tall.  We were able to share the cake with lots of family and friends. Enjoy another year around the sun Mr T!

I've been making more cupcake cakes and am definitely learning how to better decorate them each time so it's not so frustrating!  First you need double the icing than what you would normally need for 3 dozen cupcakes.  Then, add a dob of icing to the bottom of each cupcake to act as glue to keep it from moving on the board.  They key, once all the cupcakes are "glued" on the board and in the desired shape, is to refrigerate them for about 15-20 minutes to harden the glue.  If you don't do this it will be very difficult to cover the cupcakes in icing without them moving around! The cupcakes were a combination of vanilla and chocolate.  Originally, Welcome Sebastian was in dark blue but it was hard to read so at the last minute I added a 2nd layer of letters in white and offsite slightly to give a shadow effect which made it look much better. Mr. T and I delivered it to Bowmanville and then headed off to visit my parents. 

For New Year's Day we had my parents and brother over for dinner at our place.  My dad requested a chocolate cheesecake for dessert.  I only make a cheesecake in the Instant Pot now.  It is honestly, foolproof!  The cake is always moist. Best way to start a new year is with a triple chocolate cheesecake splattered with gold and silver shimmer dust.  The balloons and lettering were cut using my Cricut Explore Air.