Cake Endeavours

This is my 2nd time making this design.  It is certainly much easier and less stressfull doing a repeat design!  This time it was a 2 tiered 10" cake.  Not as many snowflakes this time so I was able to make it more symetrical *grin*.  I love my snowflake cutters!  I made this for a co-worker for a Christmas dinner. Cake: Cookies and Cream Filling: Buttercream Icing  - green

This cake was for a co-worker's son's birthday.  It was my first cake that I've shaped.  Though cutting out two triangles wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. I tried to add a few details to make it look as realistic as possible.  The yellow star is covering a flaw in the fondant that I didn't notice until the fondant was on the cake.  The yellow star is from the Star Trek cake. *grin* Cake:  Versatile Vanilla Cake Filling: Buttercream Icing  - green

The birthday boy is a big fan of Star Trek and in particular Captain Kirk.  The idea for this cake came from browsing the web and found a Dr. Spock cake that was similar.  Basic yellow fondant, apparently not the exact colour of Captain Kirk's shirt according to hubby, a black triangle for the collar and free hand for the emblem.  I did use a star cutter for the centre though.  The cake was a hit! Lesson learned:  There is no replacement for butter.  I tried just using shortening and butter flavouring as I learned in my course, instead of butter because it can alter the colour.  Ha!  It is definitely not the same. Cake: Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe Filling: Buttercream Icing

So, this was my first (and possibly last) attempt at a tiara.  I thought it would be really easy to do, but you have to work really fast with pure gumpaste as it dries out fast.  A few bandaids and a few swear words later I got it done. :)  Also my first time using royal icing, which was super easy to work with and is a great edible glue. This cake is for a co-worker's sister.  The tiara was a special request. Enjoy!   Cake:   Versatile Vanilla Cake Recipe   Filling:  Buttercream Icing

I bought these really cool snowflake cutters from Flour Confections.  They are so much fun and so easy to use.  For this cake I bought the pre-dyed red fondant.  I don't think that there is enough dye to get fondant that red.  This cake was for one of my brother's very good friend's 40 birthday.  There's one snowflake for each year.  Thinking about it now, I probably should have put an extra one on for good luck. :)     Cake: Cookies and Cream Filling: Red buttercream

I have to say this is one of my favourite cakes that I've done to date.  It was request from a family friend for his wife's birthday.  I only rolled out the black fondant to 1/4 inch instead my usual 1/8 which made it a lot easier to place on the cake and to smooth out.  I dusted it with edible shimmer dust. The large pumpkin is from a Pampered Chef set and the smaller pumpkin, ghost, and bat were from a Linzer cookie cutout set I just got for my birthday.  This was my first time using the lettering set that I bought from a really cool cake supply store I discovered in Pickering called Flour Confections.

Of course I made chocolate cupcakes for E's day care for their pot luck Halloween lunch.  It does make it hard to be able to see the fun cupcake cups I use since the dark batter hides it but you can sort of see that they were orange with bats.  The candy corn gummies I bought at Home sense.

This was a request from a co-worker for her sister's birthday.  The design is from the Wilton website.  The cake is the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe.  This was my first time using gumpaste with the fondant to make a stronger bow.  It dries a lot faster than fondant alone which is great for someone like me who's not very good at planning ahead.

Elisabeth's day care only likes chocolate cupcakes.  At least I can be creative with the icing.  This year I found these sugared fish at the Bulk Barn in 5 different colours which was appropriate since E was turning 5.  Basic butter cream icing tinted blue to look like water.  Apparently the yellow fish were the best and the orange were the least favourite according to E.

Elisabeth loves Super Mario, especially Yoshi, so her request for her 5th birthday cake was of course Super Mario.  She also requested that the cake have a chocolate, vanilla and strawberry layer which made the cake almost 6 inches tall. Rather than attempt to make all the figurines that would only get eaten I decided to buy them which was a lot less stressful!   Cake: Perfect Chocolate Cake and Wilton Basic White recipes Filling: Caramel Frosting

This cake was for my cousin who just turned 16. I used her favourite colours.  The purple fondant was not my friend.  It was a little too dry and not fun to work with which is why there are a lot of black stars covering up the near disaster.  The black on the other hand was awesome to work with.  It's the pre-dyed Virgin Ice brand. Cake: chocolate and basic yellow cake Filling: Carmel icing

I made this cake as request from my brother's girlfriend for their 1st anniversary.  Originally we didn't plan on using fondant but the icing that I made did not want to stick to the cake.  It was insane.  That has never happened to me before.  So, after scraping off as much icing as I could I was left with a half decent crumb coat.  Fortunately I had more than enough chocolate fondant on hand and it turned out way better than the original plan. Happy Anniversary K and G! :)

A wedding celebration cake. This was a special request as I've never made a Black Forest cake before.  I did find a really good recipe.  However, the ingredients were not listed in the order that they were needed.  Very annoying!  It's very easy to miss an ingredient and/or not add the right amount.  Regardless, the cake was a hit and I will definitely be making this again.  Next time though, I will use gel to pipe out the saying to avoid any bleeding.

This cake was so much fun to make. The Birthday boy's request.  The marble affect, very easy to do. The black outlining, I need to work on that, but it's not bad if I do say so myself.  I made the seaweed using the leaf tip.

I made these for fund-raising for Think Pink Week at work.

The idea for this cake came from the Wilton website.  I love this cake; it's so adorable.  I made it for a very sweet 2 year old girl.  I added sprinkles to the cake batter for some more whimsy.  

This is a recipe from my mom.  Next to her carrot cake recipe this is my favourite.  It's also my husband's favourite cake which is why I made it for his family BBQ.  I've probably made this cake over 50 times in the last 12 years.  This is probably my favourite way that I've iced the cake, so far.

This the first time I covered a cake completely in chocolate fondant and my first round cake.  A fun cake for a fun woman.

This cake was for a family BBQ.  The idea came from the Wilton website.  The cake is made with the soccer ball pan and the sun rays and glasses are cookies.  Thanks to Lindsay who piped out all the stars on the cake.  

I helped my friend make this cake for her cousin's shower.  The goal was to mimic a Tiffany box.  I was in charge of the bow.  I should have made this several days in advance because it would not hold up.  Not to mention that it ended up a snack for a Great Dane.  Fortunately my friend had a stroke of genius and added the rose to the centre.

My mom is not a fan of fondant or a fan of cakes for that matter.  However, when you're celebrating milestone you have to have cake!  So, purple being on of her favourite colours I decided to decorate it with a purple buttercream almond flavour.  The cake itself was a recipe from the Wilton site also flavoured with almond.  The birthday girl was most pleased.

The little guy that I made this cake for is a super fan of Pablo.  This was the first cake I made after I bought the Wilton fondant rolling pins.  They are amazing!  I am able to roll out perfectly even pieces and save on a lot of waste.  I splurged with my 40% off coupon at Michael's and bought the alphabet cutters.  The sour "belt" candy trim from the Bulk Barn was a big hit.  I will be using that again.  

I had so much fun making this cake.  My husband might tell a different story but in the end it was worth all the effort, especially for family.  I made the cake to replicate the decorations.  

My first endeavour with 3D fondant.  The bow turned out really good for my first effort.  Really important to make this several days in advance so that the fondant can harden.

For this cake it was my first time dying the fondant.  It was actually very easy to do and not as messy as I thought since I couldn't find latex gloves to wear.  I also used the premixed chocolate fondant from Duff.  This is crazy expensive.  $30 for a 2lb tub.  Fortunately, I used my 40% off coupon for Michael's so it wasn't so bad.

I wasn't ready to venture into mixing colour into the fondant yet so I bought the super expensive premixed Wilton fondant package at Michael's with my 40% off coupon to use for the red and blue.  The boys loved the cake.

This cake was my first endeavour into fondant and tiered cakes.  I was very excited with how it turned out.  The birthday girl loved it which is most important.  I bought pre-made fondant, Virgin Ice from the Bulk Barn.  Half the price of Wilton and much tastier.  It was surprisingly easy to work with.  

Halloween treat for E's day care.  The pumpkin Jujubes I found at HomeSense.  Of course afterward I found them at the Bulk Barn for half the price!

E's special request was a Binou cake.  I made a little cake for her. And for everyone else I made mock sundae cupcakes.  Another idea from Wilton.  The cherries are sour cherries from Wal-Mart, the only place I could find them at.  One of the few things you can't get at the Bulk Barn.

The idea for these cupcakes came from the Wilton website.  A very good site for instructions and ideas.

This was a special request from the birthday boys.  This is when I discovered Wilton premixed icing at the Bulk Barn.  Especially for black.  It's so much easier than trying to mix it myself.  The paw prints can hide lots of goofs!  The yellow trim used a whole tube of premixed icing. The cake was a hit with the boys.

These I made for Thanksgiving dessert.  I got this idea off of Very Best Baking.  You pour melted chocolate on to waxed paper and drop candy corn randomly and let dry.  Then you break of pieces to stick in the iced cupcakes.

I made this cake with the large cupcake pan from Wilton.  Caynes came through again.  It was half the price that Michael's was selling it for.  It was for E's 3rd birthday at day care.  I have a habit of making my icing too stiff.  My arms were killing me after all the piping.