Cake Endeavours

What kind of cake do you make for a girl who has three boys, is addicted to Coach purses, and decided to be born on Christmas Eve?  A girlie, elegant and as far away from Christmassy as you can get kind of cake. When I first saw the Rose Cake on I am Baker's bog.  I thought of Joy right away and knew I'd make a version of this for her birthday.  It is an amazingly simple technique.  I've used it on cupcakes many times, but never thought of applying it to a cake. I used Martha Stewart's Lemon Cake recipe.  I did a half recipe and used limes instead of lemons.  I forgot to halve the lime measurements, but it tasted really good, if I do say so myself.  The icing is buttercream but instead of vanilla I used almond extract.  I love almond extract; it can completely change the flavour. Happy Birthday Joy!

I know, it's hard to believe that in the 905 there are hockey enthusiasts that are not Leaf fans...they're out there.  At least these two cheer for another Canadian team.   I made a 10" two layer chocolate cake with Oreo cookie buttercream for the filling and crumb coat. Callum and Iain were impressed. :)

One of my co-workers is having her family Christmas today and ordered 4 dozen cupcakes.  The Cookies and Cream cupcakes are a floor favourite.  Instead of the mini Oreo cookie on top I punched out 2 medium holly leaves for each cupcake and added a red Smartie for the berry.

Another cake for a coworker...for the World's Best Book Club. This was a Lemon Cake  from Martha Stewart's site.  The icing is buttercream and I only added blue dye to but it turned green...

I made two dozen of these cupcakes for my co-worker. She requested the Perfect Chocolate Cake cupcakes with fondant on top.  I even cut out the centre of each cupcake to add the whipped cream filling.  I piped on the icing and then put funky circle designs on top. That morning on the subway ride into work I was staring at a girl's gift bag she was carrying and loved the design.  I thought that it would make really cool cupcakes.  The same day I got asked to make these cupcakes.  There was supposed to be one dozen blue and one dozen purple.  However, again, the purple was not my friend and was blue when I rolled it out, but this time it did not magically turn purple when I put it in the fridge over night like last time. Oh well!  I love the way they turned out and so did my co-worker.

Miss E's day care had a bake sale today so I made these cupcakes.  I thought that I could just spread on the icing for the glue without having to pipe it on since I was putting fondant over top, but I was wrong.  It actually took longer than piping and looked a little sloppy.  Fortunately the fondant covered most of the icing.  The snowflakes were punches that I got from Flour Confections .  For the mini cupcakes I piped on some chocolate icing and dotted them each with a Smartie.

Clearly I have a trend in the cakes I've been doing lately.  I really like the black silouettes and fortunately so do the people ordering them.  This cake is for a co-worker, she wanted the same flavour cake as Donna's , with blue fondant and shoes.  That's what I did.  I found different silouettes of shoes online, sized them all about the same and printed them off.  Then I traced them.  When I put the shoes on, there seemed to be a lot of empty space where the toes met and I was going to write in a shoe saying in between each set: 1. If the shoe fits, buy it in every colour 2. Cinderella is living proof that a pair of shoes can change your life 3. Two things you can never have too many of: good friends and good shoes But I chickened out and put little polkadots instead.

I would just like to thank my good friend Joy for yet again giving me a challenge when it came time to do her son's cake...She's very considerate that way. *grin*  It's not entirely her fault, this was Alexander's request to have a Dinobot cake and not covered in fondant.  Plus, she was kind in searching out a picture to go by considering I had never heard of a Dinobot before, let alone one named Grimlock.  Mr. T was horrified that I didn't anything about this.  He proceeded to give me Coles notes on the history of the Transformers.  My eyes glazed over fairly quickly.  Then I got to hear "Me Grimlock, me king!" all morning. The cake was Martha Stewart's Versatile Vanilla Cake recipe, double.  A double batch of buttercream icing.  The original plan was to have a nice evergreen coloured icing.  But when I added black to the green to make it darker it went a very muddy gray.  I was kind of freaking out a bit, but realised it was a cake for a boy and a

One of my co-workers retired this week, so of course we had a celebration.  She didn't want a big due, but our floor loves any reason to celebrate.  We couldn't let her go without a proper send off. Donna among other things loves purple and martinis. So, that's what I went with to decorate the cake.  I made the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe, but the filling was salted caramel icing.  Another co-worker made a couple dozen cupcakes and I brought leftover purple icing and salted caramel to decorate them with.  We put a layer of salted caramel on first then a did a rose pattern with the 1M tip. The cake and cupcakes were a huge success.  Donna exclaimed that she didn't want to cut the cake.  Rather, she'd take it home and frame it. The red velvet cupcakes were from Costco.  They were pretty good!

This year I hosted our 4th annual cookie exchange. Mr. T (ha, love that nick name) and I spent the better part of the weekend cleaning and getting the place ready for Christmas in time for the exchange. Miss E was off at her grandparents playing for the weekend.  Our poor cat was put through the wringer with all the activity.  For the exchange she hung out with everyone but was flaked out on the arm of a couch. For the exchange we each made a dozen cookies/bars for each participant plus another dozen for tasting.  I made some stand by dishes for our regular get-togethers plus a new one that was a big hit.  I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms ,  They are so good.  I highly recommend making these. To go with all the food, I made Colonial Hot Buttered Rum .  A now favourite recipe that I discovered a few years ago.  Left overs do store well in the fridge.  Though I would recommend to guest to bring a thermos for a to go bag, to be stored in the trun

A good friend of mine's hubby and his co-worker asked me to make a cake for their boss.  Their request for the cake was for it to be chocolate, with orange coloured filling, covered in green fondant with a horse on it.  Hmm...how to make an obvious guy's idea of a cool cake and make it a bit feminine?  Fortunately, the people I make cakes for a pretty good at letting me take artistic liberties. The chocolate part was easy to take care of.  For the filling and the crumb coat I made a buttercream icing with just a hint of cinnamon and dyed it a soft orange.  Peach sounds too eighties. I made a silhouette of a horse in black along with the lettering.  I had some left over green fondant from the Mad Hatter cake but cut in some white fondant to make it more of a sage green.  What I didn't realise at the time though, was that the white fondant had a bit of a crust on it and when mixed in left all these little lumps.  *sigh*  Well, that's what the stars are for, to cover so

My lovely co-worker passes me a note yesterday in a meeting advising that she needs a cake for today.... So, she wanted the Perfect Chocolate Cake but wanted it covered in fondant.  At first I was horrified because really, it's the Perfect Chocolate Cake.  You don't mess with it.  After some bantering back and forth I had to agree for a 50th birthday it needed to be special and it's hard to do that with just chocolate, I guess. :) Anyway, I covered it with Tiffany Blue coloured fondant.  It doesn't look so much like Tiffany Blue from the picture (should have used my camera instead of Tim's).  As per request I added silver dragees all around the cake.  I love the effect even though it was a tad time consuming.  I kept dropping them on the floor and the cat would chase them as they rolled away.

I made these cupcakes for Miss E's day care Halloween celebration.  I had leftover strawberry batter from the last cake, so that's the flavour they got.  I made some orange butter cream icing and topped them off with a few leaves and vines.  Then I decided that they needed at stem.  I found pretzels in the cupboard and broke them up to make the little stems.

For this cake the birthday both had very specific mammals and fish (I hope have the classification right!) in mind; an orca (a.k.a killer whale), a great white shark, a humpback whale, and a shark whale.  Off to Google I went in search of pictures and more specifically colouring pages.  I had never heard of a shark whale before.  I found the pictures I was looking for and printed them off then traced them on to waxed paper then with a tooth pick traced over all the lines to make an imprint on the fondant.  As an after thought I realised that they probably weren't all to scale so I arranged them on the cake to make it look like the shark was closest and the orca further away.  Ha!  I did take some artistic liberties and according to Elisabeth did not do the humpback whale's tummy the right colour.  Geesh!  Here I was worried about Nelson not thinking they were realistic enough.  His second request was for a Neapolitan cake.  His mom was certainly not going to let me get away

My cousin Ben asked me to make a cake for his girlfriend's birthday and asked for a Starbucks coffee cup.  I tried to convince him that I should do a 2D version but he was all for 3D.  Drat!  :)  So, I sucked it up and procrastinated a lot and woke up this morning ready to get started.  First thing, I should have made the cake the day before so it could get firmer from being in the fridge over night to make it easier to trim.  It looked like a cake massacre all over the counter. In the end, I was able to get the essence of a coffee cup. The Starbucks symbol I did freehand.  Not my best work but hopefully, at least the essence. I made a 3 layer six inch perfect chocolate cake with salted caramel icing as filling.  It's also on the top of the cake.

Hopefully this cake looks more like the Mad Hatter's hat than a leprechaun's.  I just couldn't get the green to go any darker.  This is a three layer vanilla cake.  Butter cream icing with a hint of cinnamon as the filling and crumb coat. 

Today was Miss E's sixth birthday party and it was a lot of fun!  Her party was originally supposed to be in Bowmanville for Apple Fest, but with very unsure weather conditions we moved it to our party room very last minute.  In the end, it made for a very stress free time to get ready.  Taking Friday off work had a big hand in this though. :) I made all of the decorations for the cake 2 days in advance.  They were all done out of fondant.  My violet gel colouring must have turned because after almost using the entire container I barely got a purple out of.  Gel does have a shelf life.  Otherwise it was pretty smooth going making Rainbow Dash.  The outer covering was done in a pale green fondant using FondX again.  Love this product! For the cake itself I made a double recipe of the Versatile Vanilla Cake and divided into six bowls; about 1 3/4 cups each.  Then, added gel colouring for each of the layers and mixed it in. I baked each layer in a 10" round bake pan for 15 m

These are the best baking cups.  There are some really great designs out in the market that aren't Reynolds but they disappear as soon as you bake with them.  Especially if you're making chocolate cupcakes.  The design is completely lost afterward.  I first found these baking cups in the States earlier this year and bought a few packs.  Then, a few weekends ago at Canada's Baking and Sweets Show Reynolds had a booth there.  They are now available in Canada (rumoured to be available at Wal-Mart).  Woohoo!  I love these.  They are a little pricier than the "normal" ones, but are so worth it.  I ended up buying 5 packs for $10 at the show. 

Today we are heading out to my uncle's house for Thanksgiving dinner with my dad's family.  For dessert I made a pumpkin spice cake with maple cinnamon cream-cheese icing.  My cousin Ben's birthday isn't until November but we're paying homage to his day a little early since we probably won't be seeing him all together again until Christmas time.  He's a big fan of The Office, so I topped off this Thanksgiving dessert with The Office symbol. Ryan: Did this happen on company property? Michael Scott: It was on company property, with company property. So, double jeopardy, we're fine. Ryan: I don't think-- I don't think you understand how jeopardy works. Michael Scott: Oh, I'm sorry. What is, 'we're fine'?      

This cake was definitely a challenge!  I'm not sure that I would do 3 princesses on one cake again.  It was a lot of work.  But I think it turned out pretty good. :)  Snow White is my favourite.  The cake is 9 x 13 with two layers, one chocolate and one vanilla sandwiched with chocolate filling.  I used FondX fondant dyed blue to cover the cake.  FondX is easy to work with and definitely more forgiving than Virgin Ice.

On Saturday I went to Canada's Baking and Sweet Show and dragged Tbits and E along with me.  It was in the West End and I loathe driving west of Yonge St.  on the 401.  Lesson learned, do not bring children to the show.  There is nothing for them to do there except to constantly beg you to buy them sweets.  However, I was able to pick up some fun stuff.  Flour Confections had the 10lb bucket of FondX fondant on sale for a sweet deal.  So I bought two!  Also picked up some great spring punches.  I tried some of them out on the cake. This was a super fun cake to make.  I used the edible markers to colour in the butterflies (new punch) and to draw the antennae and little trails.  I covered everything in shimmer dust.  I love shimmer dust.  It's so girlie.  This was an 8" two layer marble (chocolate and vanilla) cake.

Seriously, I never get bored of making this cake.  It's a really good cake.  I still have to refer to the recipe, the original copy I printed out over 10 years ago.  It's pretty ratty; there's water marks, folds, tape stuck to it and it's yellowed.  I love it. :) This time, however I only need a 6" cake rather than a 3 layer 9" cake.  I made the full recipe and ended up with two 6" layers and 24 cupcakes.  I sliced each of the layers in half to make a four layer cake.  I used the full recipe for the filling and just over half of the icing.  Decorated with some fondant punched flowers and royal icing for the lettering. This cake is for a co-worker for her and her team to celebrate.

"Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes." -- Mickey Mouse Yesterday we went to a surprise 60th birthday party and I was bringing the cake and cupcakes. For a retired math/science teacher I thought a calculator cake would be perfect to celebrate turning 60.  It had to be gluten free and was told that the chocolate recipes were the best.  So, I Googled recipes and found one with Nutella.  Yummy! Of course as I'm typing out this blog entry I can't find the link to the recipe I used to post on here, because it was really good. I made a peanut-butter cream-cheese icing for the filling and crumb coat before covering it in fondant.  The cake was only 5 x 9, so each "button" was only 1/2 x 1/2. I make four different flavours for the cupcakes, 4 dozen large and 8 dozen minis.  Again, the Oreo cookie cupcakes were a huge hit with the kids.  Seriously, it's just putting any cookie in the bottom before adding the batter and

Keaton's big into Super Heroes right now and his favourite is Robin.  I took inspiration from Robin Vinyl Pop! Figure .  I was actually organised this time and finished the cake with a couple of hours to spare.  I'm sure will still be rushing out the door to the party. :)

Today I hopped on the bandwagon and created a page for Cake Endeavours on Facebook.  Be sure to "like" the page!  So, I decided why not hop on another bandwagon while I was at it and start a themed weekly post.  It will be a hodgepodge of recipes, tips, and tools I like and will come across.   My first installment is the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe.  This is the only recipe I use when making a chocolate cake or cupcakes.  It has been known to turn people into chocolate cake lovers.  I really don't understand how one can not like chocolate cake in the first place, but if this recipe helps to bring the mistaken around, who am I to complain? CAKE                                                                         1 cup unsifted unsweetened cocoa                       2 cups boiling water                                                                     2 ¾ cups sifted all-purpose flour                             2 tsps baking soda                          

The  CIBC Run for the Cure is a BIG deal at work.  Go figure! :)  Tomorrow I will be decorating the pod with lots of pink as it is Think Pink week.  Our floor goes all out.  Since my pod is the first one you see when you enter, it has to look good.  Part of Think Pink week is fundraising.  I do my part by donating cupcakes to sell to raise funds.  This year I made Coconut Lime cupcakes.  I love pink and green together.  The icing with the lime zest takes on a pale green colour.  The coconut on top I dyed pink and dried in the oven.

I made this cake for a very special little guy.  Can't believe he's already 1.  I was planning to have this done on Friday night so I could sleep in on Saturday but going to the CNE for wine night with the girls won out.  We had a blast!  So, I woke up at 7:30am and spent the next 4 hours decorating the cake.  Not too bad.  One day I will get my act together and plan it out better so I'm not working under pressure.  That wouldn't be as much fun.  However, once all the decorations were made it did only take about 20 minutes to actually decorate the cake and smash cake.  The cookies and cream cake was a success all around.  Jaxson quite enjoyed his smash cake. :)

Sunday was my parents' 40th wedding anniversary.  My brother and I (along with our other halves) hosted an open house in their honour at their house.  It was a fabulous day.  Nearly 150 people came out!  Thankfully the rain held out until the bitter end.  By then most of the guests and the food were gone. For the celebration I made a 6 inch "red" velvet cake for the happy couple.  Didn't quite get red enough but it tasted pretty good.  I had made a bow from gum paste but in the end with the combination of the humidity and bad "glue" it just didn't work out.  Bows and I have a love hate relationship. I did make gum paste for the first time only because the store was out of pre-made.  It was surprisingly easy.  I used the recipe on the Wilton Gum-Tex label.     For all the party guests I made 12 dozen cupcakes and 4 dozen mini-cupcakes.  I made the same cupcakes that I did for the Cupcake Quartet as they were a hit for the last party.  The

These cupcakes were made for one of my co-workers for a 40th Birthday party.  7 dozen cupcakes.  It was a factory in my kitchen for the last few days.  I actually made close to 11 dozen cupcakes that are needed for family and friend get togethers this weekend. The daisies and lettering are fondant cutouts. 1. Vanilla cupcake with coconut & lime icing 2. Chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing 3. Oreo cookie cupcake with Oreo cookie crumb icing 4. Carrot cupcake with cream cheese icing

Happy Canada Day! To celebrate Diversity month at work I made these cupcakes. The office is a great test kitchen. These were well received.   I picked up the cupcake stand at Homesense.  I had to stop myself from buying one in every colour.  The maple leaf confetti is from the Bulk Barn.  I used the maple leaf cutter from the  Pampered Chef set for the fondant leaf.  The  Reynolds StayBrite Baking Cups I bought in the US.  I wish I had bought more.  I love them.   Cake: Versatile Vanilla Cake - recipe makes 30 cupcakes Icing: Wilton Buttercream - substituted 1/2 jar of Fluff for the shortening and used table cream instead of milk.

This 8 x 8 square cake was perfect fit for actual size Scrabble lettering to fit Happy Birthday.  I was able to use my Scrabble board to do the impression on the fondant board.  I just added the extra point squares with thin fondant squares.  The writing was done with edible black marker. The cake was for my friend Mary for her dad's 80th birthday celebration.  I think I'm going to have to do a similar cake for my Grandma Joyce's birthday next month! Cake: Carrot Cake Filling: Cream cheese icing

I made this cake for my co-worker's husband.  He loves Harley Davidson so I scooped the idea of the tire from browsing through pictures on the web.  VERY easy to do.  I rolled out black fondant and cut it to the height and circumference of the cake. To make the impressions of the tire tread I used a tooth pick. Once that was done I wrapped it around the cake.  The sides were iced with chocolate icing underneath and plain buttercream on top.

Tomorrow is my brother's girlfriend's b-day and he asked me to make her cake for him.  Yay!  He requested a Cleveland Indians themed cake and no fondant.  I thought, great, something different from fondant for a change.  Do you know how hard it is to ice a chocolate cake with white icing and not have crumbs showing?  Not easy.  Nor is it as easy to make it all nice and smooth like everyone else in blog world!  It also doesn't help that we're on the 20th floor with no a/c yet and the first heatwave of the year!  I went to do the grass border and realised that my grass tip is MIA.  I phoned Geoff who was on the way to pick up the cake with Kendall and begged them to stop at a Bulk Barn to pick up the tip.  Kendall had no idea that the cake was for her.  :)  I made the letters with candy melts.  Lots of fun!  The logo I made with fondant and used an edible marker for all the detail. This shows you how hot our condo is tonight with the sweat coming off the fondant

My friend Lori's husband special ordered a cake for her birthday.  She loves purple and dragonflies.  I made the body of the dragonfly with fondant and the wings with candy melts.  Candy melts are lots of fun to work with and super fast.

Peanut butter and chocolate according to my bestest bud Lindsay is the perfect combination.  When I came upon this cake while browsing through Whisk Kid's amazing blog I knew I was going to make it for her birthday celebration. After realizing that the heaven and hell name came from two layers of angel food cake and devil's food cake I also came to the conclusion that it was hell to make and heaven to eat.  The layers of peanut butter mousse in between heaven and hell was totally worth the pain. I went into making this cake expecting to have to problem with having a smooth finished looking ganache. Ha!  Oh well.  I gave up that dream fairly easily after I started pouring it on.  Also, I would make two individual 9 inch layers for each cake rather than baking one 10" layer and cutting it in half after it's cooled.  Too many crumbs to deal with and the angel food cake sunk in the middle.

So, I made 6 dozen of these for a co-worker's going away get together.  They were a BIG hit!  I have to say they are pretty amazing cupcakes.  Thanks to Confessions of a Cookbook Queen ; I took inspiration from her.  Seriously, she has some amazing creations. They were handing out Gerbera daisies at King station this morning so I had to showcase them in the picture as well.