Cake Endeavours

It's Christmas Eve and I am finally done all my baking.  Phew!  This last bake fest was for another coworker.  25 vanilla mini Christmas cakes, 2 pans of Salted Caramel Butter Bars and a pan of Lemon Bars.  Doing the bars were so quick and easy to do compared to the cakes. Since I ran out of the red glitter pen and gold spray I had to change things up.  For the berries, I took some clear alcohol, red dye and shimmer dust and painted them.  For the holly leaves with the gold glitter pen highlighted the vein down the centre. Mr T and I delivered these up to Aurora and now we're doing a mad wrapping session before heading out to my parents' to relax. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I was asked to make this cake for my good friend Joys birthday.  She's a Christmas Eve baby so it's important to celebrate her day.  At least that's what she says.  Ha! Miss E and her have a special bond with the love of Hello Kitty.  Joy is also a fan of pink.  I am so happy to do something that isn't about Christmas at this point.  Normally, I am longing to do Christmas baking, but I'm over that for this year. I made Hello Kitty's head a few days before so that it could harden.  I made two paws for the front and two for the back.  I set them really close so that you could easily take off her heard for traveling.  That worked out well. It's hard to tell but the bottom row of roses is a darker pink.  Of course I included some bling for Joy around the middle.  This was an 8" two layer chocolate cake. Happy Birthday Joy!

On to my 2nd co-worker who decided on 25 chocolate flavoured mini cakes, 2 pans of lemon bars, a pan of salted caramel bars and a "pine cone" cake. I had just enough gold shimmer spray and red shimmer pen for this order.  I sent Mr. T on a mission to get more gold spray.  It was no where to be fond at this time of year.  I'm not sure what I am going to do for the third order but I will figure that out later on.  Ha!  The chocolate cakes were a lot harder to cover in a crumb coat than the vanilla.  Good grief.  They looked like globs of cookies and cream ice cream.  I did manage to bring my time down to just over an hour to cover the 25 in fondant. This cake was an 8" two layer chocolate cake.  This went together pretty smoothly.  Mr T delivered these out to the west end and of course picked himself up a Slurpee on his way back. On to the next cake...

One of my coworkers asked if I could to do mini-cakes for her mom's 80th birthday party.  I had a perfect idea in mind that I had seen on  Pinterest .  She thought it was great and also liked one with a rose on it so it wasn't just Christmas.  I told/warned her that I had no idea how long these would take me as I had never done petit-fours before but I was up for the challenge.  What I didn't account for was that she would show other co-workers what I was doing.   My order of 50 ballooned to 100.  Two other co-workers wanted 25 each.  Good thing I took the week off before Christmas.  Though it's not turning out be the relaxing week that I had planned! So, to make these cakes these are the steps I took: - baked four 10" vanilla cakes. - with a 1 7/8" round cutter I was able to get 25 rounds out of each layer. - filled with vanilla butter cream and sandwiched two rounds together, set in fridge for 20 minutes - covered in butter cream each ''cake

For the anniversary of a former co-workers store, she asked me to do up a cake with their logo on it.  This was an 8" 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I think it's her favourite flavour. :) I don't have the exact alphabet font that I needed in cutters to replicate the logo so I trimmed off the extra fondant on each letter to make it work.  It's still less stressful than trying to pipe it out with royal icing.

Miss E picked these cupcakes out for me to make for her school Winter Concert bake sale.  I made two dozen chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla butter cream icing. For the Santa belts I cut out 24 red 2 1/4" circles, strips of black and then used by square cutters to make the belt clip.  They went over well and were all sold by the time the sale was over.

I've had this cake pinned on  Pinterest  for a long time.  This year I vowed I was going to try making it.  I made the Perfect Chocolate cake  in 3 9" layers with whipped cream as the filling.  I was up super last night working on these pinecones which were not the easiest to do. In the original instructions the pine cone bases were made out of fudge.  I just used brown fondant and shaped it into 5 ovals.  Instead of melted chocolate to glue the almond pieces on, I used water instead as the melted chocolate was just making a mess.  I did use the melted chocolate for the tips of the slivered almonds as the pictures in the instructions still showing the almonds with the skin on it.  This worked out really well.  Thank goodness I only made 5 of these as they took a really long time to do.  At least I was entertained by watching Scrooged on TV. For the sprigs of "pine" I used fresh rosemary and then added some sugared cranberries.  For the cranberries all you n

Miss E's birthday is in October and falls just around Thanksgiving which makes it difficult to plan a birthday party.  So, we ended up celebrating her 10th birthday with her friends almost two months later.  The theme of the cake kept changing as did the flavour.  Eventually she settled on chocolate and a mermaid tail. For the cake I bake two 10" square cakes and one 10" round.  I put the square cakes together to form a 2 layer cake for the body of the tail.  The round cake, I cut in half and put them together to make a half moon for the fin.  Then I cut away at the cake to make the tail shape.  To decorate, I punched out a gazillion circles in Miss E's colours of choice. After I was done decorating the cake I dusted some silver shimmer all over the cake.  The pink star fish was to Miss E's request for an extra "splash of colour". She loved her cake and so did the guests.  Thanks to everyone who helped out to make her belated celebration a

For twin 2 celebrating his 30th birthday the choice was Molson Ex bottle cake. For both cakes, they didn't want them covered in fondant, only the decorations.  The Molson label was fun to make.  I'm getting better at letting go that it doesn't have to be exactly as the original.  Though I'm still ticked that I didn't curve the "MOLSON" letters across the top, but I am the only one who is upset?  I hope so! This was a 9 x 13 cake that I cut out the top corners form the stubby bottle neck.  Chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing.  I also added the 30th anniversary edition "sticker" on the neck as well. Originally I was going to add Happy Birthday to each cake but in the end I like the way the cakes look and though it would make them both too busy.

I was asked to make a cake for each twin for their 30 birthday.  The first was a replica of his license plate for his Audi. I think the plate could pass for the real thing!  This was a 9 x 13 two layer carrot cake with cream cheese icing. I dyed the cream cheese icing black.  Yikes!  It looks cool as this is the colour of his Audi.  I find with cream cheese icing it's hard not to see the cake through the icing no matter how much you layer it on.  There is no change in taste but it will stain your teeth, tongue and lips temporarily.  There is no sneaking a piece of this cake without getting caught.

Looking back on doing this cake I implemented a new system on how I prepared for the day.  I started baking at the beginning of the week instead of baking everything in one evening on Thursday.  I was done baking by Wednesday evening.   I even had a hick-up with one of the layers of chocolate and had to redo it.  It just fell apart out of the cake pan.  So sad. Thursday evening while watching a made for TV Christmas movie I made the large ombre flower.  It was so relaxing to do.  I love how it turned out. The cake itself consisted of 4 tiers: 12" chocolate with chocolate fudge filling, 10" vanilla with butter cream filling, 8" red velvet with cream cheese filling and a 6" vegan chocolate cake with vegan filling.  The bride is vegan and wanted to be able to take a bite of her wedding cake.  I didn't cover the tier in vegan icing as I was not prepared to test how it would stand or colour against the rest of the cake, which she was good with.  I found this v

This cake was fun to make.  I was given a picture to replicate and thankfully the link had a great  how to tutorial . I don't know how I got this effect with my camera on my iPhone.  It was not intentional but I like how the picture turned out. The bottom tier was 8" chocolate with chocolate fudge filling.  The top tier was 6" cookies and cream with buttercream filling.  I wanted the pink bows to be a darker pink but I could not find my dye and I knew I had a bottle somewhere.  Of course I found it as I was cleaning up.  Grr!  Mr T and I delivered cake to Vaughan only to realise I had forgotten a key element of the cake. I can't believe I forgot to add Happy Birthday and the 8.  I forgot to make them, not just forgot to add them.  I felt so bad.  I offered up to bring the rest back tomorrow.  I was freaking out inside because I am getting ready for the big wedding cake for tomorrow and had everything timed out.  Fortunately on our way home I got a call say

I was so excited to do a cake and cupcakes for the welcome drop in for these two adorable babies.  Almost as excited as I was to get to meet them in person.  They are so cute!  Though they were sleeping the whole time Miss E and I were there. This was a 6" 3 layer chocolate cake.  Originally I was going to decorate it very differently but the cake was not cooperating.  The cake was so moist that the crumb coat looked more like cookies and cream icing.  I didn't have enough white fondant to cover it.  It was so frustrating!  I went with this wiggly pattern that covered all the crumb nicely.  The colour theme was pink and blue. I made 2 dozen chocolate mini cupcakes for Cooper with little feet and a "C" with a star on each. For Charley, I made 2 dozen vanilla mini cupcakes with little feet and a "C" with a flower on each. They were so adorable, the cupcakes. :)

My coworker Clover asked me to make this cake for her friend's birthday.  I can't remember what she originally asked for but she spotted my pink zebra cake and changed her mind.  Of course this was a few days before she needed and I didn't have the right fondant or dyes to make sure I got a true Tiffany Blue colour.  So I sent Mr. T off to the Bulk Barn as I knew they had this colour premade.  For lack of a better term, the fondant sucks!  The texture is so different from FondX and it just doesn't roll out as nicely.  Also, I should have made the bow more than 12 hours in advance, but I didn't have the time. Lesson learned though Madonna, I will not go for second best again. :) This was a 6" 3 layer chocolate cake with chocolate fudge icing.  Yummy!

This for Nelson's 10th birthday his request was for a Smash Brothers cake, in particular the character Mega Man.  I had to ask Mr. T to educate me on what and who Smash Brothers were.  I had no idea.  Thankfully, there is always Google. This was an 8" 3 layer vanilla cake with buttercream filling.  No fondant covering here.  Had to use my not so great skills at covering the cake smoothly with icing in the colour blue of Mega Man.  His head is on the top and around the base of the cake I did 10 different symbols representing various characters from the game.

My bride, Maria from last weekend asked me to make a cake for another store down in the beaches,  Cold Turkey  with their logo.  Originally I was going to have this cake done and delivered last night but then our plans fell through for today so I had more time to do the cake. This was a 9 x 13 two layer chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I made the cake last night with the intention of cutting out all the decorations.  Instead I went to bed early and got up early.  I completely underestimated how long it would take me to do the logo.  Thankfully the cake wasn't needed until later in the afternoon.  Everything but the juice.com was traced and individually cut out and then pieced together. We all delivered it down to the beaches so we could enjoy an early dinner at the GOOF (a.k.a. the Garden Gate Chinese Restaurant) which is just across the street.

My last cake of the weekend.  It has been so hectic, I am so glad it is a 3 day weekend, well actually 4 day for me since I took Friday as a vacation day but that hardly counts as a vacation day!  For today, it was nice just to focus on one cake. This was a 3 layer 8" pumpkin spice cake with maple cream cheese icing.  The perfect cake for fall. For me, cream cheese icing is very hard to get a perfectly smooth covering where no dark spots are showing of the cake unless the icing is super thick.  Even then it has a tendency to start to droop as it it is not as thick as the butter cream.  Instead I try to work with it so I just took an offset spatula and spun the cake around slowly with the spatula pressed to the icing moving up in a spiral pattern.  Very quick and easy to do for a rustic look.  I scattered some fondant leaves on the top in various fall colours and some pumpkins around the bottom. I took this to my great aunt's for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was so much fun.

I was so excited to do Maria's wedding cake or cakes rather.  I even went out and bought 12" round cake pans, something I swore I would never do, but I am so glad I did! Each tier is a different flavour and with that I did 4 dozen mini cupcakes in each of the four flavours.  I bought these silver trays at the Dollarama.  They fit 4 dozen mini cupcakes perfectly.  All the liners were silver foil as well. I made little place cards identifying the flavours.  Thankfully it was a cool night as I was able to store them sealed on the balcony because there definitely wasn't room in the fridge! To deliver the cake I put the bottom two tiers, chocolate and vanilla together.  I was worried by doing a 12" cake that it would take a long time for the centre to bake and outside would be dry.  However, my chocolate cake recipe did not fail!  I did a double recipe and got the two 12" layers and 4 dozen mini cupcakes out of it.  I did the same for the vanill

My first groom's cake!  I'm so excited.  I've been wanting to do one for so long.  Maria, the bride knew exactly what she wanted as the groom's cake.  They own  The Ecig Flavourium  and this is the groom's favourite hexohm box. This was a 10" coconut lime cake that I cut in half to stack together to form the box.  The neck was made with two cupcakes.  Splattering the "blood" was a lot of fun, messy, but fun.  I love this picture of the cake.  It's far better than the one I took at home before we went out to deliver everything. I wasn't really impressed with the recipe I used for the coconut lime.  It was more like a pound cake texture than "normal" cake.  At least the cream cheese filling was good! Next time, I will go back to my stand by recipe.  Don't mess with what works!  Lesson learned.

I'm so excited that I got to do my first Frozen themed cakes for sisters Chloe and Sophie.  Each cake is a 3 layer 6" cake with butter cream filling.  Their mom gave me some figurines to add to the cake, thankfully.  I could have replicated Olaf, but Elsa and Anna, especially with this weekend's craziness it wouldn't have been pretty. I admit I am a bad parent, I've only seen the movie once and didn't even realise there was a Frozen Fever.  I had no idea what snowgies were.  Chloe's cake was all vanilla but each layer was a different colour; purple, teal and white. Sofie's cake and one layer of chocolate, then purple and teal.  Snowflakes and sunflowers went around each cake. When their mom came to pick them up I realised I only had one 8" cake box.  Ack!  Fortunately I was able to find another box that actually worked out better as it was taller and I could cover most of the cake.

As a last minute add on to the wedding I'm doing this weekend I was asked to do a cake for the rehearsal dinner for the bride's sister and brother-in-law.  Why not?  What was one more cake at this point?  Her request was chocolate and that it said Happy Anniversary.  She thought it was their 15th anniversary and I had it cut out ready to put on the cake and fortunately I saw on Facebook that it was actually their 16th. My favourite cake.  I did a 3 layer 8" cake filled and covered in my chocolate icing.  I added the rosettes with a little purple and white heart on each one.  Miss E happily licked the bowl for this icing. Mr T and Miss E delivered the cake on the Danforth for me in Greek town. While I got to work on the next cake order.

This long weekend I took on a crazy amount of orders: 9 cakes, 16 dozen mini cupcakes and 2 dozen standard cupcakes.  It's Miss E's birthday and it doesn't even include her cake. I had to make a spreadsheet to make sure I had all the ingredients I needed.  I forgot to include the icing sugar, cream cheese and pumpkin puree in this picture.  I will need 40 eggs, 4kg sugar, 10lb butter, a 10lb tub of Fondx, 7kg of icing sugar and 31 cups of flour. I also made up a timesheet from now until the cake is delivered on Saturday afternoon.  Wish me luck! Update:  I had all the ingredients I needed, only dropped 1 egg on the floor, took a 20 minute nap mid Friday afternoon and Saturday night I was asleep by 10pm.

Noah is the first of the Scarborough gang to turn 10.  I can't believe they are entering their 2nd decade.  For this momentous first two digit birthday his request was Minecraft.  Miss E thought that was really cool as she has finally joined this bandwagon. In theory you'd think that doing a Minecraft cake would be easy to do.  It's just squares.  A lot of squares; 469 to be exact.  Fortunately I have little square plunger cutters that make it a lot easier to do.  Cutting these with a ruler and pizza cutter would not have been pretty for the Type A side of me. I made a 2 layer 8" vanilla cake with vanilla butter cream as per the birthday boy's request.  Covered it in blue fondant for the sky. If you look closely the front says NOAH in black blocks.  The TNT is Miss E's favourite part of the cake.  Should I be worried?  I still don't quite get this game. Originally I had planned to do three rows of tiles around the base of the cake but then