Cake Endeavours

This is the 2nd cake for my coworker that Mr T is on his way to deliver and on time! I made a couple of these last year and forgot how much of a pain it is to make these pine cones!  Fortunately, this was the most stressed out I got this year. This cake is a 3 layer 8" cake with chocolate filling.  The pine cones are made from fondant egg shaped balls, then covered in sliced almonds.  They are very finicky to "glue" on.  You can use melted chocolate or water.  Either way, you need very little otherwise the almond keeps slipping off.  Mr T had to go to several stores to find the fresh rosemary.  But the cake came together just as expected. Now we're off to enjoy the Christmas festivities.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

When my co-worker asked me to do a cake for her son's birthday with a plumber theme I first sent her a picture of a plumber's butt cake.  I thought it was hilarious but not what she was going for.  Before I would show her a picture of the cake I knew she would want me to make I watched a few YouTube videos first to make sure it was possible.  Ha!  Of course she loved it.  Her son is doing his apprenticeship to become a plumber. I swore that this Christmas I would not be running around getting everything done at the last minute so Mr T and I both took the week off before the school break.  This way by today, Christmas Eve, it could be be pretty relaxing.  All of the presents are wrapped, all the food is prepped and Miss E is already at my parents' enjoying getting things ready for tonight's festivities.  Me, I was I able to enjoy finishing off this cake and the next one to post.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing this cake. This is an 8" two layer vanilla cake with

I made two dozen cookies and cream cupcakes for Miss E's school's bake sale for the holiday concert tonight.  Lots of red icing; just in case they didn't have enough energy. :) Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the concert.  Mr T's parents picked me up from downtown; it took them an hour to get me and then it took us 7 hours to get back to our place thanks to the snow!  We were at a complete standstill for almost two hours because of one hill with 3 lanes where two lanes were blocked by trucks that could not get up the hill.  What a disaster! Thankfully, the cupcakes were a hit and Mr T was able to attend the concert and take Miss E out for dinner while we stared at cars.

It's hard to believe that 3 years have gone by already since Maria and Dave started their business venture.  This year's celebration cake included a big 3 made out of Rice Krispies.  I love how my friends like to throw in a challenge every so often so I don't get too complacent. For the big 3 I made a double batch of Rice Krispie squares with some orange dye and pressed it into a 9" by 13" pan to cool.  I took a template and steak knife to cut out the 3.  I leveled off the bottom slightly so that it could stand.  Fingers crossed that it stays standing! The cake itself is a two layer 9 by 13 chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I had once chance to get the logo on centred and completely blew that!  So I added the extra decorations to offset it; to make it look like I meant to do that. I made 6 dozen mini cookies & cream cupcakes covered in orange buttercream icing and dipped in coarse sugar to look like snow. Mr T was kind enough to deliver

For this cake I was given cart blanche on the decorating. They knew it was going to be a girl so I went with doing pink roses in vanilla buttercream icing.  I had just enough icing to cover the cake! This cake was a two layer 10" round; half chocolate/half vanilla flavoured.  I'm always pleasantly surprised when both layers are the same height and I don't have to do any trimming. I cut out the letters the night before and while they were still soft carefully stuck a toothpick in so that I was able stand the letters up. To hide some of the gaps in the icing I added some fondant flowers in white, pink and yellow. I love how this cake turned out.  So sweet!