Cake Endeavours

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.