Cake Endeavours

 Here's a third grad cake for someone in my St. Paul's family.  I'm so honoured to be asked to do these cakes!  I love being able to help celebrate these special moments.  Alex is graduating from grade 8.  He requested vanilla flavour with buttercream icing.  Though I did add salted caramel icing as filling for some extra flavour.   I love how the two tones of icing worked out.  Though the icing was not cooperating very nicely in wanting to smooth out the way I wanted.  Grrr!  I used edible gold leaf for the first time for the decoration around the cake.  It was fun to work with; using a dry paint brush helped a lot. Mr. T and I took this cake out to Bowmanville tonight and then swung by to say hello to my parents.  For a Thursday night the traffic was pretty nuts!  The drive back was smooth at least.  Got back before lane closures for construction work. Congratulations Alex! "}

 This cake was for another St. Paul's graduate.  Eliza graduated with the Gold Medal in her graduating class for top marks in Disability Studies.  Inclusion is her passion for all people.   This cake was a three layer chocolate cake with salter caramel icing.  A popular choice these days!   For the cake topper I coloured a piece of 80lb paper with Copic makers in a rainbow pattern then cut everything out on my Cricut Air machine.   Eliza also enjoys her candy I was told so I added some Oreo cookies, wafer straws, fuzzy peaches (which I remember being a lot bigger!), mini M&Ms and tropical flavoured Swedish berries.  I fancied them up with some edible gold paint. The little grey car is for Eliza's actual car I made from fondant along with the gold heart to symbolize her big heart and her gold medal from school. Congratulations Eliza!

My church, St. Paul's United in Bowmanville recently held a virtual auction.  I donated a cake to be auctioned off.  The winner could choose the flavour and decoration.  Heather's mom had the winning bid and promptly ordered a cake to celebrate Heather's graduation. Heather's request was for a chocolate cake with salted caramel filling and icing.  A personal favourite combination of mine.  I cut out in vinyl and paper from my Cricut Air machine the giraffe (a request from Heather) and added a graduation cap, Trent University logo and the lettering.  I had Mr. T go out to Bulk Barn to find me the chocolate rocks that I sprinkled on the top of the cake (over the dirt, a.k.a. crushed Oreos) and set around the base as well. The scroll, trowel and book I made out of fondant.  On the book I added a few archaeology quotes: "History may be accurate, but archaeology is precise." "Archaeology holds all the keys to understanding who we are and where we come from....