Cake Endeavours

This cake was an 8" and 6" tiered chocolate cake.  For the poodle skirt I just draped the purple fondant over the cake and left it as is instead of smoothing it out to wrap around the cake. For the cake topper I used my Cricut machine and the Nifty Fifties cartridge to create the Happy 75 sign as homage to Route 66.

Remember at Christmas when I swore I would never to mini cakes again?  My coworker, Clover, convinced me to make her some for this weekend.  I am swearing again to never make these again.  They are such a pain to do! I made a dozen of these vanilla 2" cakes.  Covering them in fondant is not easy.  I even had to double layer a purple one because the fondant started split and I couldn't get the first layer off.  Making the bows was actually pretty easy to do and I love how they turned out, I do love the polka dot cakes as well. They took a lot longer than I had planned to decorate but they got done.:)

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!

For this cake I was asked to do a 6" 2 layer vanilla with a dozen cupcakes.  of course it had to be purple, dark purple.  I wasn't messing with trying to dye the fondant and instead bought it predyed.  Makes life so much easier.   I love doing these shoes on cakes.  They are so much fun.  I surprise myself sometimes on how well these turned out.  Ha! For the cupcakes I cut out 2 1/2 inch circles and then added a black fondant bow on top.  I had a template for the bows to make sure that they were all the same size and uniform.   This really wasn't for Day's 40th birthday, it was actually her 49th.  No one ever said we couldn't repeat a birthday!

It's my 250th blog post!  I'm so impressed with myself that I've kept it up.  Never thought that when I took the Wilton intro cake decorating course nearly six years ago that I would ever be making cakes for family, friends and sometimes strangers on a regular basis.  It's my hobby that keeps me sane, most of the time. This past weekend I was honoured to make a cake for a granddaughter of my before and after school babysitter.  My brother and I had some amazing birthday cakes made by her when we were kids.  My personal favourite was my Strawberry Shortcake cake.   The request was for a mini mouse cake in chocolate.  I made a 2 layer 8" cake with chocolate filling.   I decided on pink over red for the decoration.  I love how the pinks turned out on the cake.  It's so hot in our condo that the bow was pretty dried out within a few hours. A very cute cake I must say. :)

Yesterday I went to a baby shower for one of Mr T's cousins up in Barrie.  It was fun to see his family for Miss E to spend time with them.  I was so excited to make the cake for the bee themed party. I pinned this  Bee Cake  on Pinterest to emulate.  I thought it was so sweet.  The whole cake was vanilla with buttercream filling with an 8" and 6" tier. The little bees were super easy to make.  I bought a silcone mold from  Flour Confections .  After they hardened a bit I took a yellow edible marker and coloured the body of the bee; then added black stripes.  At midnight on Saturday I was not in the mood to make the black balls around the base of each tier.  Fortunately I found this perfect ribbon in my scrapbooking supplies and two minutes later I was done.

This year for Erika's birthday the theme was spa day.  A group of 6 year old girls getting to have in house spa treatment.  Her mom asked for a zebra cake to go with a giant shoe chair with a zebra print on it that was part of the spa day theme.  I found this fantastic tutorial:  How to Make a Pink Zebra Cake .  I even used the recipe provided. I love, love, love how this cake turned out.  It was so much fun to make.   I'll update the blog later when I get a picture of a slice of cake to see how the zebra print turned out.  Can't wait! Update: Picture of cake slice.  Turned out really well.  This is a picture of the top layer.  The bottom layer has lots more "stripes".

I was so excited to be asked to make this cake.  I did Ruba's wedding cake back in June and now she's expecting a baby.  Last Saturday Ruba dropped off the results of her ultrasound revealing if the baby was a girl a boy.  The envelope was sealed.  I was going to be the only one who knew the results.  So cool.  I am so glad I only had to keep this in for a week as I am horrible at keeping secrets. Well, ones that are good news secrets! Every time I wanted to say something to someone I was worried if I said anything to anyone that everyone would know and it would get back to the family just like in the story The King of Togo Togo .  The story was on one of the Shell (gas station) cassettes that we got in the 80's.  I remember listening to it a lot in the car on our trip out to Vancouver in 1986.  The king has two horns and keeps it a secret.  I forgot who he tells, but that person just couldn't keep it in.  So he went far outside ...

Vicky's sister-in-law ordered this cake as a surprise.  Vicky is a co-worker of mine and I have done several cakes for her before.  It was really hard not to say something at work last week!  The request was for silver and blue with shoes.  The bottom tier is vanilla with butter cream icing and the top tier is coconut lime with lime butter cream icing, Vicky's favourite. The bow on top barely made it on.  It completely came apart when I went to put it on the cake.  I was all set to go without the cake, but I gave it a try putting it back together and was completely surprised that it was able to go back together and stay together.   For the kids I made a dozen Oreo cupcakes.

It's my 100th post!  Woot! I was very excited to make this cake for Pat's 60th birthday party.  I think her daughter booked me before Christmas.  So, I had lots of time to plan.  You'd think that would work in my favour.  The cake was to be a two tiered cake.  The bottom was a giraffe print, the top red with shoes and bow on top.  The flavour was to be strawberry.  I nudged Meghan to go with a chocolate cake on the bottom and salted caramel icing. This is a fairly long post, so, I won't force you to read or scroll through before getting to the pictures. Fast forward to Thursday night, while finishing the  Spotted Turtle Cake I baked the cakes. I was so proud of myself for being organised.  Friday evening before heading out to wine night I was all set to make the loops for the bow as they needed to dry over night.  I was so sure that I had an unopened 4lb tub of black fondant but after searching for twenty minutes I ...

This was a request from a co-worker for her sister's birthday.  The design is from the Wilton website.  The cake is the Perfect Chocolate Cake recipe.  This was my first time using gumpaste with the fondant to make a stronger bow.  It dries a lot faster than fondant alone which is great for someone like me who's not very good at planning ahead.

The idea for this cake came from the Wilton website.  I love this cake; it's so adorable.  I made it for a very sweet 2 year old girl.  I added sprinkles to the cake batter for some more whimsy.  

My first endeavour with 3D fondant.  The bow turned out really good for my first effort.  Really important to make this several days in advance so that the fondant can harden.