Cake Endeavours

Celebrating Mr. Dewell's 45 years of being the music director at St. Paul's.  I am so honoured to make his cake and cupcakes to celebrate the church's 188th anniversary. Cake: 6" 3-layer lemon cake with cream cheese filling covered in fondant. Cupcake tower! Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Chocolate with chocolate mocha icing. Lemon with cream cheese icing Cookies N' Cream with vanilla buttercream icing.  

At work we had a potluck fundraiser for CIBC's Run For the Cure and I of course volunteered to bring cupcakes.  You can tell how humid it was by how shiny the chocolate icing is.  Somewhere I have a chocolate mold for the ribbons but for the life of me could not find them so I improvised and made "ribbon" out of strips of pink fondant.

I was asked to make a cake for the volunteer appreciation dinner for Black Dog Rescue .  I decided on Cookies & Cream for this 10" two layer cake. As the name of the organization is Black Dog Rescue I went with doing black silhouettes of different dogs then adding paw prints in different colours. I did seven different dogs around the cake.  My favourite is the scruffy dog above the logo.

For Miss E's school fun fair this year I thought that these cupcakes would be perfect for the bake sale. These were actually pretty easy to do.  I baked two dozen vanilla cupcakes, covered them in vanilla butter cream icing then dipped them in graham cracker crumbs to look like sand.  For the palm trees I took pretzel sticks and laid them on waxed paper.  Melted green candy melt and poured it over each stick to look like palm leaves.  Though most of the palm leaves looked pretty abstract.  Before they set I sprinkled green sprinkles over them and set in the fridge for 10 minutes.  Once set I stuck each "tree" into the "sand".

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.

We're coming to the end of this year's campaign for RFTC.  As much fun as it is, I am tired of all the baking!  Only one more bake sale to go after this.  This week I went with lemon bars as requested by one of my colleagues. Luckily we had enough eggs and lemons at home as I didn't realise how many would be required until I got home.  I made a double batch which meant 12 eggs and 12 lemons went into it.  I didn't have enough sugar so Mr. T went down the convenience store to get me some.  That convenience store has saved me so many times. I wrapped these up individually and topped them with a pink butterfly sticker and wrote thanks on them.  The inside pieces do not travel so well, they got a little squished on the subway ride down.  Next time I would put them in a container before I put them into a cooler back, but they still managed to sell. This was my first time make lemon bars and they are so good.  Reminds of after church gathe...

I went to make these brownies and realised I didn't have the recipe.  I thought my mom had written it in the recipe book she had given me but nope.  I grew up with this recipe and they are so good.  Fortunately, my mom was home when I called and asked her to send me the recipe.  She was running out the door and didn't have time to read it out to me.  I then reminded her that all she had to do was take a picture of it and send it to me on my phone.  Sometimes, technology is really amazing! I made a double batch of brownies and wrapped them up individually.  We didn't sell out this time so I had Mr. T. take the remaining to his work and they sold like wildfire.  They asked when he was going to bring in more.  You just never know how a sale is going to go.

I love making these cupcakes.  They are really a crowd favourite for all ages.  I brought in 6 dozen of them for our bake sale today.  Along with the "crack" fudge we sold out of everything making $250 in profit for RFTC. These are super easy to make.  All you have to do is line the muffin baking sheet with the cupcake liners and drop an Oreo cookie on the bottom of each one.  I make my favourite vanilla batter and fill the liners as normal and bake.  After they cool, add buttercream icing on top, then a mini Oreo, followed by Oreo crumbs.  Yummy!

Last week I made some strawberry rhubarb sauce.  A lot of it.  It is so yummy.  It's my favourite combination fruit, even though I'm not sure what category rhubarb actually falls under.  I had fresh Ontario strawberries and rhubarb that was going to go bad if I didn't do something with them right away. I decided to go with sauce.  It was super easy to make.  I took 8 cups each of strawberries and chopped up rhubarb, zest of half a lemon plus 2 T of lemon juice, 1.5 cups of sugar and mixed it all up in a bowl.  I let it sit for a few hours then I poured it into a pan and added 2 T of cornstarch.  I cooked it on medium until the rhubarb was soft.  Let it cool and then ran it through the blender.  SO GOOD!  It's great by itself, on toast or on top of cheesecake. Along with Clover's crack fudge (though it's not exactly a good idea to call it that at work, that's what we refer to it as) I made mini cheesecakes topped with the s...

These are amazing bars.  I was stumped on what to bake this week for the sale and Clover suggested these. I made two pans and Clover made two pans of fudge.  We were sold out within an hour.  Yay! I thought I had my own picture of these bars without the packaging but after too long searching I couldn't find one.  So, instead I'm using the picture from  Cookies and Cups .  This is where Pinterest lead me originally when I first made these a few years ago.  She has a very detailed step by step recipe on her website.  The most tedious part of this recipe is unwrapping the caramels.  Especially when you're doubling the recipe! I got up super early to package these this morning.  I have a box of waxed paper already cut to sandwich size wrapping that I rarely use.  I thought that this would be best way to package these buttery treats.  It worked really well.  

Last year my co-worker Clover and I were the champions for the fundraiser in our department.  To raise money we did a bake sale almost every week for several months.  CRAZY!!!  We swore we were not going to be the champions this year, but we would donate to any bake sales.  Ha!  We tried.  Oh well, so on to our first bake sale.  We moved to a new building last month, just across the street.  Some of our former floor mates rejoined us and we have to people as well.  We knew we could hit up lots of people to donate to a worthy cause for baked goods in return. Clover made her famous fudge which almost always sells out.  She's going to her grave with that recipe, I swear.  She found these adorable jars at the dollar store.  I think they were 4 for $2.50.   I made 3 dozen vanilla cupcakes.  I had made the raspberry mascarpone icing for a previous cake I had a lot leftover.  It was perfect for these cupcakes...

Today was Miss E's school fun fair.  I volunteered to do face painting and to donate cupcakes for the bake sale.  Miss E chose what she wanted me to do. You would think that this would be easy to do.  Take a piece of rainbow sour belt (from Bulk Barn), stick it in icing and place mini marshmallows around.  Let me tell you, it is tedious work.  The sour belts were so fresh so they didn't want to stay in the arc position.  The marshmallows I had to cut in half as they were too big.  Each cupcake got 7 pieces for each side.  This helped to keep the rainbows from flattening out.  Miss E was thrilled with the results, which is what counts.  All the cupcakes were sold.

Yesterday my old high school, BHS had a cake auction for Relay for Life.  My grade 8 English teacher (she was actually the core French teacher but I was in French immersion so I guess she was my "core" English teacher) asked me to do a cake to put in the auction.  As I mentioned in my Instagram post, who can say no to Mme Romanchuk?? I found this  cake  on Pinterest that I thought would be perfect.  It's French themed and in my school's colours.  I made a 3 layer 8" chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling.  I made the flowers on Sunday evening so that they had lots of time to dry.  After I covered the cake in fondant I rolled out more white fondant and traced the general shapes of the landmarks before painting on the details with slightly watered down black gel dye.  All the swirls were added with royal icing. The first landmark, the Eiffel Tower. The second, the Arc de Triomphe.  Didn't realise I didn't a full s...

I made these super delicious cookies from yet another find on Pinterest:  Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies .  I made a double batch and used the large ice cream scoop  and I think I got about 60 cookies from it. I also saw on Pinterest this amazing idea for packaging, CD/DVD paper envelopes.  They fit in perfectly.  I did put a square of waxed paper behind to help stop the grease from the butter from spreading.  I made the little thank you stickers to go on each of them. I will definitely be keeping this recipe handy.  It's great that you melt the butter first. That way you don't have to wait to bring the butter to room temperature before you start baking.

Another treat that I made for the Run For the Cure bake sale fundraising.  I love caramel corn and found this recipe on Pinterest:  Salted Caramel Popcorn .  It is super easy and so good. Now, we don't have an air popper so I used Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet White Popcorn and omitted adding the salt from the recipe.  I made 3 recipes and got 25 bags.  Next time I will try it with an air popper.  I hope it doesn't take away from the flavour! We sold Clover's crack fudge along with the caramel corn and sold out within 15 minutes!  It was awesome.

Today was bake sale day and we wanted to do something extra special.  I made 6 dozen pink velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  As a special surprise I put a Hershey's hug in the bottom of each one. I cut out 72 large daisies, 72 medium daisies and 72 black centres two nights before so they could harden.  Mr. T and Miss. E were kind enough to drive me downtown last night to drop them off so I wouldn't have to lug them on the subway.  I would go by myself but there is no where to park.  Mr. T doesn't mind doing the drive when there is no traffic.  We were able to get there and back in less time then it takes for me to commute in the morning.  GRR!! We have a fabulous floor and partners willing to support the cause every week.  I bought these great clear containers from  Creative Bag  in Pickering for individual take-away containers.  Another big hit with packaging.

This year my coworker, Clover (maker of the amazing fudge) and I are champions for our team to do fundraising for CIBC's Run For the Cure.  Almost every Thursday since mid July we have been having a bake sale.  A couple of weeks ago we did brownies and fudge. I made the brownies and Clover the fudge.  She also made the chocolate pink ribbons that are on each brownie. We like to go all out with the packaging too.  So I made 80+ two inch origami boxes for each piece to go in.  They were a big hit.  I used my mom's recipe that we have been enjoying since we were kids.  I can't imagine using any other recipe.

Yesterday Miss E's school hosted a fun fair.  It was a beautiful day.  Not a cloud in the sky.  I volunteered to do face painting for a few hours while Mr T took Miss E around to blow money on toys and candy she didn't need to raise money for the school.  It was a lot of fun.  I did a lot of butterflies and saw lots of smiles from the kids when I was finished. Both Mr T and I ended up with some wicked sun burns.  He on his freshly shaved head and me on my left arm.  We're quite a pair. For the fun fair, I also make a couple dozen rainbow cupcakes for the bake sale. Fortunately I was able to get an extra 1/2 dozen from the recipe so that we could sample some today and to allow me to get a picture of the inside of the cupcake.  I divided the batter into four containers and dyed one with electric pink, electric yellow, electric green and electric blue.  From the picture I could have used more electric green for the colour to stand out bet...

Miss E's school concert was last night. The parent council did a bake sale and the teachers organised a raffle to raise money for a family going through some hard times.  I donated cupcakes (pictured in a future post) for the bake sale and a cake for the raffle. I was excited to get to do a Christmas/winter themed cake of my own choosing.  I went with an 8" two layer cookies and cream cake.  I love my snowman. Miss E was super excited that I was doing a cake for her school.  She was disappointed that we didn't get to take it home though.  Ha!

A few months ago I donated a cake (or cupcakes) to the silent auction to raise funds for some co-workers who were taking part in the Weekend to End Women's Cancers.  The winner of the cake cashed in last week.  She ordered a cake for one of her co-worker's birthday that they were celebrating at their team meeting.  Their boss often refers to Tom as Tom Terrific, a cartoon from the 50s.  So, she asked me to make a Tom Terrific cake. I decided to stick with classic black and white with red accents for the decoration rather than doing Tom Terrific in colour.  The cake itself is an 8" two layer cookies and cream cake.   Normally, I Google the theme of the cake for inspiration and ideas from other cakes that are similar, but I could not find one Tom Terrific cake.  A first for me!