Cake Endeavours

For this sweet cake I pulled out piping tips that I don't use very often to make the very large sunflower on the top.  There was a lot of icing on the top of this cake; at least an inch thick, probably more.   The ombre effect on the sides of the cake turned out nicely!  For the centre of the sunflower I used chocolate icing for some extra flavour. Cake: 8" 2-layer vanilla with rainbow sprinkles and buttercream icing, lots of it!

This year my mom had a milestone birthday, which we're not allowed to discuss.  Ha!  So, instead I made sure she had her own special cake.  She's not a major cake fan but she does enjoy red velvet.  Mostly because it's a vessel to cream cheese icing. Originally, I had planned to cover the 6" 3 layer cake in rosettes, but I didn't have enough icing.  Grr! I changed my plans to have the rosettes on the top only.  I ended up adding the crumbs over the icing on the sides because I couldn't get a thick enough covering and the crumbs were coming through.  The more I played with it the more the crumbs showed through.  Sometimes, it's just best to go with the flow!

We had an impromptu family dinner midweek to celebrate Grandma Winnie's birthday at her favourite restaurant, A-One Delights Chinese Buffet in town.  She loves lemon cake, so I made a 4 layer 6" lemon cake with cream cheese icing.   There were 10 of us at the restaurant and we still had leftovers.  With the leftover cream cheese icing I coloured it pink and green to decorate the top.  Grandma's favourite colour is pink.  Grandma Winnie with Miss E. :)  Hope we can all look as good as she does at 95!

My director's daughter threw a surprise party for her today and I volunteered to bring the cake.  She was definitely surprised! Meaghan had sent me a picture of what kind of cake they were looking for to go with their Hawaiian theme.  Last night I made the decorations.  The flowers were painted with diluted food colouring to make them look like watercolour flowers and leaves. This was a 9 x 13 cake that was half chocolate and half vanilla flavoured.  Then covered in turquoise coloured fondant. I don't often do slab cakes; I always forget how annoying the corners are to do.  Whether it's with icing or fondant they can be such a pain.  It's so important to get the icing as square as possible otherwise the fondant over top will look wonky.  This one came out pretty good.  Regardless, the birthday girl enjoyed it. :)

I was asked to make this cake for Lina's daughter's 23rd birthday.  This is only my 2nd time doing a naked cake.  A naked cake is a cake without a full coating of icing or fondant.  It is  basically a crumb coat.  For this cake I a three layer 8" chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling.  First, I leveled off the three layers, then piped the white butter cream around the top edge of two layers to form a dam for the chocolate filling.  I let them set in the fridge for about 15 minutes.  Once set I added the chocolate filling and covered in icing.  It was so strange to be done at that point.  I just had to add the flower. The flower is made out of fondant; made a few days in advance starting with darker fuchsia to lighter to give it an ombre affect.  I added a dab of icing underneath to offset it slightly. Mr. T was kind enough to deliver out to Brock St. where conveniently a 7-Eleven was close by again so that he coul...

It's been a while since my lovely co-worker Clover sent me a picture and said that she wanted me to make it.  Of course, it's never a simple cake.  She likes to challenge me.  Especially covering a chocolate cake in white fondant in the middle of a heat wave... For this 6" cake I made five layers filled with chocolate filling,  The cake was over 6" tall.  Not easy to cover in fondant.  Thank goodness there were lots of decorations to cover up some of the wrinkles.  Next time, I would cover it differently.  Rather than rolling out one big circle and draping over the top I would do it in two parts; 6" disc for the top and then a 6" x the circumference to have one seam at the back.  It could easily be covered by the dripping gold.  The roses were made a few days in advance to allow them to dry out.  This morning we dropped off Miss E to catch her bus to camp.  She's going for a month and is super excited.  We had t...

This weekend St. Paul's celebrated their organist's 40th anniversary.  He is an amazing musician! I am always awed to watch him play the organ and the piano.  Needless to say I was more than thrilled to be able to make this cake for him. This is a 6" four layer chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling.  I covered in white fondant.  To mark the white keys I used a straight edge and pressed in about very 3/4 of an inch.  Then I added the black keys on top. Mr. Dewell loves a big statement flower so I made the biggest one that I could and then brushed it with gold shimmer dust.   I also made 10 dozen cupcakes for the congregation to enjoy 5 dozen vanilla and 5 dozen chocolate.  Mr. Dewell got to take the cake home. 

Every once in a while I will do a cake with full multi colour butter cream decoration.  For my family's Thanksgiving dinner I volunteered to make a dessert.  I made an 8" three layer pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese filling.  After baking the cake the most tedious task is preparing all the icing to do the decorating. Russian tips are not as easy as they look.  For some tips the icing has to be the right consistency and temperature or they come out like blobs.  I learned this the hard way.  Once you do get the right consistency you have a small window get out as many flowers as you can before they come out as blobs again! Definitely take the time to practice as each tip works differently.  In the end I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Regardless the cake was yummy and was shared with family.

This was my 2nd cake for the weekend and my first all nighter in a very long time.  By the time both cakes were picked up I was down for the count taking a nap!  Though I did get through the first season of The Good Life, the first season of Mom and the movie Joy while I was doing these cakes.  I think I confused the cats.  They didn't know if they should be sleeping or chasing each other. Anyway, for this cake both the 8" and 6" tier were blue suede velvet.  Essentially red velvet with cream cheese filling but instead of red dye I used blue.  Then I covered both tiers in white fondant. For the multicoloured flowers I cut out one of each colour daisy then used two of each coloured petals around circles I had cut out for the larger ones; for the smaller ones it was one of each colour.  Originally I started out doing the petals free hand but that was very time consuming.  Thankfully I was only one flower in before I switched direction. ...

For this cake I was asked to make it gluten free.  Normally I only do a chocolate gluten free cake but I took the plunge and tried out a vanilla recipe.  I thought the cutoffs tasted pretty good.  Fingers crossed everyone else did too. The bottom tier was an 8" two layer gluten free chocolate cake with butter cream filling.  The top tier was a 6" two layer gluten free vanilla cake with butter cream filling.  I had originally made the 50 out of gum paste and fondant.  It was more of a yellowish gold so I added the little yellow flowers to match.  However, when I went to add the 5 on the cake I broke it. :(  Thankfully, I pulled out my Cricut machine and made a topper out of cardstock. 

I've known the bride and her daughter since I was 5 years old.  So, I was extremely honoured to be asked to make this cake for Myra and Doug.  We decided on a three tiered cake with buttercream icing to cover the cake. I was off last week on vacation so I was able to spend all day yesterday taking my time to make the roses out of fondant.  Miss E was home with me and watched some episodes of Friends and Uncle Buck.  It was lots of fun and so nice not to rush. For the roses the first few layers were slightly darker than the outer layers to give some depth to make them more realistic. The bottom tier was fake.  It was a 10" round 4" high styrofoam dummy.  To make the ruffled affect I used a piping bag and rose tip and piped it on haphazardly around the dummy.  I did this tier last once the cake was put together to cover up the edge of the 2nd tier. On the top tier I placed the roses with some extra icing to prevent them from moving ...

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!

This cake was booked over a year ago. I had to go searching for the original paper with the details on it when it came time to make the cake and cupcakes. Mr T delivered the cake and 8 dozen cupcakes tonight to  Krumbs  for the wedding tomorrow.  I left a space on the top of the cake so that they could place the cake topper on without hurting any of the flowers. The bottom tier is actually an 8" Styrofoam dummy.  It was my first time covering a Styrofoam dummy.  It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.  This made the cake top heavy!  The 6" top tier is a two layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling. Congratulations Jarrod and April!

For this cake I did an 8" tier and a 6" tier both in flourless chocolate.  The cake is more like a brownie.  It's really good but not a light dessert!  I haven't ventured passed this recipe for gluten free, mostly because they call for ingredients that I don't normally keep on hand. Decorating this cake was so much fun.  I love these flowers and I love purple.  I added about an inch of silver beaded ribbon around each tier first, then started with the largest flowers first.  They had their own topper to put on the cake so I added only a few on the top and had them sweep down the front and to the side.  I finished it off with some silver dragees and purple dots.

This cake was a last minute request that I was able to squeeze in for a surprise party. As this was a last minute cake, I had to work with what I had on hand.  The ask was that the cake be black and white with lots of silver bling.  This was a 10" and an 8" two tier brown butter and salted caramel cake. I only had the 2" black ribbon from the previous cake so I folded it in half and wrapped some silver beading around it.  This is the only part that is not edible. I was able to make the flowers the night before so that they had time to dry out.  I should have done the silver lettering too as it was still pretty flimsy.  Originally the "50" was supposed to be silver too but both numbers fell apart when I lifted them off the drying rack.  I went with black which I liked better in the end anyway. Normally I would have used a black or white board but only had silver on hand for this cake.

Saturday my cousins had a surprise anniversary party for their parents' 30th wedding anniversary.  Of course we arrive and are walking with the cake when the bride and groom pull up in their driveway.  We tried to discreetly turn around as if we would suddenly disappear but we were spotted; thankfully not before they saw the reserved parking sign for the bride and groom. The theme of the party was black and white.  Originally we had the brilliant idea of replicating their wedding cake but in looking at the picture we figured it was best to leave 1986 back in 1986.  Instead we went with the colour theme. For this cake I did three different flavours.  For the 10" base it was chocolate with chocolate filling, then lemon with cream cheese filling for the 8" tier and for the top brown butter cake with salted caramel filling. I used a two inch satin ribbon band around each tier with 3 big flowers I made the day before on the side.  I cut out the 30 by ha...

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to make an anniversary cake for me and Mr. T but instead my coworker snuck in a request at the last minute and I couldn't refuse.  Thankfully she wanted the same flavour and size so I already had the batter ready to go. This was a 6" 2 layer chocolate cake with chocolate filling.  I need to practice adding a band of fondant around a cake.  It is very tedious and not good for a Type A personality to work on.  Good thing with the right lighting and the right camera angle I can make it look like the band is on fairly straight! While we didn't get our own anniversary cake we did enjoy the cutoffs. :)

I was asked to make this cake similar to the one I made for  Pat's retirement  only a bit smaller for a bridal shower.  This was an 8" 2 layer lemon cake with cream cheese filling. I never tire doing flowers.  We're still in the middle of recovering from the renovations in the kitchen that I can't find my regular backdrop or my new piece I got for Christmas.  The new counter and back-splash will have to do.

I was so happy to be asked to do Pat's cake for her surprise retirement party.  The request was for a lemon cake with cream cheese filling, to have flowers on it and for it to say "happy retirement Pat" With my kitchen still pretty much in disarray some things are still missing in action like my black back drop for taking pictures and my supply of cake boards.  This cake was decorated on top of my large wood stand.  The cake is a 2 layer 10" cake. I love doing flowers.  They can be time consuming but are very relaxing to do.  Especially while binge watching Scandal! :) All the best to you Pat.  Enjoy this next chapter where every day is Saturday!

The kitchen renovations are in full swing.  It's amazing how it can take over the home and being in a condo it has completely taken over every room in the place.  So, when my mom asked about cupcakes for the choir concert at her church she offered to make the cupcakes if I would do the decorating.  No problem! Mom was able to get 3 dozen cupcakes from her recipe.  I made a daisy and a little lady bug for each cupcake.  My mom got to watch for the first time the process in decorating a cupcake.  She had no idea how time consuming it can be.  I think she has a new appreciation for it.   Only doing the decorating is great!  There is way less clean up to deal with. :)