Cake Endeavours

For this cake Adam and his brother-in-law were each celebrating their first Father's Day and so a special cake was requested with a BBQ theme. The recipe I used for this cake:  Bailey's & Guinness Cake I followed the recipe for the cake, ganache and buttercream making it a 6 layer 8" cake.  For the grill and food I used fondant and shaped them appropriately.  They came together rather quick and easy.  To make them more realistic I used some food colouring with vodka (makes the food colour dry very fast and the alcohol evaporates).  Finally, added grill and char marks. Both fathers enjoyed the cake.  My father was super jealous.  Good thing his birthday is coming up so I know what flavour it will be.

For Mr. T's birthday as long as it's chocolate he's not picky about the decoration and extra flavour.  I had red icing left over from yesterday's cake so I added peanut butter to it as I know he loves peanut butter and chocolate combined.  I sent Miss down to the store to buy buttercups and whatever else she could find to add to the cake; she found Crispy Crunch which was a perfect pairing. This was a two layer 6" chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and filling.  I also added broken buttercups and Crispy Crunch between the layers.  For extra chocolate I added some ganache.  Cutest helpers to lick the beaters.  Even found candles to put on the cake, and matches! Miss E captured this picture perfectly for me. The cake was also enjoyed for breakfast the next morning by everyone. 

For some strange reason I always thought I didn't like German chocolate cake and never thought of making it.  For our 2nd annual Coles Family Oktoberfest Thanksgiving, I thought it would make a great addition to the spread of Oktoberfest themed food. Of course I turned to Pinterest to find a recipe and came upon  this recipe .  I didn't make any tweaks to it; simply followed the instructions.  Every component of this cake is delicious; the cake, filling and chocolate icing, they are all decadent.  The cake is so rich that I couldn't finish my piece.  Though I am sad that I didn't save it for later. 

Miss E had been asking me for a few years to do a galaxy cake for her.  Finally I bit the bullet and went for it.  I made the Perfect Chocolate cake with salted caramel filling and covered it as smoothly as possible in chocolate ganache. There a multitude of YouTube videos available to choose from to use as a tutorial and recipe.  It's a lot of prep work for 1 minute of work and for one shot!  It turned out pretty good.  In some light you could see that the topping was melting the chocolate a bit and it was coming through, otherwise I was pleased and most importantly Miss E loved it.  I was surprised that the covering added very little flavour to the cake, which is a good thing.  I saved the left overs of the glaze in the fridge to see if I can reuse it for a later date.  Stay tuned...

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....

I wish I had kept track of how many times I've made this cake in the last 20+ years.  It's the first cake I ever made for Mr T when we first started dating.  So of course for his birthday I had to make it for him.  I had one 8" layer in the freezer left over as extra from a previous cake that I needed to use up.  This cake ended up being a 4 layer cake instead of the usual 3.  I also double the icing recipe to account for the extra layer and I used it for filling between the 2nd and 3rd layer.  The other layers are filled with whipped cream. The cake was over 6' tall.  We were able to share the cake with lots of family and friends. Enjoy another year around the sun Mr T!

This Thanksgiving the "kids" took over and made it an Oktoberfest themed dinner.  This way no one was slaving in the kitchen while everyone else was mingling in the living room.  Fortunately it was a beautiful day and we got to hang out on the deck.  My contribution to the meal was Black Forest cake and apple strudel.  I would have preferred to use fresh cherries but they are out of season.  We had dinner at my parents' house and I didn't think a whipped cream covered cake would travel well so I assembled the cake once we got to their house.  There were chocolate flakes all over the kitchen.  Oops. :)

To celebrate Father's Day and my Mom's birthday I wanted to do something different.  I came across this  recipe  on Pinterest.  Over the top fun! To start off, I bake three 6" layers of chocolate cake as per the recipe.  Followed by the Nutella flavoured icing and then the ganache.  I added the toasted walnuts (they really do tasted amazing and completely different toasted!) and marshmallows into most of the ganache.  I save some ganache for dripping down the sides.    To assemble the cake I piped the icing around the top of the first two layers to form a dam.  Then added the ganache mix and stacked the layers.  After it set for a while in the fridge I covered the cake in the icing as smooth as I could get it. Finally topping the cake with the plain ganache and allowing it to drip down the sides.  To finish off the cake I piled the rest of the ganache mixed on top and then added more marshmallows and toas...

Today we had our Coles family Easter dinner and I thought that since it was pretty close to my cousin Josh's birthday that we would celebrate.  Especially because the whole family was together and it is a major milestone turning 30.  Oh to be 30 again! I wanted to do something big and over the top so I started with the idea of cheesecake as the filling.  Originally, I was going to do a very tall 5 layer 8" cake but then I thought it would be really difficult to cut.  I decided on a two tiered cake.   Each tier consisted of three layers, chocolate cake, cheese cake and chocolate cake.  Both were covered in a salted caramel icing.  Then I drizzled chocolate ganache and homemade caramel sauce over the top of each tier.  Added some more salted caramel icing topped with 30 Ferrero Rochers chocolates.    For the topper I cut out a 3 and 0 from card stock and laminated them then attached them to bamboo skewers.  Jos...

For Tim and his brother John's birthday this year I went with the traditional Perfect Chocolate Cake.  A 3 layer 8" chocolate cake with whipped cream filling covered in chocolate fudge icing.  This is the family favourite, so I couldn't go wrong.  I made the retro cake topper using Cricut Design Space.  The lettering and music notes are in black vinyl.  It's super easy to work with. Happy Birthday Tim and John!

For Mother's Day I made my mom one of her favourite cakes.  Really I think it's a vessel to the cream cheese icing.  This was a 3 layer 8" cake covered in cream cheese icing.  I added blueberries around the bottom as trim and some on top with some lemon zest. We had dinner at my brother's house.  It was delicious!  We then played a board game which was hilarious.  A great way to spend a Saturday evening with the family.

Made the Perfect Chocolate Cake for Tim's good friend for his birthday celebration.  Tried to do something different with the icing.  Not sure if I am a fan of the trim around the top but at least it went over well with the birthday boy.  Didn't affect the taste!  Ha!

Today we went out to Bowmanville to my home church, St. Paul's for a surprise flash mob to celebrate my mom's retirement as the junior choir director after 40+ years.  It was also the Mr. Dewell's 70th birthday party, the amazingly talented organist and family friend.  No matter how old I get I still can't call him by his first name. Anyway, I was making a chocolate cake for another order today and decided as a surprise to make a 6" cake for Mr. Dewell since I know he likes his chocolate.  The only problem was that I didn't have any baking chocolate but thanks to Miss E's suggestion we did have several really large Toblerone bars that I could use instead. Toblerone chocolate is very different to work with than baking chocolate.  It melts a lot faster.  I made some musical chocolates from a mold set and were almost impossible to get out because it doesn't get very hard.  Between each of the three layers I added some chopped up Toblerone.  The Toble...

For Miss E's 11th birthday she asked for an ice cream cake and a sleepover party.  Again we are celebrating her birthday late, but this time only a month later.  The sleepover was a great success and so was the cake. I made one layer of chocolate cake in an 8" round pan and sliced it in half.  I lined the pan with cellophane wrap and place one of half of the cake back in the pan.  I softened a litre of vanilla ice cream and mixed in chopped up Oreo cookies and Skor bits then spread it over the cake.  I placed the second half over the ice cream and covered in cellophane.  The cake was kept in the freezer until we were about to serve it. When we were ready to serve the cake I covered it in chocolate ganache, whipped cream and Oreo cookies.  Miss E loved her cake!

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!

Today we celebrated Easter with my Dad's side of the family in North York.  I volunteered to make the desserts (shocking, I know).   Cheesecake always goes over well with this family.  Normally I shy away from the no bake recipes and go all hardcore where you need to start at least a day in advance, but I had run out of time since I only started this morning on the desserts. I found this  recipe  on Pinterest and saw that it called for sweetened condensed milk and was intrigued.  I topped it off with fruit spread with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.  This was really good cheesecake!  I highly recommend trying this recipe, it is not your typical no bake cheesecake. For the second dessert I made a vanilla cake using the vanilla my parents brought back from the Dominican. This was a 3 layer 9" cake with buttercream filling and icing.  I decorated this pretty rustically with some multicoloured dragees.  Both de...

Mr T. turned 39 this year.  He was not impressed.  He really didn't want to celebrate his birthday.  But I still wanted to make him his own cake.  He works so hard and is such a tremendous help to me when I am baking.  I couldn't do it without him.  Making him a cake is the least I can do to thank him.  Besides, 39 is just a number!     Mr. T loves his doughnuts, so I went back to the theme of doing up a giant doughnut cake for his birthday.  Boston Cream is his favourite.  I used my French Vanilla recipe for the 2 8 inch layers, homemade vanilla pudding for the cream and a chocolate ganache for the top.  Mr. T was happy with his cake. :)

I became aware of this cake while watching YouTube one day and this  advertisement  came on first.  Instead of skipping the ad I watched the whole video on how to make this cake.  I had to make it.  I just needed the occasion to do it. We had the Sturgeon family Christmas the Monday before Christmas and so I volunteered to make this dessert.  It was a labour of love and a good thing I started the day before!  I bought the ginger crips from Costco.  They are in the baking area; little heart shaped cookies in a tub.  The cake had to travel with us from the city to the burbs so I didn't do decorating until we were at my parents'. I loved this cheesecake.  I would make the jam alone just to use on toast it was so good.  You can find the recipe at this link:  Dorie Greenspan's Raspberry-Cranberry Spiced Cheesecake .

Peanut butter and chocolate according to my bestest bud Lindsay is the perfect combination.  When I came upon this cake while browsing through Whisk Kid's amazing blog I knew I was going to make it for her birthday celebration. After realizing that the heaven and hell name came from two layers of angel food cake and devil's food cake I also came to the conclusion that it was hell to make and heaven to eat.  The layers of peanut butter mousse in between heaven and hell was totally worth the pain. I went into making this cake expecting to have to problem with having a smooth finished looking ganache. Ha!  Oh well.  I gave up that dream fairly easily after I started pouring it on.  Also, I would make two individual 9 inch layers for each cake rather than baking one 10" layer and cutting it in half after it's cooled.  Too many crumbs to deal with and the angel food cake sunk in the middle.