Cakes for April and May

What I enjoy most about my job (besides creating unique cakes and bring smiles to people’s faces), is getting actually the initial request for a cake.  The specific idea that someone wants brought to life in cake-form.  What I also find interesting is how sophisticated birthday cakes are getting (not like the rectangular slab cakes I grew up with) and what kids are now requesting….not just vanilla birthday cake (although this is still classic!)

Late last April into earlier this May I had a few birthday cakes and a first communion cake to work on.

My friend asked me to do a puppy themed cake for her son’s birthday.  The birthday party had cookie shaped like dog biscuits, and party plates were replaced with (new) doggy bowls.

Instead of doing a large 3D form, I opted for a 2D relief of a puppy.  All formed with yummy rice krispies.

I then simply painted on the spots and doggy paw prints.

She had also requested another birthday cake in May for her daughter’s 9th birthday.  A “Twilight” themed cake.  Twilight – as in the vampire books/ movies that are the craze among preteen girls.  Okay I’ll admit that I’ve watched the movie and have read all the books and I’m all for Team Edward…hmm I spoke too much…. anyways, moving on……

The birthday girl was all for Team Jacob (hence the little fondant wolf howling at the top the cake).

For the first communion cake, I was asked to create something with pink and purple flowers and white fondant covering the base.  I tried using my flower embossing templates to give dimension to the plain white background (in pictures it looks horrible because my camera is really really old!)

 

So many cakes…

I know it’s been ages since I’ve last written…. but I really have kept myself busy.  Honest!! Cakes and cupcakes a plenty!  And somewhere along the way I found out that I have gallstones, and so I’m taking some much-needed rest (although lingering near the oven).

So what have I been working on?

Well I have been creating several custom cakes.  The requests are coming in more frequently and much more challenging.  And I love it!

There was the Super Mario Cake….

This was also the first time that I got to whip out my airbrush machine and spray on the bright blue background against the buttercream fondant.  Everything was edible and handmade from the man-eating plants in the pipes to Mario himself.  (From what I heard, the little boy I made the cake for insisted that no one eat Mario for a good week or so.)

There was the Harry Potter Cake….

(sorry not my best photo since I used my iPhone for this shot).  Originally I had wanted to tackle making Lego figures of the Harry Potter game, but they kept falling and losing their shape, and so I decided on taking a few of the iconic images of the popular movie instead… The Gryffindor red and yellow scarf, Harry’s wand, Hedwig Harry’s faithful owl, the Sorting hat, Harry’s round glasses, the Golden Snitch and Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry as the main backdrop.

In May, one of my good friend’s turned 30th and for her birthday party I created one of my first pillow cakes.  Inspired specifically from her love for the princess Cinderella, this has got to be one of my favourite cakes!

The shoe is complete handmade and edible.

June is graduation month and my best friend’s little sister graduated from University.  To celebrate, I designed a graduation cake, complete with graduation cap, diploma, hard cover book and a stack of “essays” which made the base of the cake.

July proved to be a busy month also.  I have my darling little daughter’s 4th birthday where she insisted on a Rapunzel tower cake.  Seriously.  She looked at me and said she wanted a Rapunzel tower cake.  Sigh.  Diva at 4.  So I made it for her – what can I say about challenges … I don’t exactly run from them….

Crazy to think that a year ago is when I started this entire cake adventure with a castle cake and ice cream cone towers, to a single Rapunzel Tower cake that looks like this ….

The cake was the ground and the top of the tower.  The middle part I simply used PVC piping from Home Depot and covered it with fondant.  Viola!  She loved it.  I loved it too …

The following day, I had a baby shower for my husband’s cousin.  Their first child – so of course the gender of the baby is the great surprise that only having a baby can grant.

Everyone loved the little feet.

Of course I didn’t want to leave out the soon to be dad (just in case the cake was finished during the shower) so I baked up two standard cupcakes.  And I covered these in fondant faces.  Very fitting for a dad to be.

Then last week, in the midst of trying to rest with the pain of gallstones attacks (really not the best feeling in the world!) I had a simple request for 4 dozen cupcakes: chocolate, vanilla, red velvet and marble with banana cream.

I also had another request, from my sister this time, for a dozen red velvet cupcakes and an Erotic cake for her good friend’s bachelorette party.  Ahem…. yep, if your mind went into the gutter, you’re in the right spot.

Actually this was a fairly simple cake to make.  The details were simple – I stamped the lipstick stain using a stamp I bought at Michael’s with red gel food colour and used my edible gourmet pen to write on the “phone number” (it’s actually the date of the bachelorette party.  On the other side of the cake were a set of fuzzy handcuffs that I just piped on the detail.  Yah, it’s still hard not to blush looking at this cake….

Somewhere along the way I came upon a contest in Threadcakes.  It’s a fantastic contest that has cakes designed in 2D or 3D on designs based on T-shirts from Threadless.  And the entire process from start to finish (ie. eating it!) is captured in pictures.  It took me a while to decide on something – the list of designs is huge!!  But I eventually chose the design “Work of the Genius”

Which is a deconstructed bo-bomb character from Super Mario Bros.

The entire process plus pictures can be found through the link here.  I’m very proud of it, especially after viewing all the incredible quality of work that I’m competing against.  Check out the gallery.  Lots of talented people out there working with cake.

And last but not least I made a simple Hamburger cake for my husband for his 34th birthday.  We had a fast food pot luck ( a variety of his favorite fast food sampling in one sitting … because of my recent condition I had the leaner option of shrimp and rice).

I love the fact that there was no carving for this cake.  Just 4 round cakes all layered on top of each other.  Easy peasy….

The next couple months has a few more orders coming my way…. There’s a Lilo & Stitch cake, Mater cake (for my son’s 2nd birthday), Lightening McQueen and a Darth Vader helmet.

Sigh.  I still can’t believe that after one year I’m actually taking orders for custom cakes and that this little talent I’ve stumbled upon is growing in more ways than I could have imagined. …

Bring it on…. 😉

Cake Pops – Take 2

Hello again….  Remember me?

Apparently the last time I posted in my blog was mid April and now it’s mid June…. I can’t believe it’s been that long.  But don’t take my absence from the online blogging world to mean that I was just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  Well, okay … I did that too, but I’ve also been busy baking up a storm….

This weekend was actually the last order from a string of cakes that has not stopped since the beginning of the month.  Yeah for keeping busy among sweets!  The cakes I’ve worked on I’ll post soon enough, but for now let me share with you my second try at CAKE POPS!  (I don’t know why, but it seems like there has to be an emphasis on the word “CAKE POPS” with an exclamation point – but it’s not like I’m going around screaming this at anyone)

Remember my last attempt at this cute treat?  Think back – my March 14 blog.  Think the yellow blobs of candy coating, surrounding the too moist balls of cake that slide off the sticks and made more of a mess than the few pictures I posted that actually survived to tell the tale?  Yeah, those…..  Well for some reason I actually forgot all this when my daughter’s dance teacher asked for baking volunteers to lend their services to the studios bake sale during their season end recital.  She asked if instead of cupcakes, if I could come up with a basket that would be used for the raffle.  You see where this is going, right???

So I baked two cakes: vanilla and chocolate.

And crumbled them down to crumbs.

This time around, I only added about half a container of icing to the crumbs and worked it in to the batches completely.  The texture was still moist but much more easier to compact into firm little 2″ balls.  They firmed up more in the fridge over night.

Melting down dark chocolate in one bowl and pink chocolate in another bowl via the microwave, I was ready to go to work with small groups of five balls of cake.  This is the key – work in small batches, leaving the rest in the fridge until ready so that they don’t warm up and loose that firm shape needed when you slip the lollipop stick into place.

Chocolate cake balls were surrounded by pink coating and vanilla cake balls were surrounded by the dark chocolate.  For extra measure, I switched colours for contrast as a topping.

And Voila!

As part of the presentation I wanted to display these in a decorated box, with cake spilling out of it.  I then took the time to wrap each individual cake pop using clear lollipop wrappers (look in Michael’s or any bake store).  Yes, I wrapped each one.  Every. Single. One.

If you actually counted out each one by the pictures above, that would be 40 cake pops.  40 individually wrapped cake pops.  Yes, a little labour intensive, but really well worth the effort when you look at the finish result.

And when I lingered around the raffle tables watching people slip pieces of paper into the decorated boxes next to their coveted prize, I could hear the soft murmur of “oohs” and “awes” at my basket.  I have to admit it was flattering to watch people dropping off tickets for my cake pops.  And when I glanced into the top of the raffle box – while trying to seem nonchalant about it – I grinned at how many pieces of paper were already inside.  I stayed around long enough (lingering in the background of everyone else) to see the excited look of the winner of my efforts proudly claim her prize as her family looked hungrily on.

It’s moments like that,that make all of this so worth while…..

Hockey Jersey Cake

A friend of mine asked me to decorate a cake for his dad’s 62nd birthday.  Not a problem, I said.  Actually this made me think of my own dad who will be turning 62 in early May, and the hope that I get the chance to make him a cake as well.  (My parents currently live in sunny L.A., while I live in Ontario)

Anyways, my friend asked me to decorate it as a hockey jersey – a Montreal Canadiens hockey jersey. 

Okay, okay, I will be the first to admit that I no absolutely NOTHING about hockey.  Yes, I have watched a few games on television.  And yes, I’ve even gone to watch a game live at some major event, which I completely enjoyed more than watching in front of a tv screen.  But no matter how much I’m exposed to it, no matter how many times anyone explains the rules to me, for some reason or another I cannot retain the information beyond, in our net = good, not our net = bad.  It’s sad, I know….

So into the late evening I started working on this cake.  Because there isn’t any major designs (we decided to copy the jersey from behind rather in front to capture the name and significant number), I procrastinated.  So like me.  And thus I ended up working on this cake until 4:00am.  The latest I’ve ever worked on a cake to date. 

I wanted to make sure the detail – lettering, lines, stitching on the jersey were somewhat captured.  *Sigh – and this is the other trait of myself: the extreme detailed perfectionist side, that tends to get the better of me.  But after the lines started to blur and the fact that I was holding onto an exacto-knife at the time, gave reason to crawling into bed at 4 o’clock in the morning.

By morning, and some last-minute attention to more details, this is what I finished with.

I’m sad that I didn’t get a chance to create the Canadiens logo on the puck, as I had hoped I would. 

I did hear that the cake – vanilla cake with chocolate mousse filling – turned out to be a hit .  And that my friend’s dad loved it. 

L

Cake decorating 101

I went to my first cake decorating class last Friday! 

Sadly this is after missing 2 classes before that, due to being sick for over a week.  For the record, vertigo, is not my idea of a fun – if I wanted the sensation of spinning and dizziness I would have continued my pole dancing classes.  Now that’s a fun reason to be dizzy … but I digress….

I must admit the class was interesting.  16 women of various ages all sitting around a large metal U-shaped table, pulling out varieties of cake decorating supplies and colourful icing in closed Tupperware, all preparing themselves for the 2 hours ahead.  We all have our own reasons to learn, something shared during the first class I’m sure. 

The woman sitting next to me on my right is Suzanne, a tall lady with a warm, friendly and witty manner.  She shares that she’s always wanted to take cake decorating class in the past, and jumped on the opportunity after buying the complete cake decorating supply kit on sale and seeing it as “a sign”.  At the far end of the table is a mom and daughter team, each pulling out supplies and lining them out for one another.  Their conversation is mixed with laughter and mild critique of things they have forgotten to pack, occasionally injected with shrugs and soft sighs from each woman.  Then there is the cute and eager 16-year-old girl sitting on the opposite side of the room.  She has braces and a smile as sweet as the icing she takes out from her bag.  Her hand shoots up at every moment to ask a question or to show pictures of last weeks project.  Oh to be 16 again….

This week we’re suppose to work on piping details.  Drop flowers.  Swirled flowers.  Rosettes.  Simple enough.  I fit my piping bag with the incorrect tip (it’s actually a smaller version of the tip our instructor asks for).  I smile at the instructor who notes that it’s well done, just small.  I instantly feel like I’m back in school on the first day of class with out a pencil.

We change the tips of the piping bag in unison and move onto shells.  Once again mine is just a smaller version of what everyone else is doing.  I make notes of the tips I need to buy next time I’m out shopping.

We now move onto Pompom flowers.  I finish two effortlessly, setting them aside on the table to dry.  I can move ahead to leaves.  As you can see, I do not have the correct food colouring – only having brought blue colour gel in my cake decorating caddy.  I don’t mind.  It’s as if everything has been touch by a smurf.

So my leaves are blue (like I said, something touched by a smurf – or something from Avatar).  I find these actually challenging at first.  Coming out looking like elephants.  C’est la vie, it’s a design detail…  By my fourth attempt I am improving.  I do better with the ruffled leaves, making a mental note that in the future all my iced on leaves will be ruffled from now on.

We are given the rest of the class for free rein to decorate cupcakes.  Because I wasn’t here last week, I am decorating the full size cake I brought in.  I don’t mind.  I decorate half of it with white drop flowers, adding blue ruffled leaves in between for detail and contrast.  It looks decorative, the instructor says as she passes me … in reality I’m just using up my icing before packing it up.

Next week is our last class.  We’re suppose to bring in a smooth iced cake to decorate, of course.  Graduation, our instructor smiles.