Dots and Daisies

Spring has sprung! Well...not really. Perhaps just in my cake world it has. The forecast for flurries today would suggest our Manitoba "Spring" is more than just a little chilly.

It was once again Spring in my kitchen this weekend, though! This was such a fun cake to decorate! From the moment that this wonderful customer sent me a picture of an inspiration cake for her daughter's graduation celebration, I was excited. I had never made daisies like this before, and have always wanted to try, since I think they look so adorable. I love how they look on the cake. I love the bright colors, the dots...I love pretty much everything about this cake, right down to the flavor combination they choose. The bottom tier was lemon cake with lime buttercream filling, the middle was chocolate cake with white chocolate peppermint filling and the top tier was vanilla with lemon buttercream filling. Really tasty combinations, and I have fallen in love with lime swiss meringue buttercream. Wow, is that ever yummy!


The only downside on this cake is that I wasn't on time. I am thankful for my customer who was so gracious to wait for me to finish each detail on the cake. Making cakes with two little ones around can be difficult, and this week and weekend it seemed downright impossible.

In the end, my customer was really happy, and I've been told that her daughter loved it as well!

That same day we had a "smash cake" photo shoot with our littlest guy. It's a little late (his birthday was in February) but it was so much fun and I'm glad we did it. So it was the weekend of cake. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for some action shots of a little cake being destroyed by a little guy. I'm exited to see the pictures, myself!

Stop in the name of...cake?

I had the pleasure of making this Police Car cake for a good friend's little boy who just turned 4 years old! When my friend asked me to make this cake, I figured that it would be really difficult to carve a good car shape. So instead of carving the car, I cheated and used a three dimensional car pan. I was a little sad that I didn't attempt the carving, but in the end I liked how it turned out and it made the process so much less stressful. Although I did carve out the wheels so I could add more realistic-looking fondant wheels.

It was a lot of fun to think of the details on this cake. I was especially excited to make little piles of chocolate rocks (don't they look so real?!) and have fondant grass poking out of it. To me it's the details the make a cake an entire experience...not just a regular cake. Two details, however, I cannot take credit for, and that are the license plates. My husband volunteered to meticulously cut out "Elijah" for the front plate and "Is 4!" for the back plate. He did an amazing job! Hard to believe this was his first time working with fondant!


I also made 24 mini cupcakes for the party. Going along the Police theme, I hand cut 12 Police badges with the number "4" in the center as toppers. The other 12 cupcakes had a star topper. They were so adorable!


I now have a few weeks of a break until the next cake! As usual, I'm excited to start planning!

Blossoms and Branches

Considering that it still feels like the middle of Winter out here, it was really nice to make a cake that represented the hope of Spring. Well, it was actually a birthday cake...but it represented "Spring" to me as I was making it! (There was even a blizzard the night this cake was picked up. Seriously...Winter needs to be over!)

I really enjoyed making this cake. From a design standpoint it wasn't too difficult. The only thing that took a lot of time were the fondant blossoms since each had to be done by hand. I didn't count how many blossoms made it on the cake but I'm sure I made upwards of 50 fondant blossoms. After letting the blossoms dry for a day or two I brushed them with white pearl dust to give them a bit of dimension. Otherwise they kind of looked like fabric...neat, but not what I was going for. The only unfortunate thing about these blossoms is that they are so very delicate. I dropped more than my share in the process of making this cake, and they just shattered as they hit the floor. I really hope the cake made it to the party with all blossoms in tact!

In the end I was a little sad to see this cake walk out the door. I really liked how pretty it looked sitting in my kitchen. Glad that so many others got to enjoy it, though! And now to start thinking about next week's cake...

Rub-a-dub-dub

Happy Birthday to my littlest guy! I can't believe my baby boy is one year old!

Of course I had to make my son a super-cute cake for his first birthday, so after much thought and searching online for a fun cake, I settled on a bathtub. Random, I know! I happen to know from experience that the only birthday cake I get to choose is the first one. All subsequent birthday cakes get to be chosen by the birthday boy since by the age of two they've got all sorts of ideas and opinions as to how a cake should look. At least my eldest son does! He's got his next two birthday cakes planned already!

I was asked several times at the party how long it took me to make this cake. I would guess somewhere between 10 and 15 hours with all the planning, baking and decorating. I haven't done many carved cakes. Only one, actually, so this cake took a major amount of planning on my part so I would have the confidence to carve a perfect (or near perfect) shape.

The carving went really well. Much better than I had expected it to go. I had a few issues while covering the cake with fondant, but in the end realized that there is a better and easier way to cover cakes than I had learned in my class. We'll see if it really is easier the next time I do a cake! After I finished carving I also realized how easy this cake could turn into a Noah's Ark! I'll have to keep that one in mind for a future birthday just in case one of the boys needs help deciding on a cake!

The bathtub on it's own was pretty cute, but for me what really makes it is the flooring. I love how the checkerboard floor turned out. After the flooring was in place I got more and more excited with each additional detail . The day before the party I spent the evening making the taps and faucet, ducks and a little cartoon figure of my baby. Just before the party I put all the elements together, adding the wires with splashes on the ends. Those splashes put the cake over the top!



This was also my first time using gum paste (the faucet was made from gum paste). For some reason I have been intimidated to work with gum past up until now. I'm looking forward to doing some more experimenting with it in the future.



So even though my son was oblivious to what was going on, we had a blast watching him enjoy his first taste of cake! Looking forward to many, many more birthdays and cakes in the future. I love making these cakes for my kids!

Oh, and just in case you were unsure if this was really cake, here's a picture of the cake after we took out the first slice for the Birthday Boy! It was a lot of fun to have the pleasure of cutting the cake and seeing everyone enjoy it! This particular cake was four layers of rich homemade chocolate cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting. I have to say...it was tasty!

Snowy Wedding

I had the privilege of making a cake for my cousin's wedding last month! This was my first wedding cake and I was given quite a bit of creative license, which was awesome and scary all at the same time. She just wanted a small cutting cake since they were already having a served dessert. So this was an 8" bottom tier with a 4" top.

After we decided that the theme of the cake would be "snowflakes", I started to think about how to make snowflakes that look real...not just like cut-outs. I started searching online, and came across these incredibly detailed snowflake moulds that could be used with fondant. Each fondant snowflake was pressed into individual moulds and frozen in order to maintain the incredible detail of the delicate flakes. Then the snowflakes were dried so they could be painted silver before being adhered to the cake. The cake was finished with silver balls and dark purple ribbon (silver, white and dark purple were her wedding colors...beautiful combination). Everything went fairly well, except for a few fondant challenges, but nothing that couldn't be overcome with a little extra work.

Since the cake couldn't be stacked before delivery I couldn't get any great pictures. My camera is just a little point-and-shoot and the dim lighting of the reception hall made for some terrible pictures (sure made for an incredible ambiance, though). Ends up that I was lucky enough to meet the talented Becky Radtke, who was photographing the wedding with b2 Photography. She graciously agreed to send me some pictures of the cake! I'm so thrilled with these pictures! Just so happens she's also launching a new Photography business, Jack and Ruby Photography. Check out her websites! Thanks so much, Becky!

You'll also notice some of the pictures have cupcakes. My sister and I make yummy homemade cupcakes and cookies with our little label, Barely Burnt Cookies and More! My sister made mini cupcakes topped with shimmery white chocolate snowflakes. Check out our blog here!




All in all, this was a great experience. And creatively speaking, I feel like I've found a bit of a groove. I'm learning so much with each cake, and am thankful for each opportunity to do so!

Cute Little Birthday Cake

I made this cute little 6" heart cake for my wonderful friend, Becky, for her birthday. She was so thrilled that she declared that she must go home and photograph it before anyone ate it! This is the same talented Photographer friend that has photographed one of my cakes before...take a look at her website here. The photos you see here are all hers! Thanks, Becky, for allowing me to use your beautiful pictures!

This was the most stress-free cake experience that I've had to date! This was such a fun cake to make!

An Elegant Farewell

Once again my husband, N's, boss asked if I could make a farewell cake for someone leaving the office. I asked N a few questions about what design and flavor she would like, but he wasn't entirely certain what were her favorites. Since this request was coming just before Christmas with the cake due the day after N was to return to work, there was no time for detective work. I had met this co-worker of N's on a couple of occasions and although I did not know her well, she had struck me as an elegant person. So this is what kept in mind as I started conceptualizing the cake. This was the first time where I had all creative control on a cake, which was great, but also intimidating for me, so I went online in search of an inspiration cake and found something beautiful. I wasn't hoping to copy it exactly but just simply take inspiration from the cake's colors and lines. It made me very excited.

N and I decided that a small 2 tier cake would be best since we were not sure if her favorite cake flavor was chocolate or vanilla. This also gave me the opportunity to try out some new recipes. The bottom tier is an incredibly moist chocolate cake. I am in love with this new recipe. And the top tier is vanilla. I am usually not a fan of vanilla cake, but this cake is moist, fluffy and very tasty.

Decorating day came and I was just starting to recover from a terrible cold. I was still excited to decorate, but was hoping that it would go relatively quickly. In my head I was very organized and figured that things would go off without a hitch. Man, was I ever wrong! I've never had so much trouble with a cake before!

First off my buttercream separated. If you've read previous posts, this has happened to me once before so I knew I was in for a hard time covering the cakes. In hindsight I should have made another batch, but eventually I got the cakes covered in buttercream. (this type of buttercream can still be eaten and tastes very good once separated, as it does not become soupy, just hard to spread)

Next was the fondant. Since the buttercream was a bit lumpy the fondant went on terribly. There were air bubbles everywhere! I went to work popping the bubbles, knowing that the decoration on the cake would cover any small pin holes, but I still wasn't satisfied. I smoothed and smoothed...stood back and just about ripped all the fondant off and started again. After the cakes stood for a bit they looked quite a bit better, so I just left it. But I was starting to feel like it was a loosing battle against this cake.

So it was with discouragement that I started decorating. The resulting design was looking okay, but not amazing. I had lost any previous inspiration for this cake and was just being random. I took a break while I put my boys down for a nap and thought about what I had originally wanted this cake to look like. Went downstairs, studied my inspiration cake for awhile and ripped off all the fondant decorations (not the fondant base). After putting the first few new strips of fondant on I felt like the cake was going to have some potential. I kept going and started to get very excited. I was loving the colors and how the cake was flowing and elegant which was exactly what I wanted. I debated for awhile putting the silver ball details on, but figured that they added some dimension and a bit of shine. I couldn't believe how much I was loving it! Mind you it was 8 hours later, but I had conquered the cake!

Before I did this cake I had talked with a very close friend and amazing photographer, Rebecca Croft Photographer to see if she would be willing to take some photos if the cake turned out nicely. So after my marathon cake decorating day I gave her a call and she popped over for a little cake photoshoot. The pictures you see in this post as well as my blog header are all her photos. Thanks Becky!

Hands down this is my favorite cake. I mean, I love them all...but this one has a special place in my heart. Partly because I fought with it and won, but also because this is the cake that says "Julia". The design, although inspired by another cake came from within, which felt incredible.