A pretty cake in brush embroidery

Today's cake was for my daughter who requested chocolate and vanilla cake with a raspberry cream filling and ganache. You bet.

The decoration was up to me so I made it so I could try out a couple different techniques. Inside was a checkerboard pattern that looks much more complicated to complete than it is and on the outside I did some brush embroidery which was so much fun to do. One pretty cake that was really fun to make. : )

A birthday "Breaking Bad" cake

So this cake has got to be the hardest cake I've done yet. It was epic. Back when I was creating the Squirt turtle cake, I was talking to someone about how cool it would be to do a Breaking Bad turtle cake. Low and behold, I got an email from someone requesting just that. I can't take the credit for the design of this cake because it was created for one of the show's premier parties. I couldn't seem to source out the bakery for it which is a bit of a bummer. Anyone know?
The client wanted this cake to be a surprise for the birthday boy so it was a bit tricky for me to get photos of him and make the head in his likeness. I had to make do with a few head shots and a lot of guessing. I created a practice rice krispy turtle and a trial head cake with the help of the lessons I had learned through the "Bobble Head cake" course I took through Craftsy. ( I highly recommend their course BTW)

The head was carved out of vanilla pound cake and covered in fondant. The turtle shell was made from a chocolate/vanilla marble cake while the turtle's head and legs were formed in rice krispy treats and then covered in fondant. This was one heavy cake.

I'm happy to say that the cake got to the party safe and sound and everyone seemed to be thrilled with the results. Below are some shots of the birthday boy with the cake as well as some photos I took of the cake. 
So now what cake do I do to top that one? 

Two-tiered "Masquerade" cake

I thought you might like to take a look at a recent cake I did for someone. The theme for the party was "masquerade" and they asked for a two-tiered fondant covered cake in chocolate and vanilla. The 10" bottom was chocolate devil's food and the 8" top was vanilla. 

It's kind of hard to tell in the photos but all the yellow decorations were painted or dusted with gold. The masks were made of sugar paste and royal icing while some of the applique decorations were made of fondant.

Favourite part to make on this cake? The masks of course! I loved creating the gold tipped feathers.

Vegan ruffled rose cake

Today's cake is a ruffled rose vanilla vegan cake. I'm not very experienced in vegan baking but I thought it would be a valuable thing to know how to do if anyone needed a special cake to be completely animal-free.

I took my cake recipe from Chloe's Kitchen which we've found to be a great vegan cookbook so far. I figured if this lady was able to win Cupcake Wars then surely her vegan cake was pretty darn good. While the flavour of the cake was good, I felt that the recipe used way too much oil and it felt greasy. When I make this again I will alter the recipe and make it a lighter version.

For the icing I used Earth Balance shortening mixed with icing sugar vanilla and a bit of rice milk. I felt the icing was pretty tasty but it left a shortening mouth feel similar to the kind you get from a grocery-store cake. Once you try a real Italian buttercream on a homemade cake, it's hard to go back to that kind of icing.

Overall I'm happy with this simple little vegan cake and I look forward to creating another one sometime soon. What about you? Do you have a favourite vegan cake recipe? 

A dolphin family cake for a 3 yr. old

 Last weekend I got to create a fun cake for a lucky three year old. Dolphins were to be the theme and it was worked out with the client that I would make a four layer blue-colored vanilla cake with coconut flavoured buttercream. 

The cake was originally to serve twenty people but the number grew to 30. To be able to bake the cake with number of layers I needed without having any waste, I needed to custom make a couple of the cake pans. Below you can see how I used my larger 11"x17" cake pan and adjusted it with aluminum foil and a Silpat sheet rolled up on one of the sides. It worked out fantastically.

 The dolphins were made many days in advance out of sugar paste and propped on cake waves. I wasn't able to find a small enough gumpaste mold for the lettering so I made each letter by hand and sized it up with the help my printer.

You can view more photos of this cake on my Flickr

Photo courtesy of the client

All-in-all the cake turned out really well and I'm happy to say that I got a nice email from the client telling me the birthday girl loved it. Music to my ears.

A leprechaun hat cake for St. Patrick's Day

Hello!
           Welcome to my new blog! It was suggested to me by a friend that my other blog So I was thinking...wasn't the best place to post my cake creations. Although I don't see too much of a difference between creating cake versus creating art, I can see how a separate blog would probably be a better fit for the two processes.

So here's the first post. A customer ordered a fondant covered leprechaun hat for their grandmother's 90 th birthday. I made a multi-layered chocolate devil's food cake for 30 people. I usually cover my cakes in marshmallow fondant (MMF) to save on cost but I thought I would try Satin Ice to test out the difference between homemade and commercial.

The taste was really good for both but I would have to say the elasticity and ease of use was better in the Satin Ice brand. The top of the cake was 10" in diameter so I was concerned that the MMF would tear at the edges due to the excess weight once I draped it on the cake.

So what do you think? Do you think my leprechaun hat cake bodes well for another lucky year for grandma?