Peanut Butter and chocolate birthday cake with a tabby cat topper

What do you think of my little kitty? This 8" chocolate devil's food cake was covered in a peanut butter buttercream. It was an order for a repeat customer who had requested a tabby cat as a topper. I think I'm still pretty new to sugar paste sculpting but I'm happy with how this little guy turned out. Does he look guilty about trying to open that gift?

Gluten-free chevron cake

Today's cake is a 6" gluten-free cake I made as a thank-you gift. I'm going to share with you all my pit-falls with this cake as I think it's always useful to learn from someone else's mistakes.

I had bought a gluten-free all-purpose flour mix and mixed up a batch of cake and poured it into two 6" x 2" pans. One pan was a professional Wilton pan and the other was a springform pan I had. I had to bake them longer than was directed but I thought that was normal considering their was no gluten to form structure. The Wilton cake was finished while the springform kept testing unbaked. I mean really unbaked, like wet batter unbaked. I left the cake in the oven for more than an hour and even though my toothpick tester didn't come out clean, I hoped than it would finish baking in the pan. I could feel that the bottom of the cake was getting over-done.

Once the cake cooled I unmolded it and cut off the top. The photo below is what I found. I have never had this happen to me before and I was totally surprised. Now I know.....use the proper metal for the proper cake recipe. Springform pans are for quiches, cheesecake and similar cakes that can't be inverted. 

I had to make up a new batch of cake but I had run out of my AP flour mix. This time I had to create my own mix with tapioca flour, rice flour and potato flakes and hope the it would taste similar to the other gluten free mix. There was a difference in flavour but not hugely. Gluten free AP flour is really expensive so I would like to figure out make my own. Any tips?

from the springform pan

proper cake pan

4 layers crumb-coated in buttercream

Flower made of modelling chocolate

Finished chevron design

 Once I finally had a decent cake crumb-coated, I covered it in marshmallow fondant. The orange stripes are a mix of fondant and modelling chocolate and were added in panels. This is a technique I had never tried before which I had learned through a class on Craftsy taught by Jessica Harris. I highly recommend the courses there.

So what do you think? After all my cake hurdles I was still able to create a pretty elegant looking cake don't you think?

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?