Bollywood Style cake for a 50th Birthday

  Today's cake was for a repeat customer looking for a 50th birthday cake with an intricate Bollywood style. The interior was vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. All the decorations and coverings were made with homemade fondant. Elements like the centre pearl and the gold appliques were made shimmery with edible lustre powders.

Sweet 16 black and white birthday cake

Today's cake is an 8" black and white sweet 16 birthday cake with a rainbow interior. I topped it off with a black and white sugar paste anemone with black berries and twigs. Created for clients with gluten sensitivity, I altered my recipe to use sweet rice flour, tapioca flour and a minimal amount of all-purpose flour.  

Wine Bottle Birthday Cake

Today's cake was a last minute order for a 3D wine bottle. It was created out of vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and covered in fondant. I surrounded the cake with modelling chocolate wood shavings and created a faux-bois box out of gum paste. There were a lot of fun elements to make on this cake and I was thrilled to be able to learn how to make my bottle shiny with edible varnish.

Giant carrot cake with sugar paste bunnies

Today's cake was 3D giant carrot cake with large sugar paste bunnies created to look like the client's pet rabbits. The interior of the cake was chocolate with chocolate buttercream and a surprise filling of homemade caramel and pecans. This is one decadent cake. Enjoy little bunnies.

Shortbread wedding favours

Last weekend I had a little bit of a different order and I was asked to create cookie favours for a wedding. The bride had said she wanted shortbread and that she would have hearts as part of  her theme.

 Shortbread is one of my absolute favourite types of cookies and it always amazes me how only few ingredients can change the style and flavour of this classic cookie. I tested out a couple different recipes and decided on using my absolute favourite that I  have adapted from my Five Roses cookbook. This shortbread is buttery and soft yet firm enough to roll and cut out. Flavoured with just a hint of nutmeg, these cookies as SO addictive that I have to bake only a small batch or I will eat them all.

Did you want to get a taste of these cookies? Below you can try out my adapted recipe for yourself. Mmmmm.....shortbread.

Melt-in-your-mouth shortbread

Preheat oven to 325F                                                                         Yield: 20 3" cookies

1 c           unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 c        sifted icing sugar
1/8 tsp     nutmeg
1/2 tsp      salt
1              egg yolk
2  c          all-purpose flour

Cream butter. Scrape bowl and add icing sugar. Cream until fluffy. Scrape bowl and add egg yolk, salt and nutmeg. Mix well. Scrape bowl down and remove bowl from mixer. Add flour a little at a time mixing each addition with a wooden spoon. Once all the flour has been added and mixed turn the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap and form into a rectangle slab. Wrap well and chill for 2 hours.
Once chilled, roll half of the slab at a time to 1/4"thick. Cut into desired shapes.

To maintain crisp shapes, freeze cookies for 10 minutes before baking. Bake for 20-25 min. or until delicately browned on the bottoms and edges. 

Enjoy!

Yoga birthday cake for an eighty year old

 Today's cake was created for a client whose mother is a yoga enthusiast turning 80 years old. It was made out of chocolate devil's food cake and and covered in traditional buttercream. The orchids, bamboo, blades of grass, lotus and figurine were all made of sugar paste.  

Creating the figure was the highlight for me and I made sure that she was able to separate from the flower so that both pieces could become keep-sakes. 

Dr. Who Tardis Cake for an 11 yr. old

Today's cake was for an eleven year old boy who is a Dr. Who fanatic. This 3-D cake created in chocolate cake, buttercream and modelling chocolate and stood at 12" tall. I created the time-travel universe board out of fondant and food colouring. This cake was made with many thanks to the generous tutorial posted by Artisan Cake Company's Elizabeth Marek. Thank you for providing such great cake making tips.

  

Bumble Bee baby shower cake

This sunny three-tiered cake was for a repeat customer who was having a baby shower. The entire cake was covered in a traditional  vanilla buttercream. All the accents and the cake topper were made from sugar paste and fondant. Because some of the guests were vegetarian I was asked to make the top cake eggless. While I can make buttercream or cake eggless and still delicious, fondant and sugar paste need the help of egg whites for structure and any vegetarian guest would have had to pick those pieces off.

Dachshund dog and pillow cake for an 8 yr. old

Today's cake was such a fun one to make. For ages I've been wanting to do a pillow cake and try my hand at quilting fondant. Lucky for me the birthday girl also wanted a cake topper and I got to try out some new techniques there too. 

The cake is a simple 8" square chocolate and vanilla cake carved into a pillow shape. The larger dog was sculpted in styrofoam and fondant while the puppy was purely fondant.

If you would like to see a sequence shot of the cake being made you can find it on my Flickr account here.

Birthday cake for a 9 yr old. boy

Today's cake was thanks to a repeat customer. I had created this Mod Monkey cake for a little girl turning two and her big brother thought that it was so yummy that he requested I make something special for him too. 

The birthday party was going to be at an air park so the cake was created to compliment the theme. The figurine and stars were made from sugar paste. The trampoline was created in vanilla cake that had been covered in buttercream, black fondant and blue modelling chocolate.

Birthday Cakes for 8 yr. old twins

Today's cakes were an order for some fraternal twins turning eight. Two separate birthday parties called for two cakes. The birthday boy is currently obsessed with bugs so I created a chocolate devil's food cake covered in buttercream grass. All the bugs were handmade out of fondant. The birthday girl's cake was a traditional girly cake with buttercream ruffles and fondant daisies.
 Happy birthday twinsies!

Faux Asian Noodle Bowl Cake

Today's cake is a type of cake I've been wanting to do for a while. This gravity-defying faux asian noodle bowl cake was created for my kid's spring carnival cake walk. The bowl is made of vanilla cake and then covered in fondant that I hand-painted. A support dowel runs through the centre to hold the noodles and chopsticks. 

Would you like some soup?

Monster High Frankie Stein Cake for a 6 yr. old

Today's cake was created for my niece's 6th birthday party. I heard she wanted a Monster High cake so I asked her to look on Pinterest for some ideas that she liked and I would come up with something.Confronted with too many choices the task of designing the cake was passed back to me.  For this cake I took bits and pieces of design elements I liked and created a two-tiered cake made with a zebra-style (chocolate and vanilla) batter.

I covered the cake in pink and purple buttercream and then added fondant accents. The top portrait plaque was made entirely of fondant and was created much like a jig-saw puzzle. Frankie Stein looks pretty good made out of sugar, don't you think?

3D Minion Birthday Cake with minion cupcakes

Today's birthday cake is a 3D Minion cake from the movie Despicable Me. Four 6" vanilla cakes were stacked to create this fondant covered cake. This was a really fun cake to make and thanks to this fantastic tutorial put out by Ann of How to Cook That it was pretty stress-free. Trying to deliver it and deal with a four car accident on the way was most certainly stressful. Thank god I had air-conditioning in the car.

The customer also ordered 30 Minion fondant face cupcakes to feed the birthday girl's class at school. How lucky are they?

A rainbow sea-themed birthday cake*

Today's cake was for a repeat customer who enjoyed last year's dolphin cake so much they asked for another sea-themed cake. This cake's interior is a 6 colour rainbow filled with white vanilla buttercream. Meant to feed 30 people I created a second tier to hold a sugar paste dolphin and a rainbow. The rainbow was a good test in my cake engineering and it's easy to forget that you always have to work against gravity.

 The final additions to the cake are handmade gum paste figurines. One turtle, a beluga, an orca and a seal pup. This little girl loves her sea animals. Such a fun cake to make.

    

Mod Monkey cake for a 2 yr. old

I sent out another birthday cake yesterday. This time it was a Mod Monkey cake for a 2 yr. old girl. Mod Monkey is not my own design but rather a popular birthday theme package that you can buy online. Here's the link to the hundreds of different items you can get for a Mod Monkey themed party. 

The client had requested a 6" cake along with 18 cupcakes coloured pink and green. The two requirements for the cake were awesome flavour and No fondant. We went with a vanilla cake and a traditional buttercream which is more kid-friendly than Swiss Buttercream. The monkey's face and  No. 2 was created from modelling chocolate. Very yummy.

Orchid and Peony Cake

Today's post is the cake I did for my daughter's 10th birthday. I always let my kids pick whatever they want for their cake and this year she gave me a quite challenge because it involved sugar flowers and I've never attempted them before. For this cake I enrolled in the Sugar Orchids class with James Rosselle to learn how to make the orchids. The bonus lessons included how to do bamboo, rocks and leaves. The lessons are quite detailed and very easy to follow. What I didn't know was that the cost of the flower cutters are pretty pricey so I had to figure out some other way to cut the peony petals. Thanks to Google I pieced enough information together to create an adaptation. After I finished just these three flowers I got a good understanding as to why you can expect to pay a premium for sugar flowers. Each flower is created in multiple stages and require delicate handling as they are very fragile once dry.

Although this is probably closer to a wedding cake than a birthday cake I'm pretty happy that my daughter gave me the challenge. What do you think for my first time?