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?

Valentine's 6" vanilla cake

For today's post I have a simple 6" vanilla cake covered in buttercream and then decorated with fondant mini-hearts and a large ruffle fondant cake topper. This one was for my hubby. Happy Valentine's Day.

A "Smash Cake" for a 1 yr. old

I'm so thrilled to show you these photos of a cake I did recently. I created a "smash cake" for a client to help her mark her son's first birthday. These types of cakes are used as a prop for baby photographers and the resulting photos are usually a hilarious and adorable.
 I was lucky enough to have my cake photographed by the very talented Deanna Nilson. Be sure to check out her website as she does a whole variety of photography. 

A Buzzard cake for a 75th birthday

What happens when you turn 75? People make you buzzard cakes of course! This fun-to-make cake was for 12-15 people.Vanilla cake was filled with traditional buttercream and then topped off with a fondant plaque. I like using fondant this way because it gives people the option to remove the decoration easily. While my homemade fondant still tastes very good, black and grey food colouring does horrible things to people's mouths and teeth and I like to avoid it if I can. He was one tasty bird otherwise. ; )

A couple of cupcakes

A quick little view of some specialty cupcakes I did recently. The top photos are fondant Tiffany cupcakes covering chocolate devil's food cake and the bottom ones are vanilla cupcakes with swiss buttercream and fondant Elmo toppers.

Right now I'm dabbling with the idea of creating an Etsy shop that will sell edible and keepsake polymer cake toppers. What do you think? Would you shop for some handmade cake toppers for your little one's birthday?