Jason Cake

So, it isn't quite time for Halloween or horror movies, but I had a request for a "Jason' Birthday Cake. The woman (whom the cake is for) loves horror movies and had this special request for a cake. I have done a very interesting variety of cake designs lately. I'm excited to see what Halloween has to bring! The design for this cake was inspired by this drawing.

This cake is a yellow cake with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting.

 Happy 30th Birthday Steph!

Pinkie Pie!

I used to love My Little Pony when I was little! I remember I got a bright pink My Little Pony lunchbox from the tooth-fairy when I was five years old. I don't think I've ever heard of the tooth-fairy exchanging lunchboxes for teeth, but regardless I was very excited! I can't believe My Little Pony (MLP) is still around and popular. 

                                

My niece just turned 6 years old and is also fan of MLP. For her birthday party, I made a Pinkie-Pie Pony Cake with Vanilla Cake, Cherry filling and Buttercream frosting. I debated just decorating a sheet cake... but, my boyfriend encouraged me to carve the cake into the shape of a pony. I drew several templates to figure out proportions and finally was able to get one that would fit on the sheet cake and wouldn't look too strange. I have never carved/shaped a cake before and as always, this cake presented new challenges for me to problem solve. Overall, I am very pleased with the end-result and the cake was a hit at the party! Yay! *happy dance* :) I need to learn how to cover a shaped cake in fondant a little bit better, but for my first time, I'm pretty pleased with Pinkie-Pie! 

                                     

Desserts is Stressed Spelled Backward!!!

*Phew!* What a crazy week! It never ceases to amaze me what I can get accomplished when I'm stressed out, especially in terms of baking! I like to create things when I'm overwhelmed...so for me, it creates the sweetest distraction!

I saw an awesome video done by the chocolate addict where you create tulip bowls by using balloons! I then tempered some colored chocolate into candy molds and also a muffin pan for smaller chocolate cups. I made chocolate mousse to pipe into the cups/bowls and it was delicious! I was quite proud of my adventurous chocolate spirit and glad my efforts paid off! I have some perfecting to do, but it was a great start!

Happy Birthday Mom!

I received a cake order for a red velvet cake with white chocolate mousse for the filling... after experimenting with the chocolate mousse for my Mom's birthday, I decided the consistency wasn't what I was looking for for a cake... so I decided to make a white chocolate buttercream frosting instead. I made test cupcakes and brought them into work. The flavors blended together so nicely!

The cake is for a couple's anniversary and they are having a tattoo party! So, what better way to celebrate, than with a tattoo cake? The cake has the couple's engagement ring inscription, "Love, now and forever." I'm glad I was apart of this special occasion!

It's in Our Hands

This year was a Census year, which is very important! I'm sure you all heard the radio announcements, saw television commercials or had census workers come to your door! The Census is extremely important and determines how many seats your state holds in the House of US Representatives and also how much money is allotted to public service agencies and causes. So....I hope you filled it out!

Anyways...back to cake! I was approached to make a cake for one of the local Census offices and was given a Census bag to model. Simple as it may seem, it is harder than you'd think to make a cake look like a laptop bag of sorts! Every cake presents its own challenges and for this cake, the hardest part was making it look realistic.

The cake was a double-layer chocolate fudge cake with a Giaradelli chocolate frosting covered with marshmallow fondant. I painted the hands on the fondant with my frosting sugar dyes to get the water color effect. 

 

Creepy Clown...with a Flame Thrower?

Ok, so I must admit, this was probably the most unique request I've had for a cake so far... I was given a photo to work from and I knew that I had my work cut out for me! I am new to figure sculpting, so this was challenging, but rewarding!

The cake was a marble chocolate, vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. In the middle, I put chocolate frosting and Heathbar crunch pieces. Mmmmmmmm Mmmmmm Mmmmm! I covered the cake in modeling chocolate and fondant. The toughest part of the cake was sculpting Ronald. He came out better than I had expected, but when I went to put him on the cake, he slowly began to bend over! Frantically, I tried to create extra supports so that he stood upright and the heat from my hands made him melt!!! Ahhhh! So, Ronald ended up sitting on the cake instead...*sigh*... Oh well! Not bad for my first "real time" sculpting! I couldn't make a flame thrower out of modeling chocolate, but I got sparkler candles instead!!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy Birthday U.S.A! This cake is a yellow gold cake with strawberry jam filling and homemade buttercream frosting. Yummy! The cake is covered entirely in homemade fondant (white) and homemade modeling chocolate! It tastes so much better than store-bought (and it's cheaper too!)!!! The cake has a flag ribbon around the perimeter for an extra-patriotic flair!

Scoooooby Dooby Doo!

I'm very proud of my Scooby Doo cake!

The cake was a buttergold cake with homemade buttercream frosting... and strawberry preserves in the middle. Yummy!! I covered the cake with the help of some of Duff's new fondant (have I mentioned how much I LOVE Ace of Cakes?!) and I made some modeling chocolate of my own to create Scooby, the paw-prints and dog bones!

I think this cake was the perfect "Scooby-Snack."

Marvelous Modeling Chocolate!

With every cake I make, I pose a personal challenge to myself to try something I have never done before. I've been experimenting with homemade fondant, but decided that for this cake, I needed to kick it up a notch! The occasion was my boyfriend's mother's 50th birthday party. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and covered it with white modeling chocolate and chocolate roses. I found some awesome sprinkles that look like pearls too! I am so excited with how it turned out! I can't wait for my next cake creation!

It has been a long time since I last updated! Here are some of my latest cake-like creations!














Chocolate "Mud" Cupcakes with crushed Oreos and worms
















This was a strawberry cake that I had my clients decorate as part of a "Life Skills" group. I taught them how to cover the cake with fondant and to make roses. Overall, I'd say it was a success!





















Red Velvet Cakes For Valentine's Day














Chocolate Vegan Cake with Vegan Fudgy Frosting




















yellow cake with lemon curd filling

And below... not quite a cake! But a Gluten-free fruit tart!

Happy 18th Birthday Bruddah!

It's been months and months since I've made a cake! I had wanted to make one to celebrate my graduating from college (yikes!) and one for my brother graduating from high school (yippee!), but time ran away from me. I have been busy with my new job as a residential case worker, but enjoying myself and learning a lot and the field of social services. I mentioned to a few people that I would like to decorate cakes or cupcakes with the girls and am happy to report that I will be doing that in a few weeks :).

Sooooo... I always like to do things differently. I wanted to do something kinda crazy for my brother's 18th birthday, so first, I decided I wanted each layer to be a different color and have different flavoured fillings. I often start baking a cake with no idea how to decorate the outside... which sometimes works to my advantage. I worked with what I had, and came up with a cake that was perfect for an 18 year old GIRL, not an 18 year old jock! Oh well :) I greeted him as the birthday princess when I handed him the cake hehe! ;)

So, I used a Betty Croker white cake mix and added some of my neon food dye to make the different layers. I put black-raspberry jam as one filling and lemon curd as the other, but frosted the entire cake with Betty Croker vanilla frosting. I didn't have time to make everything from scratch this time guys! I DID however, make my own fondant by using marshmallows. It was incredibly messy to make at first...I was glad no one was home to watch me... BUT, tasted better than store-bought fondant, was MUCH cheaper to make, and was much easier to work with! YAY! I still had a little trouble covering the cake, but hey, practice makes perfect. I covered my mistakes with roses and daisies anyways :)



Happy Birthday Ian!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

It's been quite a while since I've updated this blog! My apologies :). This fall my camera went on the fritz, so the few occasions I decorated delicious treats (in-between projects and finals), I sadly was not able get an adequate representation of. The picture quality on my phone isn't all that good, but then again, I wasn't super pleased with the cakes I decorated in the past couple months-- so, I guess it all evens out! But, I got a snazzy new camera, which I'm still learning how to use..

I love Valentine's Day. Don't get me wrong, the commercialism of the holiday is absolutely ridiculous- much like Christmas. It's just another excuse to make people buy things they don't really want or need! However, even though commercialized, the idea that there is a holiday dedicated to love and friendship makes me happy :). It's always nice to get a reminder from a significant other, family, or friend how much you mean to them. Romantically speaking, Valentine's Day has never been a great day for me, but I love spending it with family and friends. What better to say I love you, then with cake?!

My 'sweet-heart' cake was super yummy. I altered the banana-split cupcake recipe from "When Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World," by leaving out the pineapple and almond extract, doubling the amount of banana and adding a dash of cinnamon. I should probably mention that I doubled the recipe though, so I'm not sure how that would calculate with the banana... Anyways, I frosted the cake and layers with vegan buttercream frosting and covered the cake with various colored fondants. The border at the bottom is actually a silk ribbon like the one I used on my roommates' anniversary cake last Spring. *sigh* I miss decorating! Hopefully I will be updating soon! :)

Until then, tasty travels!
<3>

Happy Halloween!

BOO! Well, it's that time of year again! The smell of cinnamon and cider lingering in the breeze and the sound of the cool wind, rustling in the leaves...*sigh* I love autumn; almost as much as I love pumpkin cupcakes! It was my niece's 2nd birthday this week (Happy Birthday Emma!) and as always, my sister was an amazing host! All of the food on the table was Halloween-ized; from the spiderweb bean-dip and mummy-dogs to pumpkin and bats pb&j! Everything looked (and tasted) amazing! She also made a super yummy cake :) My contribution to the festivities were some vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes with orange colored vegan buttercream to give them the 'pumpkin look' (and pieces of green twizlers for stems). So good!



I hope your Halloween is full of tricks and treats!
Buhahahahaha!

Princess Sheep Fairy

The theme for my niece's 4th birthday party was very unique! She is very lady-like for a little girl and loves having tea parties with her princess dolls. She requested a party with sheep and fairies, so, I thought it would be a good idea to try to make a Princess Sheep Fairy to sit on top of her cake.I had a vision in my head, of an adorable cartoon-like sheep with a tutu, crown, wand, and melted sugar wings... I'm still new to the whole concept of creating figurines out of fondant, so my expectations may have been set a little too high for this endeavor. The sheep was much harder to make than I had anticipated! She still came out pretty cute though! My sister made adorable sheep cupcakes and sparkly wands for all of the kids. So cute! :)

I'm excited for the next cake... I've got a few ideas...
8/08- Strawberry Cake with White Chocolate Almond Frosting (delicious, but not made from scratch!).

Igida-giggida CAKE!

It's no secret that I have a sweet tooth. Actually, I may have a few. I have ever since I was younger. Whenever there is a birthday or family function that involves cake, I am always reminded by my parents of when I was two or three when I stuck my whole hand into my grandfather's birthday cake and realizing that I did soemthing wrong, yelled out in dismay, "Igida-giggida CAKE!" I have heard this story countless times, but it still can not be confirmed if it was igida-giggida or igida-piggida. I suppose if it was 'piggida' I was denouncing myself for being a little piggy.

Nothing beats a beautiful cake or pastry. I don't know what it is, but I love looking at them! I guess it's just hard for me to believe that works of art can be so delicious! Anyways, I woke up one day this past year and had a strong desire to decorate cakes. I love baking and I was in need of a creative outlet during the stressful semesters of school. I have been playing around with different designs and recipes and am excited to report, that my skills are improving! I figured I would start a blog and later a portfolio of my cakes to keep for memory. I look forward to posting more cakes in the near future!








These cupcakes were for my Aunt's baby shower.

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes with fluffy butter cream frosting and a raspberry. 11/07










Fun with fondant! My first fondant rose. I watched a few youtube videos on how to do this! The rose was SO heavy! Thankfully, they're not that heavy anymore. This rose was for my sister's mint chocolate birthday cake. 11/07

My second rose was much lighter and was made much faster! This Blue Buttercream frosted cake was a vegan chocolate raspberry mocha cake. Yummy! 1/08
















So, I discovered that I could buy fondant that was already pre-colored. Exciting news! I bought a fondant roller and some cookie-cutters to complete this cake. It was a fudgy-chocolate cake with a peanut butter butter cream frosting. Happy 80th Birthday Grandpa! 3/08




Look at the layers!





















This was my first fondant covered cake. It was a Vegan banana based cake with a layer of butter cream and strawberries. This was for my roommate and her boyfriend's 4 year anniversary! I had fun cutting out the strawberry heart and getting the red ribbon to stay!









Graduation cake for my girls! Congratulations!!!

Chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. 5/08



















Birthday Cake for my brother and brother-in-law. I was inspired by my trip to the Bahamas; although I didn't see any octupi... Vanilla cake with butter cream frosting and lemon pie filling center. 7/08









Yummy!









Cupcakes for my Opa's birthday. Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and fondant flowers! 8/08



































Happy Baking!