First Birthday cakes

I was asked a couple weeks ago to bake for a little boy's first birthday. There were a couple of parties that needed baking for. The first, a smash cake and 24 cupcakes were needed.





The smash cake is chocolate fudge cake, with chocoalte fudge filling, and covered in white buttercream with fondant accents. The cupcakes are chocolate, with chocolate fudge icing with various accents.

Today, a larger cake was needed along with another smash cake.





The large cake is marble, with chocolate fudge filling, covered in fondant with buttercream accents and "monkeys" (I did attempt to make these, however, my patience did not last too long, and they ended up looking like alien mutant monkeys, hence, the non-edible ones....). The smash cake is vanilla, with vanilla buttercream filling, covered in vanilla butterceam.

Happy birthday Dalton!

Stef & Janine's birthday cake

Hey! It's my birthday coming up on Thursday and we had my family party today. My cousin's wife's bday is the day before mine, so we always kinda celebrate together. This time around, i decided to just make one cake, instead of 2 (cuz we always have way too much left over). I think it turned out pretty cute!




Happy Birthday to Stef & me!!

Simple Anniversary cake

One of the new girls at the St Vital store asked me to make a simple cake for her parent's anniversary. It's a marble cake, filled with pudding, and covered only in buttercream.

Tara's Birthday cake

I will admit, I've gotten a lot of questionable looks when I told people who I was making this cake for. People are a little surprised that I kinda went all out for my ex-husband's girlfriend's birthday cake. They are having a pig roast out at their place tomorrow, and I was going to bring something anyways, and he asked me if I would make her a cake. Seeing as there might be like 50 people or more, I kinda went big. The bottom tier is vanilla pound cake (a new recipe), with chocolate fudge filling. The middle is devil's food cake with strawberry cream cheese filling (another new recipe). The top is lemon cake, with vanilla filling. It's all covered in fondant, with chocolate fondant branches, and royal icing flowers. So there's a little something for everyone!



Happy Birthday Tara!

Penguin Parade

I made this cake for Megan's birthday. She's a bit of a penguin addict, so I found an idea for the cake and went ahead and pretty much copied it. The penguins were actually pretty easy to make (compared to the last ones I'd attempted). I also didn't have very much time to decorate the cake, cuz I didn't have enough fondant to do it the night before, so basically I had to decorate it as soon as I got home from work, before and a little bit after supper. I still say it turned out pretty good!

Happy Birthday Megan

(even though it's a little early)

Somewhere over the rainbow

The same lady who ordered the flower cake, ordered this for her daughters. They wanted rainbows and flowers, basically something very fun, yet still girlie. This is my take on it, done with very little sleep, as the order came right in the middle of Folklorama week. They apparently loved it.

Flower Power!

Tonight I made a birthday cake for the daughter of a lady my mom works with. She was very easy going on what she wanted. Basically, chocolate and flowers. Easy peasy! This is what I came up with:


The 10" cake is devils' food, with chocolate buttercream icing, covered in fondant. The cupcakes are chocolate, with chocolate mousse filling, buttercream icing swirl and a royal icing flower on top.

Hope the birthday girl likes it!!

Happy 7th Birthday Erica!

Finally! We celebrated Erica's birthday last weekend, and her request was for a white & black zebra striped cake with orange polka dots. She loved it! The cake was vanilla with a vanilla pudding filling, then covered in fondant. It was pretty fun to make for such a simple design.



Happy Birthday Erica!! Have fun being 7!!

Canada Day & surprise cake

First came the surprise birthday cake. Little background on this; I absolutely HATE when people get let down on their bdays. I've had it happen numerous times, so I really know how it feels to have people either a)forget your bday or b) not show up to your party. In this case it was option A. My art booth buddy next to our cart at St Vital was pretty upset last week that no one, even her family remembered her bday (except for her most recent ex) and she was pretty upset about it. So the next day (cuz I didn't have a clue until 9 that night, and it was a little late to do an ything about it) I brought her a cake to cheer her up and hopefully redeem some portion of her bday.


Then, came the Canada Day cupcakes. Basically Kevin & I pigged out on the cupcakes cuz no one else showed up. Sorry you missed it!!

Mom's retirement cake

This cake is now known as "The Beast". It's the biggest cake I've ever made, and definatly the most time intensive one, for sure. When I was making it, Aryanna said to my mom, "You know, it doesn't matter how long it took Mommy to make, as long as it looks good and tastes good". Thanks kid, I'll remember that. Anyhoos, here is The Beast. Everything was iced with vanilla buttercream icing. The bottom tier is chocolate fudge cake, with chocolate buttercream filling. The middle tier is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling. The top tier is lemon cake with vanilla buttercream filling. Hopefully we're going to have enough cake tomorrow!
I also tallied up a few things.
108 buttercream roses
161 buttercream swirl flowers (made, but not all used... they kept breaking)
5.5 kg icing sugar
11 batches of icing made (total 44 cups)
24 eggs
30 cups total of cake batter (16 chocolate, 10 vanilla, 4 lemon)
Total time worked on this cake: 10 hours

Happy 9th Birthday Aryanna!!

It's Aryanna's 9th birthday party today!! My gosh, time flies!! since she's getting (and has already received) paint supplies, brushes and canvas, I decided to make her a painter's palette cake. It turned out not too bad, except my paint pots aren't exactly how I hoped they'd turn out, but not too bad nonetheless. Also, I'm noticing now (after the fact) that my fondant writing needs huge amounts of practice. Not too bad for starting the cake shortly after midnight and finishing around 2:30 am. Am I insane or what?



Happy birthday kiddo!!

Happy Easter!!

I was asked to make a combination Easter, birthday & anniversary cake. I decided to go with pastel colors for easter, but it's still pretty elegant and nice for birthday and anniversary. It took a little while to get into the groove of making the roses, but in the end I got it all done, and I think it looks great!

Alien invasion!!

To go out to Megan's on Thursday evening to party, since it was April Fools, I decided to make weire cupcakes. So aliens it was! You have to build up the base of the cupcake with mini cupcakes and donuts to make the shape, then dunk them in the icing. They were pretty cute!

Imperial cookies

A little while ago, I was asked to make imperial cookies, just like the ones they sell at Second Cup. Well, I finally mamanged to find a decent recipe for them and gave them a shot. Well, apparently they were good, because they disappeared in a couple of days. I'm definatly going to be making these again!

Purple!!

Tonight, I made cupcakes to take to work tomorrow. It was Leanne's (from Laura Secord's) birthday yesterday and she requested purple cupcakes. Not just purple icing, but purple CUPCAKES. So I went all out and made the cupcakes AND the icing purple. Throw in some hcocolate mousse in the middle of the cupcakes and some sprinkles and Voila!! Purple Monster cupcakes! (I totally just made that up!)

The cupcakes before adding the mousse and icing


The finished upcakes. Chocolate mousse inside, buttercream icing and sprinkels on top

Last class cake

Tonight was my last Course 1 class and I finally learned how to make roses! Aha!! The light slicked on in my head and I figured it out and they didn't look like cabbages or something equally weird looking. My cake colors however didn't turn out exactly like I'd hoped, but that is the product of rushing through making icing after getting home from work at 4:30 and having no icing whatsoever made! But, in 1.5 hours, I made the caramel sauce (O.M.G. sooooooooooooo yummy-tastic!!), filled the cake, made 2 batches of icing, colored it, and iced the cake with it's base coat and smoothed it out. I got all my bags ready and off I went to class in a rush. Tonight, I only blew 1 bag (a regular habit there apparently, 3 weeks in a row....) and managed to make a pretty nice cake (minus a few crumbs in the icing, courtesy of a very, very moist chocolate fudge cake). Sadly, I did not get a piece of said cake, as I made Mom a 2 second offer to bring the cake to her to work tonight (can't believe she even had to think about that!!) and brought it there for the unit to enjoy. I, on the other hand, had a wonderful snack of apple slices and caramel sauce (again, O.M.G, soooooooo yummy!!!).

Hope you enjoyed the cake St. Boniface NICU!!

:)

Gone Fishin'

Tonight I made a birthday cake for a little boy's first birthday. It seems like it took forever to make these cakes! They're vanilla, with pudding in the middle, and covered in fondant. Everything is edible, even the pebbles. He even has his own smash cake!

Enjoy!

The main cake


The smash cake

Valentines, birthday cupcakes and more

It's been a busy baking week around here. It took me awhile to get my stuff together for my class. A couple batches of icing for class and to use for my practice cake, make a cake, then make and decorate Valentine's cupcakes for Erica to take to school. Then tonight, I made birthday cupcakes to bring to work for someone tomorrow. This weekend I've got a first birthday cake (including smash cake) to make, then getting ready for this coming week's class. I still haven't decided if I want to bring cupcakes, or make a new cake to bring. We still have hardly touched this weeks'. I think I'm going to be cake'd out by the time my fourth class is done!

Here's the pics from this week's decorating.


My class cake - Not the greatest one I've ever made (the buttercream got a little smushed up from various sources.... and I think i missed half a row of stars in the orange color, oops). That's why it's called a practice cake!!


Birthday cupcakes for Peter - Yellow & chocolate cupcakes with buttercream swirl on top


Valentine's mini cupcakes - chocolate cupcakes with buttercream swirl and sprinkles on top

Beach mini cupcakes

I made these for my mom to take to a retirement party. Waves, sand (really, they're graham wafer crumbs) and cocktail umbrellas. Makes me wish I was really at the beach, sunning it up!

Thomas The Train Cake

So, it was my brother's birthday on Tuesday. He's into trains, and last year I made a cake with a wooden train on top. This year I made a Thomas cake. Just cuz I wanted to, and he didn't exactly give me any hints on what to make or anything. The bottom layer is chocolate fudge and the top is french vanilla. It's covered in fondant with buttercream and fondant accents.

Yay!

Finally!!! I'm going to be taking a Wilton cake decorating course! Michael's has a deal for the courses starting in February, and we called the other day to find out about it all and they were full up. However, mom was there today and she wanted more details and such about signing me up for a class further down the road and lo and behold, they had a cancellation for the february class!!! So..... she signed me up! Thanks Mom!!!
Yes, it is indeed true. I have not taken a class as of yet. It's something I've been meaning to do but I never think about it until the last minute. So a big yay (YAY!!!!!!!!) that I'm finally doing it! The classes are on Tuesday nights for a couple hours and I'm darn sure I'm going to enjoy every minute of them. I might actually learn how to make flowers instead of mushing them up or using silk ones! Wouldn't that be a bonus!?
I just thought I'd let ya'll know that, cuz I'm pretty darn excited about it. I'm sure I'll be posting after every class or something equally geeky to that effect.
Have a good night!

Finally!!!

So tonight, I broke down and created a site for my baking. I've been told I should have a website, so here it is. If you have any questions, comments, whatever, feel free to comment or email me at coconutty039@gmail.com .
Where baking is concerned, so far i'm sticking to vanilla, chocolate or marble cake/cupcakes. I can and will experiment with other flavors. Icing choices are buttercream, meringue, whipped, chocolate fudge buttercream, fondant, or ganache. I am welcome to suggestions of cakes/cupcakes to make. If there's anything special you're looking for, let me know as I am definatly willing to try (and if I can't do it I will definatly let you know). Prices will vary according to size, filling, and icing.
I've got pictures posted on Flikr, so if you click on the cupcake picture on the right of the page, it'll bring you to a slideshow of pics of stuff that i've made. I'll update that as I go along, as well i'll be posting on here about the new things I've made.
On that note, I'm taking off for now. I'll be posting soon! Watch for it!

:)