Sunday, July 20, 2008

Pleasure-Way Summer Party

My boss at my day job ordered 400 cookies for the Pleasure-Way summer party on July 19. A good time was had by all and everyone LOVED the cookies! The biggest compliment was from Grace who is an amazing cook. She said the double chocolate cookies were the best cookies she's EVER had! Wow!


I made 200 double chocolate cookies (pictured above) and 200 chocolate chip cookies. I think my favorite was the double chocolate...I might have to make myself a batch!


400 Cookies all ready to go!

The party was a tropical theme, so I found those cool multicoloured platters at Dollarama for only $1 each and I put some tropical looking flowers to put on the cookies. I don't think anyone cared about those though. They just went straight for the cookies :) I gave the flowers to some little girls.

There was a huge thunderstorm and a downpour just after supper, so the party disbursed pretty quickly. But a good time was had by all!

Mac, Pirate Hat, Flower Cake

Last week I made the SIGA MIS department's monthly birthday cake.

Last month was the first one and it was the ice rink cake for Gerald. I'll post a photo since this blog wasn't up and running then.


This month had 3 birthdays, so Dale requested a Mac symbol for Geoff, a pirate hat for Blake and some flowers for Chrissy. So this is how I incorporated all of that.


The cake was a yellow cake filled with strawberry buttercream icing, and iced with chocolate buttercream icing. The decorations are fondant.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Super Six Cake

My friend Tracie commissioned me to do her son Sam's 6th birthday cake. As time went on, this cake evolved into a really cool idea - a six shaped chocolate cake with Sam's six favorite superhero logos on it. It took me a while to figure out exactly how it was going to look, but it evolved into a yummy and cool cake!

The cake started with 2 - 10" round cakes and 1 - 9x13 cake. I filled between the 2 round cakes with a creamy chocolate icing then cut a hole in the middle. I cut the 9x13 cake in half lengthwise, filled and stacked it, then shaped it to become the top part of the 6.



Then I iced it in a white buttery buttercream icing, piped a grey-blue city skyline around the 6, a bead border of the same colour around the bottom of the cake, and a white squiggle border topped with multicoloured sprinkes around the top edges of the cake.



Then I plopped the superhero logos on that I made last week to finish it off



There were some transportation issues because the car was rather warm, but it turned out pretty good in the end.



Sam loved it and his older brother Isaac actually said it was the coolest cake he's ever seen. I thought that was a great compliment coming from a cool kid like Isaac! Kids can be stingy with compliments so I definitely took that one to heart.



In the end there wasn't a crumb of cake left!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Cookies and Cakes and a Baking Tip

Hi all!

Well, it's been a busy week so far. I spent the past couple of days baking 3 types of cookies and one cake due on Friday. The cookies are Chocolate Crinkle cookies, Rolled Sugar cookies with a dash of sprinkles on top and my already famous Mint Chocolate Chip cookies. I brought some to work as a "promotion", Dale bought some for a meeting he has tomorrow, and the reason I made all of these cookies is because a lady Dale works with ordered an "assortment" of cookies for a party this weekend. I'm not sure I will be doing many assortments in the future because of the massive amount of time involved. Maybe WAY later in the future when I will be able to sell larger quantities of cookies.

I also baked a deep dark chocolate cake last night for a friend's son's 6th birthday party on Friday. Keep watch for photos! And also keep watch for a menu. With all of the baking I've been doing lately I haven't had time to do any work on a menu or put my NEW logo up anywhere. My best bud Sven helped me come up with a logo that should do quite nicely. I can't wait to re-design my business cards with my new logo!

BAKING TIP

In the past, I've always greased and floured my pans for baking cakes, and used ungreased or greased cookie sheets for cookies as the recipe asked. Maybe a lot of people are aware of this baking tip, but it took 15 years of baking for me to ever come across it, so I thought I'd pass it on to anyone reading who might be in the dark like I was.

Instead of greasing and flouring your pan, grease it lightly with whatever you usually use and line it with parchment paper (you may have to grease the paper a little as well for it to stay in place). When you flour a pan, I find it is still VERY difficult to get the cake out without a lot of banging and digging and cursing. Since I've started lining my pans in parchment paper, the cakes just slide right out ever so nicely. No banging. No cursing. No ruining the cake's shape. Minimal cleanup. Fantastic!

This works for cookie sheets too. Just put a sheet of parchment down on the pan and bake away! No greasing required. Then you're not left with burnt up chocolate bits or pieces of cookie stuck to the pans. And the cookies lift up SO nice from the paper that they don't even leave any of the stuff they tend to leave on the pans. Once again, minimal cleanup. Amazing!

Watch for photos of this week's completed projects coming soon!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies



Today I got a request through Dale for some peanut butter chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies. Yes it is a mouthful...and quite the mouthful they are! Dale and I each sampled a completed cookie (to make sure they were good enough of course) and wow! I never thought of putting macadamia nuts in peanut butter cookies before, but they turned out fabulous!

We will see how Dean likes them tomorrow...