Monday, December 7, 2009

Christmas Tree Cake

Was 22 nights before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, except for my cat Franklin...and me finishing a cake
No stockings were hung anywhere since they are still in storage
In hopes that the renovations will soon be done
Nobody was nestled all snug in their beds yet
But visions of red velvet cake and fondant decorations were dancing in my head...

......anyway........

When we had to have our front yard dug up to replace the sewer line this summer, the company that came to do it just happened to be owned by the husband of the niece of a good friend of mine so he has had my cake before. He ended up knocking a bunch of money off of our final bill in exchange for a cake for their Christmas party. All he said was "something Christmasy and cakey"...which wasn't a lot to go from. But he had a lady from the office call me and she suggested a Christmas tree cake and "ornament" cupcakes.

The cake started with 6 layers of cake - 3 layers of 6" round and 3 layers of 8" round - red velvet cake with cream cheese icing filling.


Then I carved it to a tree shape


Then iced it with juniper green buttercream icing


Then piped the branches with a star tip our of buttercream icing

Then decorated the tree with royal icing tinsel, fondant decorations that I had made ahead of time and some large sprinkles and dragees that I had



Then Dale and I delivered the cake and the 40 cupcakes to the party. There were 20 chocolate cupcakes and 20 white cupcakes. All were frosted with Swiss meringue buttercream and decorated with assorted sprinkles.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Saskatchewan Roughriders Cake(s)

Oops! I forgot to post about this cake!

Every year SIGA (where my husband works) holds a bake sale/auction thing to raise money for their kids Christmas party. Last year I donated this cake with the SIGA logo on it and it raised a lot off money! This year, since the sale/auction was on the Friday before the Grey Cup and Saskatchewan was IN the Grey Cup, I made a Saskatchewan Roughriders logo cake in hopes that it would make a bunch of money. And it did! Sadly the Riders lost, but the cake was great! :)

In honour of the Riders, I made green velvet cake. Similar to red velvet, but...well...green! VERY green!

The batter was eerily green


I didn't get a photo of the inside of the cake, but I had made some test cupcakes a while back so this is what the baked cake looked like


The cake was 2 layers of 10" round cakes filled with cream cheese icing, then iced with white buttercream and covered in white fondant. The logo was made of fondant, gum paste, and royal icing.


I put a little gum paste bow around the base to finish it off. I didn't want to do anything TOO girly since it was a football cake.


Closeup of the logo


I actually made 2 of these cakes because I accidentally made way too much cake batter. But it all worked out fine because I took one to my workplace and took the leftovers of that cake to SIGA. So everyone had a chance at some green velvet cake.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Flavor List

I have finally made a list of all of my cakes and icings!

These are the cakes and icings that I have made the most often. I have made others and if you don't see what you want in this list, don't be afraid to ask for it!

Cakes:

  • Red Velvet Cake
    This cake is my newest favorite. It is very hard to describe the taste. It has a very subtle chocolate flavor, but it is not chocolate cake. And the colour is very red. For more information about Red Velvet Cake, please go here. I also recently made Green Velvet cake in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
  • Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake
    This cake is one that I have been making for many years and is always a big hit! It is extremely moist and decadently dark and by far the best chocolate cake I have ever had. It is too moist for elaborately carved cakes or large heavy cakes, but it is great for a simple round or square cake. This recipe is no secret and if you want to try it on your own, it can be found on the Hershey website here. They have a ton of great recipes that I have tried over the years.
  • Yellow Cake
    This cake is a fairly basic cake that most of the people I know have made on their own at home. It's a homemade classic.
  • White Cake
    This cake is similar to Yellow Cake, but much lighter since it uses vegetable shortening and egg whites only to achieve the pure white colour.
  • Cookies 'n Cream Cake
    I've added crushed Oreo cookies to my White Cake and it makes a fabulous Cookies n' Cream Cake! Most of the recipes I have seen for Cookies 'n Cream Cake call for a boxed mix, but I do not use boxed mixes in my cakes. This is the real deal! Goes great with the "Oreo Insides" Icing!
  • Lemon Cake
    This is one of my favorite cakes of all time! I use real lemons to get a great lemon flavor from this cake. It is nice and fluffy yet dense enough for carved cakes. Yum!
  • Lemon Poppyseed Cake
    Similar to the Lemon Cake, this cake uses actual tiny pieces of lemon along with the poppyseeds. Again, it is dense, yet light tasting and very lemony!
  • White Chocolate Cake
    This recipe was shared with me from a client and it is excellent! I'm not usually a fan of white chocolate, but this cake has a beautiful mild white chocolate taste.
  • Marble Cake
    I am still working to find the perfect marble cake recipe and it's harder than it seems! But I have found a pretty great one that I am working with right now.
  • Fruity Cakes (Strawberry, Raspberry, Blueberry, etc)
    I make several flavors of fruity cakes and use fresh fruit to enhance the flavors.
  • Carrot Cake
    Not one of my personal favorites, but if you enjoy carrot cake, I've got a great one that even I don't mind. I've made several different types of cream cheese icings that will suit any taste. Yum!


Icings/Fillings:

  • Buttercream Icing
    This is a basic icing with butter and icing sugar and milk. Delicious! I usually use this icing underneath fondant.
  • Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing
    This icing is the smoothest icing I have ever had! Instead of icing sugar, it contains sugar and cooked egg whites along with butter. It is rich tasting and light at the same time. One of my favorites!
  • Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing
    Same idea as the
    Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing but with some chocolate added.
  • Ganache (Chocolate and Cream)
    When boiling cream meets chopped chocolate, something magical happens. You get a smooth, rich, chocolatey mixture that is a fabulous filling and/or icing for cakes. Yum!
  • Cream Cheese Icing
    I LOVE Cream Cheese Icing! Usually some of it "accidentally" ends up being left over at the end of a cake job and someone has to eat it :) This icing goes so well with Red Velvet Cake, Chocolate Cake, Fruity Cakes......any cake really! Also available in chocolate flavor and lemon flavor.
  • White Chocolate Icing
    This icing is meant to go with the White Chocolate Cake, but can go with many other cakes as well. It is light and fluffly and not too sweet.
  • "Oreo Filling" Icing
    This icing is meant to go with the Cookies 'n Cream Cake, but can go with many others as well. Tastes similar to the inside of an Oreo cookie.
  • Royal Icing
    This icing is usually used for decorations such as flowers and string work.
  • Fondant
    This icing is used to give the cake a beautiful smooth finish. I used to make my own marshmallow fondant, but it was time consuming and inconsistent and often didn't work very well. For the past year I have been using premade Satin Ice fondant and Golda's fondant and I am very pleased with the results. I am hoping to try some new flavored fondants in the near future as well. For more general information on fondant, please go here.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Betty Boop Cake

A co-worker of Dale's requested a Betty Boop cake for her birthday.

So I made a 2 layer 12" red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, iced it with buttercream, then covered it in white fondant. Bettie sent me a picture of Betty Boop that she wanted me to use, so I copied that picture using gum paste and fondant and royal icing.




The "ribbon" around the bottom is red fondant.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Pleasure-Way Cake

Ever since I started this cake decorating thing, I've wanted to make a Pleasure-Way motorhome out of cake. In the back shop someone posted a picture that the owner of a PW had sent in of a cake they had made that looks like their motorhome. I always thought that was a really cool idea but didn't really have a reason to make one.

Until now.

Yesterday was the owner of Pleasure-Way's birthday. I found out last week that his birthday was on Tuesday and thought it would be really fun to make a PW cake. And it was! I haven't had that much fun making a cake in a long time! I always have fun with my cakes, but there are a few that are extra fun to make and I can just lose myself in them and forget to eat and stay up WAY too late and it ends up being totally worth it in the end.

I started with 2 9x13 pans of red velvet cake cut and stacked then carved into the shape of the motorhome. The filling was cream cheese icing.

Then the cake was iced with buttercream icing

This is one of the photos I was working from. This is a 2009 Pleasure-Way Ascent-TS

And this was my Ascent when it was done! At 12:30 in the morning. There were a few more details I would have loved to have put on, but I had to get up at 6, so I left some things off. But it still turned out better than I had ever thought possible!

The cake was covered in white fondant and all the extras were made of gum paste, fondant and royal icing.



Merv didn't want to cut it but we made him do it :)

The cake got rave reviews for looks and taste. Maybe I'll get to make another one again someday. Goodbye Ascent!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Second 1st Birthday Cake

I got to make another first birthday cake this month! My husband's godmother's daughter's little boy turned one last week and they asked for Elmo sitting on a stack of presents.

So I made Elmo out of red fondant first. He was a little creepy for a while because his head and arms and body were all separate. But once he was all together he looked great! A little fat, but still Elmo!


I used nice bright primary colours and big shapes for the presents


I made a little smash cake for Ethan as well (background)


Ethan seemed to really like his cake. He stared at it for a long time


And then he REALLY got into the smash cake! He ate quite a bit of it and wore even more! It was very fun to watch him smash that cake apart!

New Moon Cake

A woman I know asked me a long time ago for a "New Moon" cake. Her daughter is really into the Twilight books and decided to have a party celebrating the book/movie of New Moon.

So I made a cake for them in the shape of a book. The cake was white cake filled and iced with white buttercream icing. Then partially covered with black fondant to look like a book.

Instead of trying to re-create that beautiful elaborate flower on the cover, I got an edible image printed up of the actual book cover.

My husband suggested making a bookmark too.

The writing on the front and side is royal icing.

Kat told me that one of the guests almost went to pick up the "book" because it looked so real.

Monday, September 21, 2009

First 1st Birthday Cake

My husband's best friend's baby turned one last week and they had a party on Sunday. So Dale, being the baby's godfather, provided cake along with presents. :)

It was fun doing a 1st birthday cake! I looked at lots of cakes online and found a few designs that I liked, but Dale chose the one that he liked the best out of those.

The stars and curly things looked very festive!




I found a super cute candle to go with it


Baby loved his smash cake!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Vacation/Renovation Break

I think I hinted at this in previous posts, but I thought I should officially say that I am taking a break from cakes for a bit.

Dale and I are going on vacation to Kelowna next week for a much needed break. So obviously that means no orders for that week :)

But as I mentioned in this post, our basement is under some MAJOR renovations due to a sewer backup. The basement has been demolished and we are just waiting for some things from our insurance company. When we get back from our vacation, we should know which contractor we will be using and will be able to discuss some changes that we want to make down there. We are hoping the contractor will be able to start very quickly after that.

Since the basement is already demolished, we have had to move a lot of stuff upstairs, and we've had to move a lot of stuff around to accommodate the basement stuff. So because of even less space then before AND the renovation MESS that I hope will start very shortly after we get back AND the stress that will be in my life because of these renovations, I am not going to take any new cake orders until I have a better idea when the basement will be finished.

So, I am terribly sorry to anyone who was hoping to get a cake from me in the next couple of months, but unless we have already discussed it, it probably won't happen. There are a couple of people that I have said I will make cakes for, and I will absolutely still do those! But no new orders probably until October. But I will post when I am ready to take orders again!

Thanks for your patience! Stay in touch!

Megan

Monday, August 10, 2009

Louis Vuitton Purse Cake

I got this cake order months ago from an online friend named Jyl :) I can't remember how we found each other, but now we know a lot about each other despite only having met a couple times now.

Jyl had a really fun 30th birthday party where all of the guests came dressed as celebrities and there was a red carpet and everything. She asked for a Louis Vuitton purse for this extravaganza.

The cake was 4 layers of lemon poppyseed cake filled with lemon cream cheese icing then frosted with buttercream and covered in white fondant.


The buckles and handles are all out of gum paste. Some are painted with gold pearl dust.

The pattern was painted on with get food coloring. The "zipper" was imprinted using my stitching wheel and then painted with gold pearl dust.



Buckle detail


This photo is from Jyl. It is the cake next to her knockoff LV purse. I had a great time making this cake and meeting Jyl!


I finally got a couple pictures of the Birthstone Wedding Cake that I had shipped off to Calgary unfinished. It looked fantastic with all of the flowers on it. Please see these pictures in the cake's blog post.


That's all for now folks! I'm taking some time off to focus on our basement renovations. I will let everyone know when I am ready to start taking orders again. Have a great summer (or what remains of it)!

75th Birthday Cake

It was my husband's grandpa's 85th birthday on August 6, so I was commissioned to make a cake and some cupcakes for the party.

The cake was lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing as a filling, then iced with buttercream and covered in white fondant. Decorated with gum paste flower and leaves and royal icing border and writing.


The cupcakes were also lemon with lemon cream cheese frosting. Decorated with a dash of emerald green sprinkles.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Disaster? Or Blessing In Disguise?

Hello everyone

Well, it's been a busy few weeks and this week is not going to be much different. However, some stuff has happened that is going to sort of force me to take a vacation from cakes for a while.

On the evening of July 29, our house alarm went off. We were both inside and all of the doors were shut and everything looked normal. Dale checked the alarm and it said "low temperature". Weird. He went into the basement though, and found a nice puddle of water around our sewer drain. Nice. The carpet, the wall, everything was pretty wet. Luckily we have a wet/dry vacuum and Dale sucked out a bunch of the water that night.

Dale happened to be off last week, so first thing in the morning, he called in a plumber. The plumber snaked out the clog, but didn't know what it was. But everything was all fixed up. Next Dale called in an insurance adjuster to take a look. We figured we would have to at least clean the carpet, OR they would possibly get us new carpet. We were unprepared for what the adjuster said.

He did his inspection and then told Dale that yes, they would replace the UGLY carpet. And since the carpet runs all through the basement and up the stairs, they will replace all of it (except for the two bedrooms down there) including the stairway. Next he told Dale that since there was water damage on our UGLY wood paneling on the one wall, and that they would never be able to match that paneling because it is so old, they will replace all of the walls where that paneling is. Which is pretty much the ENTIRE basement (excluding the bedrooms again). Then the adjuster said they would re-do the entire laundry closet where the drain is. Then he said that because they will need to be moving the suspended ceiling while re-doing the walls, it is actually easier to put an entirely new ceiling up there then put the old tiles back in.

We are actually pretty excited about this disaster. We have been thinking of re-doing the basement since we moved into this house 4 1/2 years ago, but weren't prepared to spend the money to do it yet. Even if all we get is cheap carpet and unpainted drywall, it will be better than the depressing ugliness that currently exists down there. I know dealing with insurance and contractors and the MESS that will be in the house will be exhausting, but it is exciting that something will be done down there! I think the sewer backup was a blessing in disguise.

So this week will be demolition time and figuring out what the heck is going on and getting quotes from contractors and all of that fun stuff. We are also allowed to have the contractor do some extra work (out of our own pocket of course) if we want it done. We have a few fairly minor other jobs that we would like taken care of if the price is right.


So, to make a long story short, it is with sadness, but also happiness, that I will not be taking on any additional cake orders until this whole mess is sorted out and the construction is winding down. I just can't be baking cakes when the house is a disaster area. I will of course still be doing cakes that are already on order, but will not be taking any new orders until....well, I'm not sure when! I will definitely keep everyone posted. I HOPE it won't be too much longer than a month, but there's no way to tell for sure yet.

Goodbye ugly grey/brown/almost purple cheap paneling! May you rest in peace...at the dump!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Jackie's Wedding Cake

Jackie's wedding cake was started on Wednesday evening with the baking of the biggest tier. On Thursday I baked the 2 smaller tiers. On Friday evening, before I started working on everything, this is what my table looked like:

I had made some flowers to put on the cake, but ended up not using them because once I got the cake stacked, it looked fantastic without them!

The cake was all white chocolate cake, filled with white chocolate frosting and blueberry filling together, then iced with buttercream icing and covered in fondant.





I forgot to take any photos of the decorated tiers, but I decorated them at home and then transported them separately to the venue. At the hall, I stacked the tiers, put the topper on, and did the bead boarder around each tier.

See why I didn't put flowers!? It was perfect just the way it was!








Jackie and Gerald loved it and so did the guests. While I was cutting the cake in the kitchen, Dale overheard people saying it was the best tasting wedding cake they had ever had! And it was fun taking pictures of the cake while people were there and hearing everyone talk about how pretty and cool it was when they didn't know the decorator was right there! :)

Congratulations Jackie and Gerald!