Sugar Bites Baking

NEW BLOG!

2010-01-10T15:43:00.004-06:00

Hello readers!

I am starting off the new year with a NEW Sugar Bites blog and a new email address.

I've been told by quite a few people that Wordpress is a better blog host and that it looks more professional for business type blogs. So I've made the switch! All of the old posts and your old comments made the move over to Wordpress so it's got all the same stuff, just a new address. So from now on, I will not be updating this blog. Only the Wordpress blog. Thanks in advance for joining me in the big move! Make sure to update your bookmarks or your feeds or your readers!

http://sugarbitescakes.wordpress.com/

Also, since I got an iPhone, I've been using it to check my email more than my computer. However, Shaw doesn't seem to get along well with the iPhone for some reason. I've had a lot of weird problems with my Shaw email address on my phone. Like if I reply to an email, sometimes it doesn't show up as being sent, BUT it will actually send it once every 10 minutes so it fills the recipient's inbox with the same email over and over! We can't have that! And I also have sporadic problems connecting to Shaw. So I finally decided to give it up and switch over to Gmail.

So the new Sugar Bites email is sugarbitescakes (at) gmail.com (sorry for the weird format. Don't want spam!)

Happy New Year!

Snowflake Wedding Cake

2010-01-07T19:07:00.004-06:00

Happy New Year!

Our renovations are pretty much done now! But we still have the huge job of "moving in" down there and sorting through our stuff. Whew!

Over Christmas we kept pretty busy too. Especially with this cake! My friend Carmel got married in Red Deer on December 27 and she asked me to make her wedding cake for her and I was more than happy to do it!

I baked and filled and iced and covered all of the tiers at home before leaving for the wedding. The top tier was an 8" round 3 layer deep dark chocolate cake with ganache filling. The middle tier was a 12" round 3 layer blueberry cake with blueberry pie filling filling. And the bottom was my favorite - 16" round 3 layer red velvet cake with cream cheese icing filling. All tiers were iced in buttercream and covered in white fondant.

A couple weeks before the wedding I also made a lot of gum paste snowflakes. Each snowflake was cut out with a cookie cutter and left to dry for a few days. Then I painted some piping gel in designs on the snowflakes so the white sprinkles would stick in different patterns. Then each snowflake was finished off with a royal icing snowflake pattern over the sprinkles.

Then we packed up everything and traveled to Red Deer. The entire wedding and reception was held at the same hotel, so Dale and I stayed at that hotel. I built and decorated the cake in our room and then we transported it down the hall on a cart with the help of a busboy.

I used gum paste to create the drape effect. I tried fondant first, but the fondant I use is a little too soft for this effect so I was happy that I brought gum paste along too! Then I attached all the snowflakes onto the cake with royal icing. It turned out so great! It was one of my favorite cakes of the year!

Here is the cake set up in the reception area

Once it was set up, it needed a bit of extra sparkle, so I just shook sprinkles over the entire cake. It looked like snow!

I was so proud of the cake!

Carmel and Lance liked it too

Dale and I cut the cake for them. It looks kinda pretty all cut up too :)

Congratulations Carmel and Lance! I loved doing your cake!

Christmas Tree Cake

2009-12-07T08:50:00.002-06:00

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.

Saskatchewan Roughriders Cake(s)

2009-12-02T11:26:00.002-06:00

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.

Flavor List

2009-11-28T15:02:00.005-06:00

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.

Betty Boop Cake

2009-11-02T11:22:00.002-06:00

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.

Pleasure-Way Cake

2009-10-28T13:29:00.002-06:00

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!

Second 1st Birthday Cake

2009-10-19T13:45:00.002-06:00

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

2009-10-19T13:37:00.002-06:00

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.

First 1st Birthday Cake

2009-09-21T11:12:00.002-06:00

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!

Vacation/Renovation Break

2009-08-26T17:29:00.001-06:00

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

Louis Vuitton Purse Cake

2009-08-10T09:40:00.003-06:00

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

2009-08-10T09:30:00.002-06:00

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.

Disaster? Or Blessing In Disguise?

2009-08-03T21:08:00.005-06:00

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!

Jackie's Wedding Cake

2009-08-02T11:21:00.002-06:00

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!

How It All Began...

2009-07-27T15:34:00.003-06:00

Here is the story of Sugar Bites:

Ever since I was a kid, I totally looked up to my Aunt Pat who lives in the states because she always made beautiful and yummy cakes. Every time I got to go to a cousin's wedding, I always loved the cakes and couldn't believe that someone I knew made them! I always thought it would be so much fun to make pretty cakes like that.

During church camp one year, I was very excited to find that cake decorating was a class I could take! Not very "outdoorsy" for camp, but very exciting. I learned how to make borders and roses and all kinds of yummy fun stuff!

When I was done high school, I took a break from schooling because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. During that time, I secretly toyed with the idea of moving to the states and getting a job...and secretly thought it would be really cool to work with or at least live near my Aunt Pat so I could learn how to make those beautiful cakes. But I ended up staying in Saskatoon and taking office administration instead. Exciting.....

Every office job that I have had, I've always brought in baking treats. Because I've always loved to bake, but I can't possibly eat everything that I bake or I'd be 600 pounds! I've always gotten compliments for my baking.

Last year, my friend and co-worker Jackie got engaged and sort of half-jokingly asked me to make her wedding cake because she loved my baking. I gave this some serious thought. It was always something I was interested in....why not?

So I signed up for cake decorating classes at Michaels and took all of them except for the first one (since I knew the basics from camp). I accumulated all kinds of fun supplies and tips and tricks and techniques and had a fantastic teacher.

Then I just started making cakes for friends and family and slowly more and more people started asking for cakes. I posted pictures on Facebook and on this blog and between that and word of mouth, I've kept really busy

And so everything is coming full circle this week as Jackie's wedding is on Saturday! I can't believe it's this weekend already! Stay tuned for pictures of Jackie's wedding cake coming next week! I took the whole week off of cakes so I can give it all of my attention. Can't wait for the wedding!

Piano Cake II

2009-07-27T14:50:00.002-06:00

I got a request for a second piano cake from a guest at the party where I brought the first piano cake. This guy actually figured out that it was "Happy Birthday" piped on the side! He asked for the same cake for his birthday party and I was more than happy to oblige.

I made it basically the same. It is still a white chocolate cake with semi-sweet ganache filling and iced with buttercream. The bottom tier is covered in white fondant, then has "Happy Birthday" piped around it. The top tier is covered in black fondant, then has black and white fondant piano keys on it.

I made it a bit different with the flowers. Dale found a beautiful bouquet out at Costco when he was doing some shopping. It had some really cool big yellow flowers in it that I just loved. And the client made the cake his own by bringing a toy grand piano to sit as a topper with the flowers.

These yellow flowers were very striking with the black and white!

The piano was a perfect touch!

And the piping even turned out better than the first piano cake because I had a better grasp of how to lay it out.

This cake turned out just as beautiful as the first piano cake!

Birthstone Wedding Cake

2009-07-27T14:31:00.003-06:00

A former co-worker of mine got married in Calgary this past weekend. She sent me a message asking if I could do up a cake for her at the last minute since she was having problems with her local baker. I said I would do it and she came up with a bottom tier of "citrine" and a top tier of "topaz" for her and her husband's birthstones. Then emerald green swirls for her son's birthstone.

Since her family was transporting the cake to Calgary, I shipped it with them unassembled. Plus they were going to put some flowers on the cake. So I have yet to see the cake completely assembled! I can't wait to get some pictures and hear how everything went!

The following photos are of the completed cake. The photographer was Urban Obscure

Hammy Cake

2009-07-27T14:28:00.001-06:00

This was a fairly simple, but really cute cake. A friend requested a "Hammy" cake from the movie "Over the Hedge". After looking at the pictures of Hammy, I was freaking out about how to make him look good in icing. He's such a strange shape and very detailed and I wasn't sure what to do! So I decided to take the easy route and got an edible icing image printed up and just used that. It turned out really great! And all still edible.

Princess Cake

2009-07-20T11:57:00.002-06:00

I think this is the first time I have been able to do a really girly cake! It was rather exciting. I love doing the sports cakes and stuff, but it's nice to do something girly now and then.

A co-worker ordered a princess cake for his granddaughter's 4th birthday. A fellow cake decorator had posted some photos of a royal icing tiara and I was dying to try it out, so this was the perfect opportunity!

I used an emptied and cleaned sour cream container, taped a design on it, then taped some wax paper on top of that. Then I piped the design and let it dry before adding some additional decorations of heart sprinkles and sparkly pink sprinkles.

I also made a wand out of royal icing. The cake itself is white cake iced and filled with white buttercream then covered in cute pink fondant. The string work, lettering and pearl border are all in royal icing.

New Logo!

2009-07-15T09:21:00.002-06:00

My husband went to a charity breakfast and silent auction a while back and he bid on a corporate logo design....and he won it! So I got a great new professional logo for a VERY low price.

The logo was created by Laconic Design in Medicine Hat, Alberta. They were amazing to work with! The whole process was really smooth. I ended up sending Travis a whole bunch of thoughts, colours, ideas and existing logos that I liked and he took all of my random bits of information and formed them into 4 really fantastic first drafts. From there I picked my favorite and he tweaked it into 4 more specific designs. Then from there I picked my favorite, tweaked it a bit, and we ended up with what you see at the top of the page.

I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out! It's simple and cute, but slightly edgy and fun at the same time. And it's simple enough that I can re-create it in icing, which was one of my suggestions.

If you're ever looking for a great logo design, I highly recommend these guys!

Tim Hortons Coffee Cup Cake

2009-07-15T09:12:00.002-06:00

A client of mine asked for a Tim Hortons themed cake for his wife since she ordered him a golf ball cake for his birthday. He asked for a Tim Hortons cup and an eclair with eclair filling. He also requested a gum paste figure of his wife for something extra special.

The cup cake is 4 layers of 6" round devils food chocolate cake carved to the shape of the cup. It was filled with swiss meringue buttercream then iced in buttercream and covered in white fondant. I hand painted the logo and the reddish brown colour with gel food colouring. The lid and the figure are both gum paste.

The "eclair" was made out of white cake, filled with eclair pastry filling and topped with melted ganache. The cake was left un-iced to look more like an eclair.

Soccer Cake

2009-07-15T09:01:00.002-06:00

Our friends who ordered the Super Six Cake, the Football Cake and the Daisy Cake ordered a soccer cake for their son's birthday this year. Last year he got the Super 6 cake, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do his cake this year!

I modeled this cake similar to my Golf Ball Cake. The base of the cake is deep dark moist chocolate cake filled and iced with creamy semi-sweet ganache. The grass is buttercream.

The ball is white chocolate cake filled and iced with white buttercream icing and covered in fondant. The black pentagons are also fondant and the "stitching" was made with a notched wheel.

Piano Inspired Cake

2009-06-15T09:38:00.003-06:00

This cake is one of my favorite cakes that I have made! It was for a milestone birthday for a friend who is an awesome keyboardist and singer.

It started off as 2 tiers of 3 layers each of white chocolate cake. It was filled with milk chocolate ganache, then iced in buttercream. The top 8" tier was covered in black fondant and the bottom 12" tier covered in white

Then I cut some keyboard keys out of white fondant and stuck them on with piping gel.

At this point I was scared of how it would turn out because it looked kind of silly

But then with the black keys it started to look great!

Around the bottom tier, I piped the music to Happy Birthday out of black royal icing.

One musician at the party even recognized it!

The cake was starting to look great. Then I added the flowers and it went from great to fantastic! It was my first time working with real flowers on a cake and it definitely won't be my last! The pretty orange and yellow colors of these flowers totally suited the occasion!

Yes, definitely one of my favorite cakes! It turned out classy and fun and everyone loved the look and taste of it!

We had a great time at the party! Happy Birthday Dickson!

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, Cupcakes!

2009-06-09T08:29:00.002-06:00

I've been doing a rather large amount of cupcakes lately! More than usual. Most of them have been for my own personal use, but I've had a couple actual orders for cupcakes.

The first was for Dale's workplace. I have been doing cakes for them every month up until now. This month I only had time to whip up some cupcakes. So I made some yummy chocolate cupcakes, frosted them with whipped ganache that was part Bakers chocolate and part melted Lindt chocolates (and part cream of course). Then I topped them with a Lindt chocolate each and some rainbow sprinkles.

Then I made a bunch of cupcakes for a client for a wedding shower. There were 5 dozen cupcakes in total. Half of them were white cake and half were chocolate. They were all iced with ganache. 4 dozen were decorated with simple white sprinkles and large flower. The final dozen were decorated with handmade fondant roses.

The client also requested 6 cupcakes for her grandfather who is a big Red Wings fan.

I also made some extras of these for my sister-in-law's birthday. They were delicious :)

Sugar Shoes

2009-06-05T08:24:00.002-06:00

I've decided to try my hand at making shoes out of gum paste. I've always thought it was a really cute idea and just recently got some good gum paste that I could use to try it out. I left the gum paste white since it was just an experimental shoe and I didn't want to waste time coloring it.

I found a great tutorial on YouTube for a simple shoe to start out with.

I took a few photos along the way:

The shoe sole with a heel

With the lining, complete with "stitching" around the outside

The top of the shoe

The finished shoe! I added a little fondant bow for a finishing touch.

Watch for some fancier/sexier shoes in the future! The process was pretty easy, so I'm excited to make some cuter shoes now that I know the basics.

Greek Scroll Cupcakes

2009-06-05T08:16:00.002-06:00

My best friend passed through town on Monday on her way to seminary in Michigan. We celebrated our birthdays together since mine was in April and hers is this month. For the occasion, I baked up some cupcakes. She had requested a cake a while back in the shape of a scroll with some Greek lettering on it because over the summer she will be studying Greek. This changed to cupcakes for portability (easier to eat while traveling) and this is what I came up with.

I made strawberry cupcakes and iced them with some leftover lemon cream cheese icing and also a few with some leftover white chocolate icing. The scrolls are gum paste painted with brown food coloring, then dusted with some gold pearl dust for shine.

Closeup of theta :)

I miss you Massiel! One evening just wasn't enough!

Convocation Cake

2009-05-30T17:04:00.001-06:00

I don't usually do last minute cakes....but when one particular co-worker of mine pulls his sneaky tricky stunts, it's hard to say no! :)

He said "Oh I wish I had thought of it earlier...my daughter's convocation is tomorrow and it sure would have been nice to have a cake....."

Since I really didn't have anything else going on, I told him I could do it. A few minutes later, he came back to my office and asked "did you like how I asked for a cake without really asking for a cake?"...What a sneak!

But the cake turned out great. I came up with the idea for a mortarboard (graduation cap) cake, which he then said that's what he was going to ask for, but wasn't sure if I could do it on short notice. Luckily I now have a tub of pre-colored black fondant, so it wasn't too hard.

The cake was lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing as filling and iced with buttercream before being covered in black fondant. The top part of the hat was cardboard covered in fondant and the tassel was green fondant. The scroll was gum paste painted with food coloring.

He said he was a hero for getting the cake, so I'm glad I did it :)

My Favorite Cakes

2009-05-28T09:43:00.002-06:00

Over the past year that I have been decorating cakes, I've had a few people ask me which cake has been my favorite. It's so hard to choose!

So I will just post links to some of my personal favorite designs. (In order of when I made them)

Super Six Cake - One of my very first cakes ever! Done for some good friends of ours for their son's sixth birthday. He loves superheros, so they chose 6 of his favorites and I did their logos for the cake.

Big Comfy Cake - One of my first (and best) sculpted cakes and one of my first times using fondant to cover a strange shape. And also one of my first attempts at making figures out of gum paste. It turned out better than I ever could have imagined. I sat back when I was done, and I couldn't believe that I had actually made that thing out of cake!

Leopard Print Cake - My first attempt at painting with food coloring on fondant. My friend asked for a leopard print cake with some star gazer lilies on it, so this is what I came up with. It's one of my favorite cakes that I have done because it is kind of "wild" but kind of classy at the same time.

Golf Ball Cake - A client asked for a golf cake, so I looked online and found a photo very similar to the cake I ended up making. I went to Michaels and found the ball cake pan to make the cake and I tried it out and LOVE the results. Piping the grass took a long time and I was pretty sore afterward, but the end result was totally worth it!

Nesting Doll Cake - I saw a photo of a nesting doll cake that the instructor from my Wilton classes did and I thought that was a great idea for my mom's birthday. Except my instructors cake was all out of buttercream icing. I tried something different and covered the cake in fondant and painted the design on. I was thrilled with the result!

Football Cake - Along the same lines as the golf cake, this cake turned out better than I expected as well! Our friends who I did the Super Six cake for requested a football cake for their 10 year old, so I had to come up with something as awesome as the Super Six cake!

Stocking Cake - I made this cake for my family at Christmas. They asked for a cake and didn't really specify any design, so I was free to do what I wanted. After a lot of thought, I thought a stocking would be cute and relatively easy. It turned out better than I had dreamed!

Buffalo Sabres Cake/Cupcakes - My husband actually came up with this idea for one of his co-workers, and it's one of my favorites for sure! The logo turned out better than I had hoped, and the jerseys were such a fantastic idea! This design has been requested by a LOT of people since then for different teams and different players.

Daisy Cake - This is one of my most recent cakes and one of my favorites. The same friends who ordered the Super Six and the Football cakes ordered this pretty cake for her mom's birthday. This is one of my favorites for many reasons. The design was really simple, yet cute and fun and classy. The yellow color is so happy! The cake and icing were my favorite flavors - lemon cake with lemon cream cheese filling/frosting.

So these are some of my favorite cakes that I have made. There are many many more that I loved for different reasons, but they can't ALL be my favorites!

Daisy Delight

2009-05-18T11:44:00.002-06:00

My friend Tracie asked me to make a cake for her mom's birthday this weekend. She requested a 2 tier lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing.

So this is a 10" and 8" (both 2 layers) tiered lemon cake filled and frosted with lemon cream cheese icing.

The cake was covered in yellow fondant and decorated with white fondant and gum paste daisies with yellow royal icing centers.

View from the top

My cat likes to sit and watch me from a distance. It's kind of creepy, but kind of cute. Luckily he doesn't come near the cakes.

Mother's Day Cake

2009-05-18T11:37:00.002-06:00

I did a Mother's Day cake for a friend whose wedding cake I will be doing in the summer. She wanted to try out the white chocolate cake and icing with her family, so this is an 8" white chocolate 2 layer cake filled and frosted with white chocolate icing. It also has some extra filling of blueberry pie filling.

Decorated with some purple buttercream icing roses.

Skateboard Ramp Cake

2009-05-03T08:09:00.002-06:00

This week was our nephew Ryan's 13th birthday! His mom pretty much gave us free reign over the design. She had suggested a cake in the shape of a 13, but I couldn't think of anything really cool to put on a 13 shaped cake, so I came up with this:

The cake is 2 layers of white chocolate cake plus 2 extra layers on the sides to build up the ramp. The cake is filled with white chocolate icing, then iced with buttercream icing. The brown on the ramp is ganache. I sculpted Ryan out of fondant. The skateboards are a couple of Ryan's Tech Decks.

I gave Ryan the "Field smirk" as my husband calls it.

I did a bunch of graffiti on the cake because at one point Ryan wanted to be a graffiti artist when he grew up. So I figured he would like a bit of graffiti. "Feel the rue" has become a bit of a Field inside joke, so I added it.

Happy 13th birthday Ryan!!!

My Birthday!

2009-05-03T07:57:00.002-06:00

It was my birthday on the 28th! On the 26th my team and I did the MS Walk for Life and then I had everyone over for birthday cake/pie.

Since I've started this venture, I thought of many elaborate cakes to make for my own birthday, But when it all came down to it, I'm actually a little bit sick of cake! So I decided to keep it simple with a 3 layer chocolate cake iced and filled with ganache, then topped with some Smarties.

But the cake was just a secondary dessert for anyone who wasn't interested in the main event: lemon meringue pie completely from scratch. I've always loved lemon meringue pie, but always made it from the Jello mix and used a pre-made pie crust.

Recently, however, I've started making everything from scratch. The crust, the filling and of course the meringue. The result is a bit time consuming, but totally worth it!

My birthday creations:

The cake:One of the pies:

*I didn't notice when I got them, but the Smarties I got have no artificial colours in them. That is why they don't look like normal Smarties. They kind of tasted different too...I think I prefer the artificial ones!

White Chocolate Cupcakes

2009-05-03T07:54:00.002-06:00

I made some white chocolate cupcakes for a work birthday. The cupcakes are white chocolate cake, the frosting is white chocolate frosting, and they are each topped with a raspberry.

Chocolatey Sunflower Cake

2009-04-20T07:48:00.002-06:00

I got a request from a fellow blogger to do her birthday cake for this past weekend and I was happy to do it and to meet her!

The cake was my deep dark chocolate cake made with Hershey's cocoa. It was filled with semi-sweet chocolate ganache.

And also frosted with semi-sweet chocolate ganache. She said she like chocolate, so this was the chocolatiest cake I could think of!

She had seen some other sunflower cakes and cupcakes that I have done and she really liked them, so I put some Oreo sunflowers on her cake

Complete with cute little ladybugs

Click to see her photo and a bit of a review of the cake on her blog. Thanks Pam! It was nice to meet you!

Church Cake II

2009-04-15T09:40:00.002-06:00

Last week was my group's turn to do snacks after church again. My last cake went over so well that my mom asked me to make another for this week. I got a fantastic recipe from a client for white chocolate cake, so I thought that would make a yummy Easter cake. I baked 3 14" round layers of it. I didn't want icing that was too sweet, so I did a dark chocolate ganache icing and filling.

Filled, but not frosted:

Frosted and decorated with cute Easter-y sprinkles

The ganache was so yummy!

Bobcats Cake & Cupcakes

2009-04-07T08:28:00.003-06:00

My hairdresser ordered a cake and cupcakes for his boy's hockey team's wrap up party. I was showing off some pictures of the Sabre's cake and cupcakes during my last appointment :)

I started off by cutting out a bunch of jersey shapes out of rolled out red fondant a few days before the cake was due to let them dry.

Then I piped the kid's names and jersey numbers on them and let that dry. Then when the chocolate cake and cupcakes were all iced with chocolate frosting, I put the jerseys and the team logo on the cake and cupcakes.

The logo was a little tricky because it was a little more intricate than the Sabres or the Canadians logos. So I got some food coloring markers and drew the logo onto a dried fondant shape. Usually I would cut each color out of fondant and stack it, but this was too intricate.

I hope you guys liked it!

By the way, Untangled is a fantastic salon and Dean is just the best :) I've been going to him for years and he always makes me look pretty and it's always a fun time! Check it out!

2 Miscellaneous Cakes

2009-04-07T08:20:00.002-06:00

Over the past couple of weeks, I've made a couple of cakes, but haven't posted.

I re-created the infamous golf cake. The ball was a delicious white chocolate cake filled and frosted with white buttercream then covered with white fondant. The base was a little tricky because they didn't want chocolate and it's supposed to look like the ground. So the cake is white cake filled with coconut icing and iced with vanilla buttercream with lots of brown food coloring.

Then I had a quick cake to do for my mom's boyfriend's birthday. I made a 2 layer lemon cake iced and filled with lemon cream cheese icing. The decorations were some simple sugar flowers that I made ages ago with leftover fondant from another job and I just happened to have some matching blue royal icing already made so it worked out great!

Race Car Cake

2009-03-24T09:38:00.002-06:00

I got a request last week for a race car cake! I was pretty excited because I've wanted to do a car for a long time. It turned out not so bad for my first try!

The concept (Dale Earnhardt Jr's car):

The cake (2 layers of vanilla and 1 layer of chocolate - iced and filled with cream cheese icing):

The car:
I left off all of the advertisements. Especially since it would have taken forever!!!

The spoiler:
The spoiler was my favorite part! I made it out of gum paste and it made the car into a race car

Montreal Canadiens Cake & Cupcakes

2009-03-15T17:20:00.006-06:00

From the Buffalo Sabres cake & cupcakes that I made last month, I got an order for a Montreal Canadiens cake & cupcakes.

The cake is chocolate and the icing is buttercream. The jerseys and logo are fondant.

Brunette is the birthday boy

Gotta Love My Job!

2009-03-15T17:14:00.002-06:00

I love my day job, but I LOVE my side job! Last week I tested a new recipe and it is my favorite one yet! Lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing.

I decided to make a little 6" test cake and decorate it in a more traditional wedding style to practice piping. I also got some pre-made Satin Ice fondant and I had to try it out. I've been making marshmallow fondant for my cakes previously because Wilton fondant is yucky! But Satin Ice is really quite good and really easy to work with.

I could have eaten the whole cake myself!!!

Buffalo Sabres Cake & Cupcakes

2009-03-02T08:47:00.002-06:00

Time for the SIGA MIS Department's monthly birthday cake again! This month's lucky birthday boy was Dean. Dean is a huge Buffalo Sabres fan so Dale came up with the idea to make cupcakes with the retired Sabre's jerseys on them. I decided to also make a 6" cake with the Sabre's logo on it. Since Dean doesn't like the newer logo, I did a classic logo.

The whole package turned out to be one of my favorite cakes!

Left to Right: Tim Horton, Rick Martin, Gilbert Perreault, Birthday Boy - #1!, Rene Robert, Pat LaFontaine, Danny Gare

The cake and cupcakes were cookies n' cream. The icing was a fluffy white meringue-like icing.

The jerseys and cake logo were dried fondant cut to shape with royal icing piping.

Spring Church Cake

2009-02-21T15:01:00.002-06:00

I made a nice big cake for snack time at church this week. I started off with 3 12" square layers of my favorite Hershey's deep dark chocolate cake. Then I decided it was a good time to try out a new icing recipe. So I found this recipe online (thanks Martha Stewart!) and tried it out. It's a Swiss meringue buttercream recipe. I've been looking for something that isn't too sweet for some projects and this one is great!

I used some leftover white royal icing to make the border and sides. Then I finished everything off with Cadberry mini eggs - one for each piece.

The combination of the super moist chocolate cake and the Swiss meringue buttercream was to die for! I got a lot of compliments!

There wasn't a lot of cake left! I thought I'd have a ton left over, but some people had seconds and Lloyd took a chunk home for later.

The remainder shall be eaten tonight with friends :)

Valentine's Cookies

2009-02-21T14:49:00.002-06:00

For Valentine's Day I made my family some heart shaped sugar cookies

The brown ones are chocolate sugar cookies half dipped in a chocolate glaze and sprinkled with minty chocolate chips. The white ones are normal sugar cookies iced with runny royal icing and topped with pink and white sprinkles.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Snowman Cake

2009-02-08T10:18:00.003-06:00

My friend's husband contacted me a while back and asked for a birthday cake incorporating a heart and a snowman and for it to somehow show off the ring he got her for her birthday. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do that for a while, but after thinking about it, I came up with this.
It is a 3 layer white cake filled with white chocolate raspberry/strawberry ganache, iced with buttercream icing. The snowman is balls of fondant rolled in white sprinkles. The hat, nose, eyes, mouth, scarf and arms are all made out of gum paste. There is also white sprinkles on the "ground" underneath the snowman.

The red hearts are giant heart shaped sprinkles.

This is the cake complete with the ring and wrapped in snowflake cellophane (photo from Amy Heihs)

CompuCake 5000

2009-01-21T07:59:00.005-06:00

It was that time again. Time for the SIGA MIS Department's monthly birthday cake. This month they requested "something computery", so after thinking whether I should go literal or figurative with that, I decided I'd go as literal as I could and make an actual computer. And since I can't imagine how I would build a nice flat screen monitor out of cake for the price they pay me every month...I decided to go for an "old fashioned" IBM computer.

I love that you can see our bowl of remaining Christmas candy on the table behind it...those apple raspberry candy canes are fantastic...

Tropicality

2009-01-15T07:45:00.004-06:00

Happy New Year!

I took a bit of a vacation from cakes over Christmas and the fist week of January as one of my best friends was in town to play a concert, and he stayed at our house. It was so great to see him again!

Anyway, we are back to work! A friend ordered some "tropical" cupcakes for her co-worker's last day. The photo she sent me had those cute paper parasols that are often found in fruity drinks. I went to 7 or 8 stores, but alas, apparently nobody in Saskatoon drinks fancy fruity drinks in the winter time. Not a parasol to be found. But I made some cute flowers (supposed to look a bit like hibiscus) in bright tropical colours and it worked out well!

The cupcakes are white cake. The flowers are royal icing. The frosting is buttercream.

The lighting in my house is a little yellowy...perhaps I should invest in some sort of photography lighting...

Stocking Cake

2008-12-28T20:00:00.002-06:00

My in-laws requested a cake for Christmas day a long time ago so I had a lot of time to think up a design. Many ran through my head, but I am quite pleased with the one I ended up doing.

The cake is cookies n' cream with oreo center frosting and filling. Then I covered it in a light blue marshmallow fondant and piped on some snowflakes and a furry top. To finish it all off I "filled" the stocking with some cookies.

This cake turned out to be one of my favorite ones of the year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of my readers!

I am taking a bit of a cakecation again as one of my best friends is coming to town and staying with me from January 5 - 11. I am not accepting any orders until after that week so I can make sure the house is clean beforehand and so I can spend as much time with him as possible while he is here. See you in the new year!

Christmas Baking

2008-12-28T19:51:00.003-06:00

I took some time off from baking for other people at Christmas so I would have time to do some baking for my friends and family.

I made a LOT of cookies and packed them in tins for my co-workers and for family as well.

Dale's grandma's whipped shortbread recipe

Lots of 1" cutout sugar cookies covered in Christmas sprinkles

Lots of larger cutout sugar cookies with green buttercream and Christmas sprinkles

Cookies in their tins

Closeup of a cookie tin

Merry Christmas!

"Over the Hill" Cake

2008-12-28T19:42:00.005-06:00

This cake was for the wife of a co-worker of mine's birthday. He requested an "over the hill" cake so I made it as cute as I could. The cake is an 8" 2 layer carrot cake with chocolate cream cheese icing and filling. There is an additional 6" diameter "hill" of carrot cake. The grass is green buttercream and the road is just some sprinkles. I found some cute dinosaur candles and used them on this cake as well.

SIGA Bake Sale Cake

2008-12-13T13:54:00.003-06:00

I made this cake to donate to the SIGA bake sale. My husband works there and he said it was one of the most popular items at the sale!

The cake with the logo in the background

The cake is a 2 layer deep dark chocolate cake (very moist!) with chocolate frosting. The logo is fondant.

Shushybye Cake

2008-12-06T22:55:00.003-06:00

I got an order for a "Shushybye cake", saw the website that the guy sent me and thought it would make a very cute and colorful cake.

The cake is a 3 layer 9" x 11" cookies n' cream cake with "Oreo Insides" icing (icing that tastes like the inside of an Oreo cookie). The cake is covered in blue marshmallow fondant and the figures are fondant cutouts. The hair and border are royal icing and the stars are large sprinkles.

Quicky Cake

2008-12-06T22:52:00.005-06:00

Earlier this week I got a last minute panic order from a gentleman who had put off getting a cake for his wife's birthday. Since he didn't want anything incredibly fancy and only needed a small cake, I took the order for the next day.

This is a 2 layer 6" white cake with white buttercream icing and the piping is with some leftover chocolate ganache.

For the record, I usually need AT LEAST one week to two weeks notice to make a cake since I work full time at my office job during the day and I do enjoy having a social life on occasion as well. Thank you.

3 Cakes in One

2008-11-26T22:02:00.004-06:00

This cake was for Dale's department's monthly birthday cake. It was 3 birthdays in one and Dale requested 3 different cakes put together as one.

Cake 1: Raspberry cake filled with cream cheese icing and raspberry jam. Decorated with daisies

Cake 2: Cookies n' Cream cake filled with "oreo cookie center" icing. Decorated with the Autobot Transformer logo.

Cake 3: A new chocolate cake recipe filled with chocolate ganache filling. Decorated with the Green Lantern logo.

The whole cake was placed together then iced with a vanilla buttercream icing.

Big Comfy Cake II

2008-11-13T07:52:00.003-06:00

For the 2nd time I've been asked to re-create a cake. You can see the building of the last Big Comfy Cake here. Since I had built the couch before, I won't bore you with additional pictures as I built it exactly the same. I did a couple of minor details differently though.

As you can see, the doilies on the couch are slightly different than last time. And to save on time I covered the cake board with foil this time instead of fondant. The dolls were also different. I made Loonette standing. I was going to make her holding Molly, but it didn't work out as planned. So Loonette is standing and Molly is sitting. And this time I took pictures of the construction of the dolls. My husband and several others found it slightly creepy...

Here are some completed pieces drying separately

Here is the completed Molly:

Here is the completed Loonette:

I love how this picture turned out!

Canucks Cake

2008-11-13T07:50:00.005-06:00

I made this cake for my buddy Sven's birthday. He loves the Canucks and loves carrot cake. So this is a 3 layer, 8" round carrot cake with gobs of cream cheese icing. Even the logo and border are cream cheese icing

Football Cake

2008-11-02T14:50:00.007-06:00

Some friends of ours (Derek and Tracie) have a son (Isaac) with a birthday this week. His party is today so they asked for a football cake. So this is what I came up with.

Their other son Sam was the recipient of the "Super 6" cake featured earlier in this blog.

Harley Davidson Cake #2

2008-11-02T14:47:00.003-06:00

For the first time I have re-created a cake. It was my father-in-law's birthday on Halloween and for the family get-together on Saturday, I made him the Harley cake since he loves Harleys.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T21:36:00.004-06:00

My husband's workplace ordered 100 Halloween themed cupcakes for today. So I made some white cupcakes (dyed orange) and some chocolate cupcakes. Then I decorated them to look like pumpkins (thanks to Hello Cupcake for the idea!), Jack o' lanterns, spiders on spiderwebs and ghosts.

Pumpkins: Orange buttercream with orange royal icing stripes and a green licorice stem.

Jack o' lanterns: same as pumpkins, but with black buttercream faces

Spiders/spiderwebs: All buttercream piped on chocolate buttercream

Ghosts: Started with chocolate buttercream, topped with a large marshmallow, then draped with a disc of white marshmallow fondant. Faces in black buttercream.

This guy was my favorite Jack o' lantern!

Sunflower Cake

2008-10-18T11:17:00.002-06:00

This was a small cake for my friend Crystal. It is a 6" round cake with 4 layers of marble cake, filled with chocolate and white buttercreams and iced in chocolate.

Then I made sunflowers out of oreo cookies with buttercream petals and leaves.

Then a finishing touch of ladybugs on the flowers.

Nesting Doll Cake

2008-10-13T21:32:00.005-06:00

I made this cake for my mom for her birthday. Her birthday is on the 14th of October, so always right around Canadian Thanksgiving. She had a bunch of people over to her house for Thanksgiving, so I provided the cake.

I have wanted to do a nesting doll cake since I saw a picture of one that my Wilton class instructor did. I thought it was a very cute idea and since my mom is Ukrainian, it was a good fit.

The cake was 2 layers of raspberry cake (mom's choice), filled with white chocolate cream cheese buttercream icing, carved to shape, iced in the same icing, then covered in white marshmallow fondant. Then I painted the details on using food coloring. I thought it turned out quite well, and since it was one of the rare cakes I was able to cut into and eat myself, I'd have to say it tasted pretty darn good too!

Here is the cake next to the picture I copied:

*yes I realize that the cake is much fatter than the doll pictured...I just couldn't bear to cut away anymore of the yummy raspberry cake than I already had!

Saskatchewan Roughriders Birthday Cake

2008-10-11T15:27:00.003-06:00

This was a birthday cake for a friend's husband's surprise birthday party. It is 3 layers of moist chocolate cake filled with creamy chocolate frosting then iced with white buttercream and covered in white marshmallow fondant. Then I cut the green part of the logo out of green fondant and piped the black and grey and white on it. Then it was topped off with the white S

Golf Ball Cake

2008-10-08T07:43:00.002-06:00

I've been told by a couple of people that this is my best cake yet and that it will be the most copied.

A friend of a friend asked for a fairly big golf cake for her husband's birthday party. She sent me a few ideas and this one was my favorite. So I got some pans that when put together form a ball and went from there.

The bottom is 2 layers of 12" square chocolate cake filled and iced with yummy chocolate icing then topped with green buttercream piped to look like grass.

The ball part of the cake is a 6" diameter ROUND white cake filled and frosted with white buttercream frosting then covered in white fondant. Then I used the round end of one of my tools to dent the ball like a golf ball and piped a logo on it (recommended by Dale...GREAT touch!!!).

Leopard Print Birthday Cake

2008-10-04T14:32:00.003-06:00

My best bud's girlfriend's birthday is this week so he ordered her a cake. They wanted some stargazer lilies on it and also some leopard print. I know she likes purple, so I did a purple leopard print.

The cake is a 3 layer white cake iced with buttercream icing then covered in pale purple marshmallow fondant. I made the lilies a couple of days ago out of royal icing and painted them with food coloring. I also painted the fondant with the leopard print with food coloring. Then I added the flowers and leaves on top and finished it off with a white bead border.

Sunflower Cupcakes

2008-10-03T17:18:00.002-06:00

I made some cute sunflower cupcakes for another co-worker's last day. I saw these cupcakes in the book "Hello Cupcake" and have always wanted to try them.

The cupcakes are chocolate, then iced with chocolate frosting. The centers of the flowers are Oreo cookies. Then I piped the leaves and petals around the Oreos. I added little ladybugs on a few of them and they went over very well. I might have to make these again sometime...

Spiderman Cake

2008-09-28T09:29:00.002-06:00

I made a Spiderman cake for a co-worker's grandson's birthday. The red fondant wasn't co-operating very well, but otherwise it turned out pretty good. I hope they like it!

3 layers of 10" round chocolate cake. Iced and filled with chocolate frosting, then covered with red fondant and other decorations.

Vegas Wedding Cake

2008-09-22T08:09:00.003-06:00

Some friends of mine went to Vegas to get married about a month ago. They had a small party yesterday for close friends and family and they wanted a wedding cake for this party.

They didn't want the traditional white wedding cake with flowers on it, but a colourful Vegas wedding cake.

I started by making the "welcome to Las Vegas" sign out of gum paste about a week before the cake was due so it would have time to dry. This is the sign all put together after the pieces were dry and painted.

The bottom tier was 3 layers of 12" round white cake iced and filled with white buttercream icing then covered in red marshmallow fondant. Then I hand painted gold swirls on it with pearl dust and a little water.

The top tier was 2 layers of 8" round carrot cake iced and filled with white chocolate cream cheese buttercream icing then covered in yellow marshmallow fondant. Then I hand cut all of the card suit decorations and 7's out of fondant and put them on the cake.

The finishing touches included a yellow buttercream bead border around both tiers and putting the "welcome to Las Vegas" sign on the top.

Here is the finished product:

Closeup of the top tier:

Side view of the top tier:

Closeup of the sign:

Closeup of the bottom tier:

Harley-Davidson Cake

2008-09-22T08:00:00.002-06:00

One of my co-workers requested a Harley-Davidson cake for her and her husband's "dating anniversary". Both her and her husband ride Harleys. It was a really fun cake to make.

She requested a chocolate mayonnaise cake, so I found a recipe online and it worked out quite well! I filled and iced the cake with orange coloured buttercream icing, then covered it in orange coloured marshmallow fondant. The black part of the logo is also marshmallow fondant. The lettering and orange border were all in buttercream.

I think the cake turned out quite well. And she just told me it tasted great! Good to hear!

Dictaphone Cake

2008-09-15T10:46:00.002-06:00

Last week my sister-in-law commissioned me to do a farewell cake for one of her co-workers. Apparently this co-worker fell asleep while listening to the dictaphone and typingggggggggggggg.....

I felt that it turned out very well!

This is the actual dictaphone:

And this is the cake:

It's a slightly different shape than the dictaphone so it could feed more people and fit the words on it.

This was my first time using pearl dust and it worked very well. The dictaphone cake looked metallic like the actual dictaphone.

Sex and the City Cake

2008-09-01T21:07:00.002-06:00

This was my take on a simple "Sex and the City" cake. What is more Sex and the City than a cosmopolitan and a red stiletto shoe? Well, I can think of a few things, but wouldn't really make for a PG cake! Ha!

Calla Lily Cake - Final Wilton Class

2008-08-28T22:11:00.003-06:00

I had my final Wilton Fondant and Gum paste class this week. Which makes it my final Wilton class ever! I'm excited to be done, but I will kind of miss going to class. Now I know the basics though, and I can continue to learn new techniques and decorations on my own.

For my final class I had to make a cake to decorate. I decided to use this as an opportunity to do several things at once. One: Make a cake for class. Two: Make a farewell cake for a co-worker, Jackie. Three: Give Jackie an idea for a possibly flavor of cake for her wedding cake which I will be doing next year. That's THREE birds with one stone!

So I made an 8" two layer blueberry cake, filled with white chocolate cream cheese buttercream icing and blueberry pie filling. It was iced with a layer of buttercream icing then covered in white fondant and placed on a purple fondant covered cake board. The ribbon border was a fondant/gum paste mixture in the same purple as the cake board. The leaves and stems were green fondant. And the purple calla lilies were gum paste creations that I made on the weekend.

The cake went over really well at work and I think Jackie might get blueberry cake as at least one of her tiers :)

Compu-cake

2008-08-28T22:06:00.003-06:00

This week I had 2 cakes to make. The first one was for my husband's department's monthly birthday party. Dale always comes up with strange cakes for me to do. So he asked for a router cake with some network cable on it. With a Cisco logo on one side and Curious George and a Kronos logo on the other side. It made sense to them I guess.

The cake itself was my deep dark chocolate cake, and the icing and filling was a dark chocolate buttercream. All of the decorations were out of fondant.

I will admit I wasn't a huge fan of this cake. I think the only part I really liked was the network cable. The color came out perfectly and I had the brilliant idea of "plugging in" one end to the back of the cake like you would to a router.

Big Comfy Cake

2008-08-24T15:31:00.002-06:00

A co-worker of my father-in-law ordered a Big Comfy Couch cake for her niece, so that's what I've been working on this week!

I started off by baking 1 10" white cake for the back of the couch, 1 8" white cake for the arms of the couch, and 1 9"x13" chocolate cake for the base and cushions.

Then I covered a board with fondant icing for the cake to sit on.

Then I arranged the couch so I knew where all the pieces would go.

Then I iced and fondanted all of the pieces of the couch.

After all the fondanting, I made a couple other finishing touches such as the doilies and the pillows (both out of fondant)

Once the couch was done, I started on the figures of the dolls. I used gum paste for them (and some royal icing for the hair) and they worked out pretty well!

Tina just picked up the cake about an hour ago. I hope she likes it!

Pleasure-Way Summer Party

2008-07-20T10:10:00.004-06:00

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

2008-07-20T10:01:00.002-06:00

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.

Super Six Cake

2008-07-12T11:37:00.002-06:00

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!

Cookies and Cakes and a Baking Tip

2008-07-10T06:57:00.001-06:00

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!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies

2008-07-03T21:51:00.006-06:00

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...

First Blog Post

2008-06-29T19:34:00.003-06:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you for visiting my new business blog! Here I will post each project as I make them and as I figure out pricing and product ideas, I will post them here too. Please see the slideshow at the bottom of this page to see what I have done so far.

I am looking forward to making some great cakes soon. I have a lot of ideas and I love to hear the ideas of my customers as well.

If anyone would like to order a cake, for now you can email me at meganfield@shaw.ca. I'm not sure if I will be keeping my current cell phone number or not, but once I find out, I will post my number here for easier communication.

Thanks for visiting and I hope to hear from you soon!

Megan