Recent Cakes I

Not only do I made cookies, but I sometime dabble in cakes too!  Here’s a few that I’ve made for family and friends.

This fun cake I made for a friend’s son who loves Cars.  Buttercream with cookies.

This one I made for my daughter’s friend Maiah.  Buttercream with fondant details.

I made these guys for a friend’s daughter’s birthday.  I’m mad at myself because I took awful pictures of the cake.  But these guys turned out awesome.

I made this Monster High cake for my daughter Abby.  It’s a 6” buttercream with fondant details.

This Buzz Lightyear cookie cake I made for a friend’s one who was turning 3!

I had fun surprising my husband with his favourite movie in cake form.  This was an 8’ black forest cake!

This adorable 4” cake I made for a baby shower.  Vanilla bean with chocolate ganache filling.

And this was for the office party.

Thanks for looking!

Happy Birthday to Me and My Rowan!!!

The joke in our house is that I gave Rob and I children for our birthdays.  Abby is 6 days after Rob’s birthday in July and Rowan is 4 days after mine.  I’m January 28th and Rowan is February the first!  So as you can imagine lots of cake goes down at our house at least two times a year :)

My birthday is pretty standard.  Dinner with the family and then carrot cake (recipe below too)  I get to play with ideas I’ve not yet tried.  This year I decided I wanted to try the buttercream rosette cake.  Now the only issue is that I prefer my carrot cake naked, however there are others in my house who prefer icing.  This seemed like an appropriate compromise.

I didn’t get to rest on my laurels for very long because next up was Rowan’s Lavagirl cake.  First off, I hate making characters on cookies and figurines out of gumpaste.  Less so of the latter.   But when this face asks, you say yes.

Now she did give me free reign on the design but it had to look like lava; there had to be a volcano; Lavagirl had to be on it and oh yes, flowers, lots of flowers.  Right!

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of Sharkboy and Lavagirl this is the movie poster.  And yes, that is Taylor Lautner of Twilight fame.  His acting was just as bad.  But she loves it and that’s really all that matters.

First I had to make the cake look like lava.  So I used red food colouring in the cake to give it a lava look.  Filled it with chocolate butercream and covered it in marbled fondant.  So far so good.

Then I made the volcano out of rice krispie treats and covered it in black and red marbled fondant.  Then I placed it on top, added some lava fondant beads, some flowers and of course Lavagirl herself.  As requested!

I have to admit I was pretty proud of my first hibiscus.  It may not be a traditional colour, but it worked!

My Lavagirl had a great little party at Monkey Joe’s with her friends.  The bounced for an hour, ate pizza and cake and then back to bouncing.  Tired kids are happy kids or maybe that’s happy mommies.

Now I normally make cookies for goodie bags but this year I was fortunate that my friend Laurie of Cookie Bliss made them.  We got Rowan a logo for her birthday, as she wants to own her own restaurant when she’s grown up. Rowan’s Food Never Fails. 

I sent it to Laurie and these are the cookies she came up with.  They are brilliant!

We have several left and I can’t bring myself to eat them as they are so awesome.  Don’t worry, Rowan doesn’t have such an issue.  A cookie is a cookie, especially when it’s a really tasty cookie :)

Now I can rest until July for the next set of birthday cakes in this family.  I’d also like to take a moment to thank everyone who wished Rowan and I a happy birthday on my Facebook page.  The love was overwhelming.

Thanks for looking!

Carrot Cake Recipe:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups apple sauce
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 cups grated carrots

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, apple sauce, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. 
3. Pour into prepared pan.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
5. Ice cake with favourite icing.  I used lemon buttercream.
6. Enjoy!

January is for birthday!

At least for me!  My birthday is tomorrow and oh yes there will be cake.  But you’ll have to come back to find out what I whip up.

I also know of 15 others born in this great month plus my Rowan’s birthday is February 1st, so lots of cakes to be done.  No I don’t make them all, just for a select few.  I also had the opportunity of making a cake this year for a new friend, Mark.  Mark is the owner of Mark Day Company, Caterer.  He emailed me before Christmas to ask if I would make some cookies for the holiday rush and I said sure!  Then he went through my portfolio on Flickr and saw a cake in my feed plus some day of the dead cookies and asked if I would make them for his birthday. UMMMMM…OK.

It also happened to be on the same weekend as our next door neighbour’s son’s birthday and I usually do his cake too.  I don’t do a lot of cakes and two in one week is certainly extraordinary but what the heck.

I started by making some cookies and by some I mean one hundred Day of the Dead cookies.  Now when Mark went through my Flickr he ordered based on this picture.  I’m embarrassed now but at the time I made them three years ago I was uber proud.  The picture is bloody aweful too.

I told his that they were a while ago and my piping on cookies was definitely at a different caliber now, so I could probably make them nicer.  So I made him these…actually 100 of these. And yes my hand did cramp.

The cake he wanted was a replica of the cake I did at a course I did at Swank Cake Design here in Raleigh.  It’s been two years but sure I can do that, at least I hope I can :)  But man I have to make a flower too and I haven’t done one of those in over 5 years, especially one on a wire.  I guess I better practice and so I did.

It turned out better than I expected on the first go, it ended up being the one I used.  That was a good sign. I then made the recommended gumpaste from scratch and practiced on the applique cutters and they seemed to work, so I decided I was ready.  After the cookies were complete, I moved on to the cake.  The cake was a dark chocolate sponge with fudge buttercream filling and coated with chocolate ganache.  I really like working with ganache, it smooths so beautifully. 

Add a fondant coat and it’s ready for the applique and voila…looked pretty good.  The words are an inside joke, I think :)

Now Mark also wanted some simple rosette cupcakes for which I forgot to take a picture, so lets use our imaginations, shall we.  They were vanilla bean cupcakes with a simple syrup and a vanilla bean buttercream peach rosette on top.

I dropped them all off in the swanky location, got to finally meet Mark and then I was off back into the kitchen to make cake number two!  This one was slightly less stressfull.  Tyler turned four and he wanted cookies but his mum wanted cake, so I combined the two.  He’s also all about the movie Cars and Cars 2, so I made some cookies.  I made all the big names and added Guido “pit-stop” because he’s my favourite.  Sorry about the bad picture, I forgot to take a good one.

Then I used the same vanilla bean cake as in the cupcakes and made a simple 8” cake covered in buttercream.  I tried the Viva towel method for smoothing and for the first time it worked.  I added the cookies and now cake two was done and I can take a very short break.

This week I’m making my cake and my daughter’s 6th birthday cake.  You’ll have to wait until next week to see what I made us :)

Thanks Mark for taking a chance on me for your birthday party and as always Tyler, I love making you smile!

Thanks for looking!

Recipes used this week:

• Chocolate Cake
• Vanilla Cake and cupcakes by Glorious Treats
• Buttercream
• Fondant
• Royal Icing by Bake at 350

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Happy Birthday Rob!

Today is my awesome husband’s birthday!  Yesterday we had a fun bbq with friends and then today we had a small party with just family.

I made him two cakes.

This one for the party:

It’s a three layer, 6” round chocolate cake with fudge buttercream.  Then I made it into a minion!  He turned out way better than I could have hoped.  Not bad for starting it at 6am before the rest of the house arose for the day.

Today I made him his birthday birthday cake, his favourite:

It’s 4” round Black Forest Cake.  Chocolate cake with layers of whipped cream and cherries.

Chocolate Cake (my kids absolute favourite)

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup freshly brewed coffee

1. In bowl of stand mixer, combine dry ingredients.
2. Add buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla slowly until just combined.
3. Slowly add coffee until just combined.  Remove bowl from mixer and fold to make sure all in incorporated.
4. Divide into 4 6” round pans. (I weigh my bowl and divide by number of pans, subtracting weight of bowl)
5. Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.  Let cool 15 minutes before removing to cool completely.
6. Ice with buttercream.

Chocolate Fudge Buttercream

• 1 cup softened unsalted butter
• 1 cup room temperature shortening
• 7 cups icing sugar
• 1 cup cocoa
• 6 tbsp milk

1. Cream butter and shortening until combined.
2. Add icing sugar and cocoa.
3. When combined at tablespoons of milk one at a time until desired consistency.  The thicker the icing the harder to spread.

Cherries (can be used in Black Forest cake as well as cherry pie filling:

• 1 can tart cherries in water
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp sugar

1. Drain cherries and place liquid into small saucepan.
2. Add sugar and simmer until dissolved.
3. Add cornstarch and sugar and mix constantly until it starts to thicken.
4. Put reserved cherries back into juice mixture and combine.  Set aside and let cool.

We also bought him balloons.  This is Rowan on the trip home.

In hindsight, 38 balloons in my car might have been pushing it!

I think he had a pretty good day!

Happy Birthday to the best hubby!  Love ya

Thanks for looking!

Chocolate Cake for a special boy!

This week marks the 10th birthday for a big beautiful boy, Dartagnan.  Friend, running partner, babysitter and guard all rolled up into 100 lbs of golden fur.  He’s loveable and smooshy and wonderful and above all he makes our family complete!

Dartagnan was our wedding present from his sister, Catherine.  I got an email with a picture attached at 48hrs old asking if we wanted Dartagnan as a rescue puppy.  I knew I was being set up because who would name a dog the name I had chosen when I finally got to have my own dog.  At the end of the email she wished us a happy wedding prezzie.  I’m not sure what I was more excited about, the wedding or the new puppy. (maybe I was but don’t tell Rob, I mean look at that face)

We got to see him at 4 weeks and then he was delivered by Catherine on July 1st weekend.  For the next ten years he became the best dog anyone could ever want.

Now he’s a big brother to Remy who is 9 months old and I honestly think Remy’s temperament comes from Dartagnan.  He’s still hyper as he’s still a puppy but we love him too!

So for Dartagnan’s birthday I baked a cake.  I know he can’t have any but what a better way to celebrate than with the best chocolate cake on the planet.  I used the Barefoot Contessa’s Beatty Chocolate cake and oh my, delish!

I wanted to make it fun, so I kind of used Melissa at MyCakeSchool.com’s idea of using chocolate melt flowers.  Here’s my take!

The cake is from The Barefoot Contessa and is so moist and luscious.

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup freshly brewed coffee

1. In bowl of stand mixer, combine dry ingredients.
2. Add buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla slowly until just combined
3. Slowly add coffee until just combined.  Remove bowl from mixer and fold to make sure all in incorporated.
4. Divide into 4 6” round pans. (I weigh my bowl and divide by number of pans, subtracting weight of bowl)
5. Bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.  Let cool 15 minutes before removing to cool completely.
6. Ice with buttercream.

The icing is an orange flavoured buttercream.  It tastes just like orangecicles!

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1 cup shortening
• 8 cups icing (confectioners) sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tsp orange flavouring (I used LorAnne Oils)

1. Beat butter and shortening together until fluffy. 
2. Add sugar and then slowly add milk to your texture.  If too stiff add more milk.
3. Add flavour.  Whip on medium for 2 minutes until all lumps are gone.
4. Decorate as wanted!

I just thought chocolate and orange was a great combination and I was right!  It was delish.  I know Darty can’t actually eat the cake, so he got extra cookies!

This cake was devoured by us and our neighbours!  Another must try!

Happy Birthday Dartagnan, we love you!

Thanks for looking!

Some stuff

Over the last month I’ve been making stuff and not posting because of my back.  So instead of a little blurb on that, I’m just going to post some pictures for you!  Here are some cookies!

First birthday cookies for Emily

Third birthday cookies for Tyler

Welcome baby cookies for Lucas,

Superbowl cookies

Valentine’s cookies

Welcome baby Logan

And the cakes:

First attempt at a stained glass cake,

Rowan’s 5th birthday cake!

So as the back starts to heal I’ll be getting back to blogging more.  Thanks for being so patient with me.

Thanks for looking

Happy Birthday January Babies–Me Included!

Well who would have know that January is a baby boom month?  Not me, I mean I was born in January and until recently didn’t realize who many of the people in my life are born in the first month of the year.  We are not New Years babies, we are Victoria Day/Memorial Day babies. Yup, that’s right, our parents were drinkers :)  LOL  SHHHH don’t say that to my mother, she’d die ;)

Ok, back to why you are here…the cake!

Our friends down the street; Linda and Adam, fellow Jan babies, hosted a party for all us birthday babies.  I offered to make the cake.

There’s nothing really special about the type of cake, I’ve made them several times before.  What’s fun is the new icings I used.  Now I made them and then googled hoping I’d be original, but alas no.  So I’m not giving credit because I honestly didn’t borrow.  I’d like to think of it as great minds!

The bottom cake is a chocolate/yogurt sponge with chocolate Kahlua swiss meringue buttercream and the top layer is my favourite carrot cake with a champagne vanilla bean cream cheese icing.  I asked on my FB which flavours I should use for the icing and these are the ones that won.  Don’t worry, I’ll include all four recipes below.

The theme of the party was winter wonderland.  And considering our recent snow and ice “storms”, it was very apropos.  As a Canadian living in the North Carolina, their version of a snow storm is a regular daily event in Ottawa, we called it just snow.  HAHA.  So I decorated with snowflakes.

The chocolate cake recipe can be found here.

The carrot cake recipe can be found here.

Now for the icings!

Chocolate Kahlua Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

• 5 large egg whites
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons, room temperature
• 2 tbsp Kahlua
• 4 1/2 ounces melted semisweet chocolate

Directions:

1. Combine egg whites, sugar, and salt in the heatproof bowl of a standing mixer set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly by hand until mixture is warm to the touch and sugar has dissolved
2. Attach the bowl to the mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Starting on low and gradually increasing to medium-high speed, whisk until stiff (but not dry) peaks form. Continue mixing until the mixture is fluffy and glossy, and completely cool (test by touching the bottom of the bowl), about 10 minutes.
3. With mixer on medium-low speed, add the butter a few tablespoons at a time, mixing well after each addition. Once all butter has been added, whisk in Kahlua.
4. Fold in chocolate
5. Keep buttercream at room temperature if using the same day.  It makes about 5 cups.

Champagne and Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Icing:

• 8 oz  cream cheese at room temperature
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter softened
• 1/4 cup champagne
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 4 cups icing (confectioners) sugar

1. Combine cheese, butter, champagne and vanilla together.
2. Add icing sugar 1 cup at a time.  If required add  more or sugar depending on consistency.  You want it a bit stiffer so it’s easier to spread.

And here are the ones that I couldn’t used:

Vanilla Bean Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

• Use the SMB recipe above but omit chocolate and kahlua and add 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste.

Amaretto Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

• Use the SMB recipe above but omit chocolate and replace Kahlua with Amaretto.

So for all you January babies, I hope you had a wonderful birthday and I hope someone special made you a cake! Just forward this post as a hint :)

Here’s to all my friends and family who share this month with me:

Christine R, Kim, Mary-Anne, Miles, Jen L, Tracie, Nancy N., Connie, Coreen, Jennifer B, Susan, Christina B, Karina, Patty, Angela, Sarah, Emily, Kristine, Julie, Retah, Samantha, Deanna, Dee, Linda A, Tyler, Adam, Kaye, Rob T, Tiffany, Keira, Satomi, Angie.

Thanks for looking!

I made some more cookies!

Just a few!

These were for a friend’s daughter’s first birthday!

These were to surprise a family with great news!

Lots of fun!

Not much to share but to say, have an awesome Thanksgiving to my American friends and family and for the rest of you…aren’t these too cute!

Thanks for looking!

I Made A Few Cookies This Week

Inspiration: CookieCon

It’s amazing what happens when you spend 3 days with 200 cookie decorators.  Nope not gain weight, but oodles and oodles of inspiration.  I learned so much.  Not that I used any new techniques on these cookies, it was just great to make some fun ones for some friends.

I had two birthdays and a new baby to celebrate this past week.

First up, while I was in Salt Lake City, my friend Anna had her third baby, Sienna.  So I made her these:

Then one of my neighbours, Angela, down the street had a birthday, so I made her these:

And then another friend, Kelly, had her 40th this past weekend and I made her these:

So as you can see, lots of fun this past week. And then this upcoming week, I’m making 5 dozen owls!

There are some awesome CookieCon wrap ups, check out these great blogs to get the scoop!

Melissa from The Baked Equation

Pam from Cookie Crazie

Anita from Sweet Hope Cookies

 

Thanks for looking!