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8 months pregnant and made this huge (life-sized) Stanely Cup Wedding Cake for our friends' wedding on Saturday. The bottom 5 tiers are fake cake, three top tiers are Chocolate Guinness cake. Flowers are all made of sugar.
My husband's favourite Dom Rebel t-shirt has this beautiful rose and vines on the back. I snuck a photo of the t-shirt and reproduced the flower on the lid of the all-cake box of chocolates. This was also the first time I ever hand-made my own chocolate. My sweetheart was very impressed.
This was the second cake I ever made (ever - not even a Betty Crocker came before this one!). I had bought fondant to attempt a first birthday cake, simple, one layer was pink, the other white with ribbons and I had some fondant left over. I saw an ad in a magazine for cake jewellery and this was the cake design - tiny flowers. I made a bunch of them out of royal icing one afternoon and made the cake. I think I realized I was hooked when I finished glazing the N on the top. I was quite proud of this little one!
This was a Farewell cake for a girl named Alex. She was off to Paris, lucky her... I airbrushed France and handpainted the city names. The Eiffel tower was made of gumpaste - I learned how to shim the pieces together by shaving down the edges with a scalpel. Pretty intricate work - I finished it off by adding royal icing detail and then airbrushed the tower to look like metal. She kept the Eiffel tower as a keepsake and the chocolate Guinness cake was devoured on the spot. Great success! This is probably one of my favourite cakes.
Idea stolen with pride from Sylvia Weinstock's book. The little pink and blue flowers were outsourced to my sister, mom, and aunt so we all contributed to the making of this apple-caramel cake. It was so good I included a photo of the inside. Unusual shape for a piece of cake but that was the rim! The flowers are all made of gumpaste. I wish I'd had learned Norm Davis's method of twiddling and molding flower petals - it would have saved so much time! If you can attend a Cake Cruise - do it - I learned a TON of stuff there!
For a 12 year old's birthday! He was very pleased - the guitar was almost life-size. I tried to make the strings out of royal icing and my hands were shaking so bad I ended up cracking a few and needed to redo them after the delivery. I had so much fun making this one!
My second attempt at a buttercream cake. The first was a disaster, I don't even have a photo of it! This one I liked because it mimicked the stucco on the wall behind it. The wedding was fabulous at L'auberge du pommier in Toronto. I actually brought the cake from Montreal in a cooler and the groom helped me make the buttercream the night before. We had to knock in the center dowel using a polish sausage because we couldn't find a mallet. The orchids are real. The cake was a pistachio-almond cake with pistachio buttercream filling and vanilla bean buttercream on the outside.
My first attempt at gumpaste flowers. I need to thank the internet because a lady had offered a full how-to for tulips on her blog. The pot is all cake, covered in fondant, the dirt is oreo cookie crumbs.
For a 3 year-old's birthday I thought I would simplify Flash and so this was my second cake car ever. I was very happy with it - probably because when they're this young they don't notice the tires aren't tires. Even the spoiler is made of cake - carefully held on with toothpicks!
Made with a ball cake pan from Wilton. It actually disappeared from the dessert table and I didn't see it get cut - I am still not sure what happened to this groom's cake in the end!
For 250 people, airbrushed design. I demo'd the technique at the West Island Cake Club - I am sure there is a much easier way (smearing royal icing across the stencil then pulling the stencil away) but I was too afraid to do that with black on white! The flowers are real, not gumpaste.
This birthday cake had me cursing. Let me just say that a plan is only good if used. I got carried away with making an upright bottle knowing full well I wanted to lay it on top of a box (all cake of course) but didn't think about support! I smudged a lot of my 24-carat gold painting on the bottle trying to fix it. Of course (as usual) the recipient and guests at the party only noticed the fact that there was a champagne bottle made of cake on the table! It also helps that I used my favorite recipe for chocolate cake, Guinness.
This was a cake requested by my boss (at my day job) for his father in law who worked for the company for most of his life. The replica of the gentleman is of course gumpaste. The tires were the hardest pieces to execute - it is an 18-wheeler after all!
This was my first car cake. I swore it would be the last. I was wrong! I did enjoy painting the headlights and I think they turned out well. I didn't let the gumpaste spoiler dry long enough so it sagged a bit. Also, I didn't smooth the fondant into my carved cake deep enough so as the fondant dried it seemed to loose some of its definition - so it now looks more like a Tiburon! Oh well, the man was pleased, very pleased and that's all that counts!
For halloween this year I was Colette from Ratatouille, the Disney movie. So I brought a pumpkin-spice cake with me to the party - here it is. Remy, his dad and a baby rat were all made of gumpaste. I had to sort of patch the orange fondant together because it was such an odd shape for a cake. My neighbour came by right after it was crumbcoated and asked "is that an egg?". It does have some resemblance, I admit.
This birthday cake matched the party invitation which is ultimately my favorite lazy way of designing a cake. Invitation designs transfer so well to cakes it's almost ridiculous to claim the design as my own! I did use a madeira cake recipe and forgot (oh my) the simple syrup step and the blasted thing was dry dry dry. I thought so anyway. I now have a wedding cake to make for the same gal who ordered this one - so I it was a great success in the end!
I made this one for a dear friend who is an artist - her lovely paintings are on my walls. It had to feed quite a few, so it's more of a toddler-bed than a baby bed! I hand painted the stork and wording and used clay molds for the teddy bears - they are made of gumpaste however. I used a paper impression kit to press the design into the green fondant - that was very difficult to smooth afterwards!
This enormous (really, it works out to 8.4L!) cake was for my Executive MBA graduating class. I brought it to the university with me the last day of classes (or shall I say final exams), each student and a few professors signed the back with edible ink pens and then we ate it. Well, some of it anyway. I used 24 carat gold dust for the bulls and it was my first attempt at piping tiny writing. Shaky - probably because I drank too much of the actual Red Bull!
I had practiced this cake in a 9 inch version, airbrushing my seashells and I wasn't too pleased with the results - so this time (probably out of sheer laziness) I worked some cocoa powder into royal icing and thinned it before painting the seashells - the effect was just what I'd hoped for. Imagine - an iPhone with a fancy camera filter took this photo!
(if this is a private computer)
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