Baby Boy's Baptism Cake with Cupcakes

All Photography by:  Jerome Callender Photography

So, it's been a long time since I've been able to post anything.  I've had a lot going on in my life, I got married, went on a honeymoon and moved into a new house!  Now that all the wedding planning, traveling and moving is complete, I have some time to catch up on my blog.  This baptism cake is from a few months ago and my wedding cake will be a blog post soon, once the wedding pictures are ready!

I made this cake for my friend's baby boy's baptism.  He's such an adorable little guy, I was excited to make it for him :)

His parents requested chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  I'm always happy to do a buttercream cake, as I think it tastes much better than fondant, but does sometimes take me more time to get smooth with sharp edges. 

This cake was three layers of chocolate cake filled and covered with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream.

To decorate the cake, I made a cross motif out of rolled fondant with a bit of gumpaste.  Also a simple border with a bow and the cake was done!

For the cupcakes, I did a swirl of buttercream with a large star tip.  The topper "L"s were made of piped white chocolate.  I wrote out 20 "L"s on a page, covered it with a piece of wax paper and piped onto that.  I like to have a stencil, but you could pipe it free hand.  The chocolate was put in the fridge for a few minutes and they were ready to go on the cupcakes :) 



The last part of this cake setup was the blocks.  They were made out of rice krispie treats (RKT) covered in fondant.  I didn't cover them in buttercream first, just rolled the fondant out thick, so that the lumps and bumps in the RKT couldn't be seen.  The letters for the blocks were made using a chocolate letter mold.  I first thought the chocolate letters could stick to the fondant with a bit of water, but quickly learned that it doesn't hold after the water dries and used melted chocolate instead.

 Congratulations Leo!

Floral Ombre 50th Birthday Cake

For my aunt's 50th birthday, she asked me to make her a cake!  I obviously happily said yes :)

I pretty much had free reign on the cake, so I thought I should try something new.  I had bought the Wilton's gum paste flower cutter set, so this was a perfect excuse to use it.  Since I like purple and ombre always looks pretty, the colour scheme was chosen!

My cousin said that Red Velvet with Cream Cheese was his mom's flavour of choice, so that was chosen too!

This was a 2 layer cake, covered and filled with cream cheese icing and then topped with fondant.  This was a big mistake!  Cream cheese icing does not work well under fondant at all, hence the dome like shape! It doesn't hold it's shape and just slides around creating large bumps. When I needed to use cream cheese icing under fondant again, I created a buttercream dam around the cream cheese filling and then covered the cake in more buttercream before covering in fondant, which worked much better.  Buttercream stays fairly firm at room temperature which allows the cake corners to be sharper after it's covered in fondant.

I spent hours creating these little flowers, and  then went to work adding them from the bottom up.  I think the effect was pretty :)

From this view you can see how the cream cheese icing made the cake so lob sided :(








The '50' was made a few days in advance, so the gum paste had time to dry.













In the end, my aunt and family enjoyed cake, so I was happy with the overall result :)

A mishmash of my recent baking

Sorry I haven't had much time to post anything lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been baking! :)

Here are a few things I've made in the past month or so...

A coworker of mine ordered this cake for his friend last minute, so I made my go to chocolate cake and decided to ice it with Italian meringue buttercream.  I was excited to decorate it since I wanted an excuse to use my new cake comb on the sides.  It was so easy to use and made the cake looked finished.  I did a reverse shell border around the edge, made some fondant letters with my tappits and it was done!











I made these chocolate cupcakes for my nephew to share with his friends on his last day of daycare. He was excited to help me put the sprinkles on, but even more so to eat them, especially the icing!

This cake I made for my cousins belated graduation BBQ.  Congratulations Hannah :)  It was a red velvet cake filled with cream cheese icing and covered with chocolate ganache and marshmallow fondant.  With this cake, I got to use my new quilting impression mat for the sides, it didn't make the groves as crisp as I wanted, but it was much faster than doing each line individually. 




That's all for now, but more posts coming soon!

Bridal Shower Cupcake Cake

Recently I offered to make a cake for a friend's bridal shower at work.  I'm also making this friend's wedding favours, more on this in a few weeks :)

I was given free reign on the cake and told it only needed to feed 12 people.  Since it was going to be at work, I knew it's always better to have extra cake, in case more people showed up.  From my experience, there no such thing as too much cake at my work place!

I've seen a lot of bridal gown cupcake cakes during the hours I've spent on Pinterest, so I thought I'd give it a try.  I decided to go with this layout, which used 28 red velvet cupcakes.  I actually baked 36 cupcakes, as I tripled the recipe. 

My first batch didn't turn out well, as I accidentally mixed the sugar in with the dry ingredients, so I wasn't able to cream the oil and sugar together.  This caused the first batch to come out slightly oily and not rise properly, since creaming the oil with the sugar is when all the air is incorporated.  The flavour was still good, just the texture was slightly off.  This bad batch worked out in my family/friends favour, as it just meant more cupcakes for them :)   

I chose to use a cream cheese icing and iced the cupcakes using simple rosettes.  This cake looks really fancy, but it literally took less than 10 minutes to ice! 

A few days before the cake was going to be delivered, I made a quick bow out of fondant and left it to dry on a foam pad.  By the time it needed to be placed on the cake, it was all dry and firm.  The only mistake I made was putting it on the cake and then placing the entire thing into the fridge.  As soon as the fondant was in the fridge, it started to sweat and become soft, thankfully it wasn't there for too long and the bow kept most of its shape.  Next time, I'll just place the bow on right before delivery. 

I placed a purple sash and then the bow on top, and the cake was finished!


It was all well received, which I was happy about, and the bride was completely surprised :)  Some even asked for the recipe, which I think is a big compliment, I'm hoping it works out well for them too!  

Week 10: Chocolate Decadent Cake

 It's arrived...the last class of cakes 1 :(  No more weekly cake :(  But on a happy note, this week's cake was delicious.  I call it an almost flourless chocolate cake and will definitely be re-using the recipe.
I call it an almost flourless chocolate cake, since it contains about 3% flour and is super chocolatey and rich with about 50% pure chocolate.  It could easily be made gluten free by just removing the flour or adding ground almonds.  With all the chocolate in the cake, it had a very silky smooth texture.

This was probably the easiest cake to measure out, since it had a crazy small ingredients list; just chocolate, butter, eggs, sugar and a pinch of flour.  Melt it all together, bake it and you a pretty much done :p

To cover the cake, we made what else...a chocolate glaze...more chocolate!  Another simple ingredient list; chocolate, butter and corn syrup.  We poured it over the cooled cake, garnished with some raspberries and it was finished!  To enhance the glaze, when I make it again, I'll add some liquor to add more flavour, maybe match the liquor flavour to the the fruit that I might garnish it with.   

I'm not really a big chocolate lover, I usually choose fruity or nut flavoured cakes when given a choice, but I really liked this.  When microwaved for a few seconds, it was almost like a molten chocolate cake, melted and flowing in the center but still set on the outside. 

This cake would work really well if I was to try it again in ramekins for a dinner party :)

I got so many good recipes from cakes 1 at George Brown College and feel so much more confident trying different cake recipes now.  I really recommend the class to anyone looking to expand their baking skills.  

Next class...PASTRY :)  Can't wait!!

Week 9: Chiffon Cheesecake

Cakes 1 is almost coming to an end...only one class left :( ...but at least this wasn't the very last class :)

This week we learned a new twist on cheesecake!  I'm a big cheesecake fan and am always ready to pull out my spring form pan and make a cheesecake when asked to make dessert for an event, so it was nice to learn a new way of making it, from my traditional new york style cheesecake.

New york style cheesecake, can be very dense and rich, but this cake was much lighter, allowing me to eat a lot more cheesecake than I usually can :p.  The cake was lightened with the addition of whipped egg whites which adds a lot of airiness.  In the which chocolate raspberry cheesecake I've made in the past, the filling was really simple, white chocolate, cream cheese, cream and sugar, but this cake had 6 eggs, flour, buttermilk and oil, making it much more cake like in consistency.  

The crust was a traditional graham cracker crust, which is super easy to make, just melted butter, graham cracker crumbs and sugar, but we added some toasted ground almonds to heighten the flavour :)

For the topping, we cooked down some frozen raspberries with sugar, water and cornstarch to thicken it up. 

Week 8: Chocolate Mousse Cake

Another fun week in Cakes 1 :)  This week we made a chocolate mousse cake, surprisingly our first chocolate cake of the course.
This cake was layers of almond meringue (Japonaise) with a chocolate mousse filling covered in a chocolate glaze, it was light with a good chocolate flavour.

The cake got it's lightness from the airy meringue and silky smooth mousse.  The mousse was mainly whipped cream but also had whipped eggs with sugar, melted chocolate with butter and a little bit of gelatin for stability. 

Once the meringue was baked and cooled, it was layered together in a ring mold and placed in the blast chiller.  After a little while, it was time for the fun part, the glazing :)  I decided to cover the entire cake in chocolate and decorate with extra meringue bits and chocolate covered crunch balls.

I'm not usually a chocolate cake person, but this was really good, since it wasn't too dense and rich.