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!

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!