This weekend I had a lot of fun making my niece Grace’s birthday cake. She and my other niece LOVE Mickey Mouse. I was inspired by the Mousketere hat and made this cake for her.

I recently got a copy of my grand-mother’s chocolate cake recipe (in full disclosure this is the second time I’ve received it because I accidentally lost it the first time). This has become my favorite chocolate cake recipe as it turns out moist and is great for shaped cakes (like the hat). I used some Manner chocolate ganache and then covered it with a new home-made fondant recipe that uses white chocolate.

Every day I think about what is happening in Japan. If you are able please donate to the Red Cross – they have dispatched 80 medical teams to the effected area and our friend in Tokyo has seen first hand the good works they are doing. I hope that if you are able you will donate here. Visiting Japan was amazing – the people were so welcoming and helpful, the cities and sites extraordinary and just generally lovely. Please help!

On one of our last nights in Tokyo we went to this great cafe in Ginza, Cafe de Ginza, where I ate this amazing dessert – the name slipped my mind until very recently. But this sweet dessert is known as Mont Blanc. Now that I’m back in Canada and can’t go to the local bakery to find this delicacy I decided to hunt for a recipe that I can try at home sometime. Although I have not been able to find a recipe that matches what I had exactly, I have found an excellent subsitute on No Recipes which I can’t wait to try.

Who knows when I will make it back to Japan but hopefully it’s soon.

This dessert was also very close to the Mont Blanc but without the puree chestnut on top.

Recently on a tv show I saw some cake ideas that reminded me of my childhood and I thought…I want to make those. And so it came to be that at a recent Girls Night In Stella and Dot party that I made cupcakes but also cake cones.

When I was younger my mum would bake cake in ice cream cones but since I couldn’t remember how she did it I just baked cake in a square pan, but only making a thin layer. Then using a circle fondant cutter I carefully cut out circles (I saved the scraps to push into the cones.)

First I put a blob of icing into the bottom and then put a piece of cake.

Then I put in a piece of marzipan or drizzled caramel and icing.

Then I put another piece of cake.

Finally I topped them off with lots and lots of vanilla buttercream icing.

I cut out various little fondant ‘confetti’s – flowers, circles and hearts and put them on the cake cones and cupcakes. They were popular at my party and I think would be really great for kids parties, like they were when I was younger. I think if I do a cake for a child’s birthday I would definitely consider doing cake cones.

That’s it on the cake front for a while but it was really fun to be doing so many cakes/cupcakes again!

In celebration of the World Cup finale, LP, LM and I got together Saturday morning to decorate some cupcakes. I wanted to incorporate soccer, red (for Spain) and orange (for Holland). We also used green for grass and some soccer themed cake decorations to finish it off.

I will post some more photos later!

So it’s Friday – another week has flown by. This weekend we will be hosting a World Cup soccer finals party. I’m very excited as LP and I have gone shopping to get Spanish and Dutch inspired beverages and food. Tomorrow I will be working on some food preparation and cupcakes for the party with LM and LP. Of course, one must have soccer cupcakes for a soccer party. I’ve come up with some ideas for the cupcake toppers and hope we can skillfully execute them.

I will post some photos once they are complete!

Not too long ago a friend asked me to help her do a shuffle board cake for her father-in-law. One night after work we had fun decorating a cake like a shuffle board. 3 of us worked on this cake including building a character to look like her father-in-law (see bottom right of the cake) however I forgot to get a picture of the final outcome.

It was a great evening and really fun to be working on a cake!

This weekend I had a great cake challenge – a Clockwork Orange cake. I did plan the cake to be simple but it still was quite challenging – especially the thin lines for the ear and the eye.

Some initial challenges with the cake layers, even with extensive evening icing made adding the fondant very difficult but I am happy with the results.

Once I completed stage one I added stripes in the lower half and then circles on the top. I wanted to mirror the eye a little bit but also include my signature polka dots that I incorporate into almost all my cakes somehow.

The head wearing the bowler hat was a great challenge and I look forward to tasting this chocolate, chocolate-coffee buttercream icing with a single layer of candied cherries. I was hoping that this cake would be reminiscent of a black forest cake…we will see!

This weekend was a busy one with completing one project and also completing 2 cakes.

Here are the final cakes:

First cake up my drum kit cake which used the 4 direction colors: red, black, yellow and white. I was trying to incorporate geometric shapes, music records and notes and a drum kit on the top. I was very pleased with the result. The lower tier was a chocolate with chocolate buttercream icing and the top tier was vanilla with vanilla buttercream icing.

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This week I’m making two cakes  which I’ve been really excited about.

Tonight I worked on both the cakes but came close to completing this cake. My Hello Kitty Rock star cake. This cake was requested by a co-worker for her daughter’s 4th birthday. Read the rest of this entry »

So my New Year started off and running! I’ve got lots of projects on the go and I’m really excited about them.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to make some flowers for an event – corsages and boutonnieres. It was fun working with flowers again and I was really happy with the results (Wordless Wednesday this week).

I’ve also been working on a photography/writing project which hopefully I can talk more about soon – so stay tuned. Read the rest of this entry »