Better late than never... Power Ranger Dino Charge Cake

I'm so proud of this cake, because it's all mine. It was for my sons birthday party. I sketched the idea, and surprisingly it came out exactly how I wanted it. I almost crashed into a snowbank for this cake. :) Both layers are cake head/mask is rice crispy treat.

My Birthday!

You know what's great about doing cakes? I can do anything I want for MY birthday. I love purple and pink. The brighter the better. I wouldn't exactly wear it, or paint it on my bedroom wall... but I love it. So I get to play with my cake. This is what I came up with for my own birthday cake. :)

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Take 1

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake - Chocolate fudge cake with cookies and cream filling and vanilla buttercream. I think that'll be my cake of choice for my birthday!!! Happy Birthday Alex! Hope you had a great party!

Surprise Minnie Mouse

Lemon pound cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant. Minnie Mouse is made of rice krispies and fondant.

Sock Monkey

Sock Monkey cake... Cake is chocolate fudge with peanut butter buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream exterior. Sock Monkey is made of rice krispies and fondant. Fondant accents.

Grover!

Grover cake. Peanut butter pound cake with vanilla buttercream. Piped fur and eyes, nose and mouth are fondant.

iCarly

Don’t you just love those fun, bright colors? There’s something about this cake that just makes me happy. Maybe it’s because I would have LOVED a cake like this when I was younger? Maybe I would love it now! All the same, I think it’s just so fun. My client sent me a photo of a cake she liked and asked me to make it the top tier of a 2 tier cake. I had to make a few modifications but in the end the birthday girl did love it, and that’s what’s most important to me! The cake is vanilla pound, covered in buttercream and fondant and decorated with fondant accents.

Tip:

Want to know how to easily get a scalloped edge on the bottom of a cake? Get a round cookie cutter, cut out some fondant circles, then cut those in half with a pizza roller and tada…. Put them side by side along the base of the cake. What a nice neat border, and you didn’t have to spend any money on fancy tools!

Mickey Mouse

This is a bit of a repeat of a cake I did last year... The difference is last time I covered it in fondant and this one is buttercream. The cake is chocolate fudge with red vanilla buttercream. The Mickey head/hat is also cake (baked in the Wilton Ball pan), then covered in buttercream and fondant. The ears are fondant/gumtex mix.

Tip:

Bright red icing is tough to get. Believe me! I’ve had more than a few bad experiences dying buttercream red. Here are a few tips to successfully achieve red icing…

1.       Add cocoa to your buttercream (so you start with a chocolate icing). I don’t find you’ll get a bright “lightening McQueen” red… but you will get a nice, deep fire engine kind of red. AND the chocolate hides the nasty taste of the red food dye.

2.       DON’T use liquid red. You’ll just end up with bright pink, and a very thin icing.

3.       Use wilton no taste red gel food color, available at Michaels and Bulk Barn (Might be at Walmart and Scoop & Save too – I haven’t personally bought it there before.)

4.       My ABSOLUTELY new FAVORITE is Ameri-color. I ordered it online and you need only a quarter IF that of Wilton’s gel color. What’s crazier… I got a 4.5oz bottle for just a dollar more than what I can get 1oz of Wilton color! I know. WELL worth it.

Popcorn cake

Bag of popcorn anyone? Bet you’d like this kind! Of course, the ‘bag’ is made of cake, vanilla pound, with vanilla buttercream. But the popcorn is actual popcorn covered in white chocolate candy melts! Ya… yum. The reason I covered it in chocolate was to get larger clusters to stick on the cake, or else I’d have a bunch of loose popcorn.

Oh and there’s those great “food writers” (edible markers)… Love them!!!

Tip:

If you’re making a larger cake and can’t fit it on a plate and don’t want to spend money on those expensive silver cake boards do what I do. I get foam board from the Dollar store and cover it. You could cover it with tin foil, but I don’t like how easily tin foil can rip, and you might end up serving some with your cake. So I use disposable plastic table cloths. You know the ones you buy to decorate your table for a party that gets full of salsa and cracker crumbs and you throw away? Well, I have a giant roll… it’s cheap and food safe! Plus, I love wrapping… so it’s like wrapping a gift each time… kind of appropriate right?

Rapunzel Tower cake

Some cakes I just have so much fun with. Probably because I’m still a kid at heart and LOVE watching cartoons with my daughter. These cakes will keep me young, since I get to ‘research’ for each cake. As I’m sure watching Rapunzel about 15 times was necessary for the preparation of this cake.

The cake is vanilla pound. The client is going to add a Rapunzel doll on the right hand side. I wish I had a picture of the cake with the doll. I always test my accuracy with my daughter. I don’t tell her what I’m making. In fact, most of the time I only start after she goes to bed. So when she wakes up I ask her to come see something. I wait to see if she can tell me what it is. In this case, I probably should have told her, because this is how the reveal of the cake went:

Me: Hey Mia… wanna come see a cake I made?

Mia: Yaaaa!

We walk into the kitchen…

Mia: Awwww Mom…you made me a Rapunzel cake, and a Rapunzel tower for my Rapunzel doll….thanks Mom! Is it my birthday?

Me: No Mia, it’s not your Birthday. It’s for another little girl.

Mia: But Mom, there’s a number 3 on it, just like how old I am.

Me: Mia I’m sorry, it’s not for you.

Mia: Sniff…sniff…sniff…

Tip:

If you want to add a 3d element to a cake, try making a batch of rice krispies squares and shaping it into what you want to make. I use ¼ cup vegetable oil, heat it, add 1 pkg of mini marshmallows and once they’re melted (over low heat, stirring frequently) add about 5 cups of rice krispies. Remove from heat and stir stir stir. Let it cool until you can handle it, then grease your hands with a bit of shortening (or else you’ll have rice krispy square hands) and shape it as you want. Pop it in the fridge to set and tada… just ice it and decorate.

Over the Hill (40)

Here’s my take on the many possibilities/versions of the over the hill cakes circulating on the web. The cake is covered in buttercream and the signs are made of fondant. Did you know that edible markers exist? (the ink is edible, not the marker. J ) I love that I can actually write on a cake and you can eat it and it’s safe! It’s probably one of my most favorite tools right now.

I’ve been asked a few times for tips/techniques, etc… I figured that I’d start offering tips I learnt or my favorites from each cake, for those who might like to know.

Tip:

The grass on this cake was made with tip #233. It’s probably one of my most favorite icing tips because you can make things look so realistic, like grass, or hair on a person cake, or fur on an animal cake or even a shag rug! J

Ipod Cake

This was another fun and creative cake. I was asked if I could do an ipod cake. i POD? Really? Then I was asked if it could be on the facebook app with birthday wishes from friends and family. I loved the challenge and doing the research and am very pleased with the outcome. It's a 2 layer cake, 1 layer chocolate, 1 layer vanilla. Covered in fondant. Piping is done with royal icing, writing is done with edible food writers. I really enjoyed making this one. Hope the birthday girl liked it!

Happy Birthday to a Habs fan dad

I was asked to do a cake for a Habs fan... from his kids. Something simple. This is what I came up with... it's peanut butter pound cake, vanilla buttercream and fondant accents.

Happy 40th - Friends being supportive

This was so much fun. I had received an email looking for a 'fun' 40th birthday cake. I found some cute ideas but this one wasn't in my surfing... instead the client asked about the 'bra' cake. So after a bit of googling I knew what she meant and was excited to get going. Bra is made from gumpaste. Cake is vanilla covered in vanilla buttercream. While I was doing it I had the following conversation with my daughter:

Mia - What's that Mommy.
Me - A bra.
Mia - What's a bra?
Me - Big girls wear them to cover their boobies.
Mia - WHOA big girls have boobies big like my head?

--Perhaps I made the bra a bit too large?

 

 

Basketball Birthday

This was a fun cake to do! It was for a joint birthday/basketball end of year party. The cake is chocolate chip swirl, filled with chocolate buttercream covered in vanilla buttercream with fondant accents. The 'bleachers' have 'fans' sitting in them (sprinkles) holding signs with the birthday boys names. Basketball nets are made of fondant and toothpicks.

First Birthday Cake

This cake had many 'lives' before it became what it did. Chosing a first birthday cake for your little one isn't always easy. :) The mom sent me 2 photos to sort of bring together to make 1 kdfCREATION especially for her little girl. The cake is vanilla pound with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents. The smash cake is the same, with a fondant bow.

Birthday Hat Cake

My client sent me a photo of a hat cake she wanted me to recreate. I've always wanted to do a hat cake like this. :) Sadly, my pregnant brain is working against me. The first time I made the cake, I forgot to put the eggs in. IMAGINE. Thankfully, second time went well. Cake is red velvet, with vanilla buttercream covered in fondant. Flower was hand made with gumpaste. Feathers aren't edible. Birthday wish is cardstock cut out with my cricut.

A little bit for him and a little bit for her

I made a joint birthday cake for my sister in law and her boyfriend. He's a swat/cop guy, and she's a girly girl. This is the combination I came up with so that a little bit of each of them was represented in the cake. It's fudge marble cake covered in vanilla and chocolate buttercream. The gun is made of rice krispies covered in fondant. The hand cuffs, badge, glasses and shoe were made of gumpaste. The cake was made for my sister in law and her boyfriend.

Beer Barrel

I got to try a bunch of new stuff for this cake. That's always fun! First, a new recipe... Cinnamon swirl cake. I had a small sliver.... mmm mmm mmm. Then I tried "Bettercream" it's a lighter version to a buttercream. Similar to a whipped cream but has a similar taste to buttercream, just not as sweet. I wasn't sure how it would turn out but I must say I do enjoy it and can see myself using it a fair amount. (I'd love to try it with strawberry yogurt cake!) I then tried to make the ice. I got lucky on my third try. It's a sugar and corn syrup concoction that when heated to the right temperature will make a 'candy'. I wasn't heating it enough (I was trying to avoid it reaching the amber stage) unfortunately I learnt the hard way that it needs to reach that stage if I want it to harden.

The wood is made of fondant that I distressed and painted. The beer cans are real and almost torture to use in photo. I'm 7 months pregnant and have been craving a beer since I was 3 months along! Seriously! I was good though... they went back on the shelf.

Pizza Anyone?

I think my husband enjoyed the research for this cake. In fact, we ordered pizza for supper to get me in the proper 'frame of mind'... if it only worked the same for let's say a tropical cake... I'd love to do my research somewhere south! :)

I was asked for a pizza cake. No additional details other than chocolate cake. I searched through many examples and learnt about what I liked and didn't like. So here's what I came up with. Oh and I'm a believer of giving credit, when credit is due... the table cloth idea was my husbands, and I must say it does add a little extra something to the whole cake.

Details:
14" Chocolate fudge cake, covered in vanilla buttercream. The "sauce" is thin red chocolate ganache. The Cheese is grated marshmallow fondant melted with my heat gun. The peppers are chocolate. The mushrooms, olives, and pepperoni are all fondant also given a little texture with my heat gun. (Marshmallow fondant + heat gun = toasted marshmallows = yum!)