November 26, 2011

And it's One, Two, Three Strikes Your Out...

I had a wonderful surprise a week or so ago, when I posted my girlfriend's penguin birthday cake on an online forum I am a part of. I got a message from another user, who asked if I would be willing to make her son's birthday cake in a few weeks. I of course said I would love to! After we chatted via message for a bit, she said her best friend was in need of a cake for her son's birthday for the 26th. So I contacted her and we discussed what she wanted for her son. I was looking forward to it! It was wonderful to be recommended, even more wonderful was that I had not met either woman before!

So her Son is turning One today, and she wanted a small cake for him to "Smash" for pictures. It was to be a baseball shaped cake. Perfect! I started working on this cake on Thursday morning. I made a ball cake using the Wilton Ball Pan, which is a great multitasker of a pan:) My first cake decided to cause me much hassle and one of the halves did not release from the pan properly.

Wonderful..
So attempt #2 was made. This time it came out of the pans properly, but I was really worried about the weight of the cake on itself. Once I stacked the two halves together, it was painfully obvious that my recipe was too moist of a cake, and I needed to make more of a pound cake to it to withstand the weight.

So on Friday morning, attempt #3 was in the oven.
I must say, it was such a difference in cakes, and I could tell before I even started trimming the excess off, that this cake was a lot denser and should hold up nicely.
Then the fun part began. I got to ice it and decorate it up to look like a baseball. It went surprisingly fast, and before I knew it, the cake was done and waiting to go in the fridge.

So while I know the Birthday Boy won't know the difference between a baseball or a hockey puck, I am sure his parents will love it!

November 15, 2011

Celebrating a Birthday with friends

This past weekend was a close friend's birthday. She recently moved to BC with her now fiance, and left us all behind. She was in town this weekend to visit family and celebrate her birthday with us. Of course, since we were having everyone over for dinner, I had to make a birthday cake...

I had recently tried my first attempt at making modelling chocolate, so I really wanted to use it for a cake. Since the modelling chocolate I used was Black, I needed something black to make...

Somehow I thought Penguins would be a cute idea.
Workin with the modelling chocolate was a lot of fun. It took a little bit of troubleshooting to figure out how to work with it best, but once I got going, I was really enjoying how easy it was to mold.
Now I am not an artist or a sculptor by any stretch of the word. I can barely draw a straight line, so making animals out of edible playdoh was something I was a little hesitant about. But I decided it was fun to play with, and I can only learn from it, no matter how ugly my penguins may be.

Since its coming up winter time, I thought my penguins needed to dress appropriately as well.

next, my Penguins needed an igloo to live in. Since I didn't actually make an Igloo cake, I wanted to create that same sort of look. I found this technique on Pintrest a while ago, and thought It would make a wonderful igloo look..





And then my penguins needed a pond of ice to play in... along with some snowballs to have a snowball fight..




And the final look of the whole cake..

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. Not bad for someone who doesn't sculpt or have any artistic talents. My GF loved it, and everyone thought it was a wonderful Birthday present:)

November 2, 2011

New Babies make me so happy

A girlfriend of mine just had her second baby boy on the 19th. I had been waiting for him to arrive so I could make a cake for him. I always wanted to do a cherry blossom style of cake and since I knew my friend had a cherry blossom tree tattooed up her side, I thought it would be fitting to make.
I was surprised to find out that I ended up duplicating their wedding cake! They thought it was incredibly sweet, I enjoyed making it, so it was a win/win situation:)