C'mon Spring

So, while my friends south of the border are getting nailed by crazy snow storms and bad weather, we are getting warmer than normal temperatures the past few days. Spring is in the air and I personally cannot wait for the snow to be gone. The cake that I had to deliver yesterday really helped get me in the mood for the warm weather! How could this cake not?

This cake was HUGE and weighed a ton! It was 4 tiers - 16",14",12" and an 8 inch sphere. The bottow was chocolate with raspberry buttercream, then vanilla bean with orange bc, followed by lemon with white chocolate bc and the sun was raspberry swirl with white chocolate bc. Everything was covered in fondant with gumpaste accents. The cake was a corporate cake for the company I work for. They were celebrating the retirement of 3 long time employees.

On another note, I'd like to give a shout out to Sharon Zambito of SugarEd Productions. Sharon is an amazing cake decorator and teacher. Lately, Sharon has had a string of bad luck with getting her new website up and running (no thanks to her incompetent web guy). Despite all these difficulties, she was kind enough to sell me copies of her 2 new dvd's before the site was fixed and functional, just so I can try to use some of the new techniques on my niece's birthday cake in 2 weeks. I plan on doing a review of all of her dvd's in an upcoming post - kind of a tribute to a great teacher and inspiration to me!

I'm off to work on my next cake - a can of Coca -Cola. Until next time, Happy Caking!

Almost Spring!!!!

I know some people in the US are having horrible weather. Luckily, we seem to be experiencing a nice mild stretch here! Last week, my wife's grandmother told us she was able to get me a table at an upcoming craft fair at her retirement club. This is my first time doing something like this, so I am gonna sell Easter and everyday chocolate, and a few other goodies! I'm really excited, and my Sister in law is going to share the table and sell her really cool sock creatures.

I get to take a day off my day job this Wednesday so I can work on a cake for the company I work for. They're throwing a retirement lunch for 3 departing employees - unfortunately, the day off has to come from my vacation time :( This cake is putting me in the mood for summer time though - it is gonna be awesome - I'll post pics later this week. For now, here's a pic of an I-phone cake I did over this past weekend:

The cake was a layer of buttercream sandwiched between a chocolate layer and a vanilla layer. The cake was covered in Chocolate fondant and airbrushed in black shimmer. The screen is just an edible image I printed up. This was my first time using chocolate fondant, and I loved it! It rolled so smoothly and nicely - there was no tearing, and no dreaded "elephant skin".

On the pipeline for the weekend, is a cake shaped like a can of Coca Cola. I have already made a mold of the tab out of silicone plastique, and plan on using my Cricut to do the lettering. The only thing I haven't decided on yet is the flavor - my choice, since it is for my wife's uncle. My policy is, I'll give family cake for free as long as they agree to give me full say over the flavor and design! Till next time, happy caking!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I am settling down from making 300 chocolate heart pops for 1 order, along with all of he other treats I had to make for sale this past week. Wow, did the product fly! I don't think anything was left after a few hours. It was like that at my office as well as my wife's.! In addition to having to prep all the chocolate, pretzels and popcorn crunch, I worked on my first ever cereal treats sculpture! It was part of a 1st birthday cake for my co-worker's daughter, Riley. Riley loves Elmo, so the design I came up with was Elmo popping out of a bag of popcorn. Here's the finished cake:




Elmo was sculpted from cereal treats and then covered in modeling chocolate - another first for me! Once the chocolate was on, I used some sculpting tools to etch the fur design, Elmo was then airbrushed in a deeper shade of red to give a finished look. The cake was 2 tiers stacked on top of each other and covered in fondant. The stripes were hand painted to give a cartoon-ish effect. The popcorn is all gumpaste made one kernel at a time. I took pictures of the popcorn process and will hopefully be posting my first tutorial in the coming weeks. I am gearing up for a few more cakes in the next week, including an I
i-phone and another corporate cake. I am also anxiously waiting for the news that Sharon Zambito's latest dvd is out so that I can get my grubby little paws on it :) Until next time, Happy Caking!