C is for cookie......

I know, I know.....it seems like forever since my last post!  I cannot wait for the day where I can leave the office job behind and cake full time :)

Last week was a busy week!  A couple of customers needed 2 cakes for same person, but having 2 parties.  It started with Twilight.  I was asked to do a simple cake for a family dinner mid week celebrating a birthday for a 10 year old.  This is what I came up with:

It was an 8 inch round covered in buttercream.  I did a blood red ribbon border in bc trimmed using black bc and my open star tip.  The Parrot Tulip is gumpaste and is inspired by the flower from the cover of one of the books.  The plaque was printed on wafer paper using the twilight font and was mounted on a piece of fondant.  The birthday girl was jumping up and down with excitement and actually cried when she saw the cake.....that reaction reminded me how worth doing what we do is!

Her second cake was a sheet cake with an edible image for her party with her friends:

The greeting is cut using the cricut and twilight font.  I lightly dusted Edward with bright white luster dust to make him shimmer like he does in the books and movies.

Another 2-for was for my cousin and his girlfriend.  Their son was turning 1, and they wanted a Cookie monster theme:

It started with cookie monster cupcakes for daycare.  These were really fun to do and are covered in bc with real cookie crumbs and fondant eyes for decoration.

His party cake was a 2 tiered fondant covered cake.  Cookie is sculpted from modelling chocolate and all of the decorations are gumpaste.  The lettering was all cut using my cricut - I am really starting to looooove that machine now that I'm used to it! I spelled the birthday boy's name on the sesame street sign as I thought it would be cool:

I always do a free smoosh cake whenever I do a 1st birthday, of course it had to be a cookie monster head!

I also had another Super Mario cake based on the one in my last post - I made a couple of changes to the layout of the gumpaste decorations and made the pipes curved for a bit of extra dimension:

Easter weekend, I spent alot of time working on a 3D My Little Pony:

I'm not going into too much detail on this one, as I took some pics along the way and plan on turning it into a tutorial if you are all interested!  Post a comment and let me know!  I'd love to hear what you all think!

The last cake I'm going to post was done this week for delivery yesterday (I actually have a cake-free weekend this weekend and plan on taking advantage of it to reorganize my cake room, make some sugar flowers, and try some new recipes).  It is my 1st attempt using the chocolate transfer technique from Sharon Zambito's Sheet Cakes DVD which can be found here.  It is of Wolverine from the X-Men.  The lettering is gumpaste using (you guessed it) the Cricut.  I love the web - it allows us to find so many great things - including the same font used on Wolverine comics:

The cake itself is covered in bc, with the chocolate transfer on top.  The red x-men logos are gumpaste brushed with red luster dust.  The letters got a dusting of super blue luster as well!  I love Sharon Zambito's dvd's - they are really helpful, and have let me bring my skills to a new level!

My next post will be sooner than later - I plan on doing a feature where I review a cake decorating DVD.  I have a small collection of material to work with and plan on doing 1 a week.  If there are any requests for a particular sugar artist or dvd, let me know and if I have it, I will review it for you.

Until then, HAppy Caking!

Kickin' it old school!

So, this weekend I had the opportunity to do a cake I've been wanting to do for a very long time....a Super Mario Bros. themed cake:

This cake has been on my wishlist of themes for a while.  The cake itself was chocolate with chocolate mousse filling.  Using a few of the ideas and techniques that I learned from Sharon Zambito's Successful Sheet Cakes Dvds, I brought this cake to the next level!  The entire cake is covered in buttercream with an edible image on top.  The coins and supporting characters were all edible images cut out, mounted on gp and left to dry.  The pipes and pirranha-plant heads are fondant with tylose as are the brich strips that line the top and bottom of the top of the cake.  I used a brick impression mat to give the brick feel and used the same mat to emboss the bc on all 4 sides.  Needless to say, the client was thrilled, and the employees of the venue the party was being hels at said this beat any sheetcake they've ever seen brought in for a party.  I posted the pic to my Facebook profile and group before I delivered.  By the time I got home from the delivery, I had a message from someone requesting that cake for her son's party in 2 weeks!  (Too bad I threw out all of the extra brick and character pieces I had - lesson to all, don't throw leftover pieces away - you never know when you'll need them!)

I learned another valuable lesson this weekend.  A few weeks ago, an acquaintance messaged me on facebook and asked about a cake for her daughter.  Friday morning, before leaving for the office, I was checking fb and she had posted on my wall asking if a cake for Saturday was pushing it.  I didn't have any plans for Friday night, since my other cake was for Sunday, and agreed.  I gave her my office number and told her to call with details.  Low and behold, my phone rings at 8:30 and it is a friend of hers calling about the cake.  I had already agreed, and couldn't back oout now hearing that it is for a first bday and their previous cake decorator (a friend of the baby's mom) had backed out last minute claiming illness.  So I continue emailing the client back and forth, and am told they want a 3D replica of the baby's favorite stuffed toy, a dragon named Scorch:

Really cute, right?  The client says they only need it to be a smash cake, so something about a foot long would be great.  As the day went out, I was continually distracted by one thought - Mark, you haven't carved alot of cake, are you going to be able to do it that small?  By mid-afternoon I realized it - NO SLEEP TONIGHT!!!  The cake ended up being 100% cake (save a small piece of foam core to support the head and 4 toothpicks that held the wings in place), about 5 inches tall and 18 inches long (approximately, I didn't think to measure it).  I was happy with the final outcome:

Even though I didn't charge nearly as much as I should have, I just had this gut feeling that told me I was doing the right thing and that this cake would make an AWESOME picture.  Not only did the clients like it, the birthday boy had a huge smile when he saw it, and I may have added some new clients to the roster!  All in all, a very satisfying day, considering they mentioned an upcoming wedding that they'd like me to do their cake for! 

I started this year telling myself to head Duff's words, "Make it bigger, make it badder, make it awesome", and this would be the year that I start the five year plan towards my own shop!  Until next time, Happy Caking!

PS:  Exciting News!!  I registered this week to take Jennifer Dontz' posies class this June in Ottawa - I am super excited (especially since it is the weekend after my birthday)

A Thug's Life

So last week, I had to do a graffiti cake for a very good customer. Her cousin's daughter wanted a brick wall with "Happy 9th Birthday Tiashia" written on it. I am by no means artistically inclined, and was a little worried about the graffiti part. I did some research online and was able to download a few alphabets in various graffiti forms. I found the one I liked best, cut each letter out from gumpaste, let it dry and then airbrushed in pink and purple per the Birthday girl's request. The brick wall was easy enough - fondant cut out and laid out like a brick pattern then airbrushed red:

I was very excited this week to receive the latest DVD in Sharon Zambito's collection. It is all about SHeetcakes and new techniques to liven this former grocery store fodder up a bit. Many cakers detest sheet cakes, and I for one used to feel they were so boring to do. Until now. I didn't have much time to really pay alot of attention, but picked up enough to come up with this:

This cake was for my niece, Sara's 4th birthday. She wanted Wow Wow Wubbzy, and she got him. This was done using Sharon's run sugar technique. It was Chocolate cake with cookies n cream mousse filling.

The rest of my weekend will be spent making assorted goodies for next weekend's craft fair. I've got this good nervousness going on, and can't wait until next weekend! Before I go, I am thinking about starting a new feature - DVD reviews. If you're anything like me, you don't have much access or enough $$$ to travel and study with Cake greats. I spend my cash on DVDs - that way I can always go back and review, and I still get to learn from the greats. If this is something that interests you, post a comment and let me know what you think.

I'll try and post next weekend after the craft fair with pics and a detailing of how it went.

Until next time, Happy Caking!

Always Coca-Cola!

This past weekend, we celebrated my wife's uncle's birthday. He is a collector of everything Coca-Cola, and has decorated his family room with all kinds of Coke paraphanelia. This cake was my wife's idea. When I got my Cricut for Christmas, she had the idea to do the can of coke cake. I liked her idea, but thought a closed can of coke would be boring. Instead, I opted to do a spilled can of coke. The cake was chocolate filled with white chocolate vanilla bean caramel ganache. The cake was airbrushed in red shimmer for that metallic effect. The top and bottom of the can were airbrushed gold. The silver tab (to open the soda) was done in silver - unfortunately the close up of the tab didn't come out as well as I thought. Needless to say, the wife's uncle was really happy with his cake and was even comparing it to a real can of coke.

This was my first time making my own mould using silicone plastique. SP is a 2 part putty where you mix equal parts of the white and blue componunds and roll it out. I had an over-sized tab from a fruit cup that I placed in the compond and allowed to set for about an hour or so. I then removed the tab and now had a mould that I could fill with gumpaste. Can't lie - I love this stuff and am now obsessed with thinking of other things to mould.

The SP was bought from Flour Confections, an online supply store located here in Canada and owned by acclaimed sugar artist Lisa Bugeja. Flour Confections has so many cool cake toys, that it is hard to not constantly spend money there :) Not only does Lisa offer great cake items, but you can also find fantastic instructional DVDs and info on all of her courses including those given by celebrity instructors. I am dying to visit her in Pickering to do a class, just waiting for something that can fit my schedule. Visit Lisa over at http://www.flourconfections.ca and see for yourself the array of goodies for sale. Lisa has amazing customer service, reasonable prices, and fast shipping. She also ships internationally, and is now taking pre-orders for the new Cricut Cake machine.

Until next time, Happy Caking!

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!