Pink First Communion

Last weekend I made a first communion cake.  I know, a strange time of year for a first communion, but a cake nonetheless.  The client asked for a two tiered cake and provided me with a picture of a cake her daughter liked.  The cake was vanilla bean covered in fondant and adorned with shimmery pink blossoms, a pink fondant fabric swag and bows.  The cross on top was gumpaste, decorated with gumpaste pearls and jewels.

As mentioned earlier, I am still working on the Jen Dontz interview as well as a review on Sharon Zambito's Back to Basics DVD.  Until next time, Happy Caking!

Who Ya Gonna Call?

We all know that everything that's old becomes new again.  With the recent success of Ubisoft's Ghostbusters game for the Wii console, a new generation has been exposed to this great franchise!  I was fortunate enough to be asked to make a Ghostbusters cake for the son of one of my customer's.  She picked the base cake from another website and I used it as a jumping point.  Here is the finished product:

The top tier was covered in fondant with fondant buildings.  The bottom tier is covered in buttercream.  Staypuft and Slimer are hand modelled in gumpaste.  Slimer is covered in tinted piping gel to give him a "slimey" look.  The ghostbusters logo is an edible image super imposed on gumpaste and sprinkled with disco dust to give it that something extra!  The cake itself is vanilla bean and is filled with "Slimer green" buttercream.

More cakes coming up - the next few weeks are booked.  On the pipeline for my faithful blog followers is a review of Sharon Zambito's Back to Basics DVD as well as an interview with Jennifer Dontz.  If there are any tutorials or anything else you'd like to see on the blog, leave me a comment.

Until next time, Happy Caking!

DVD Review: Stargazer Lily with Edna De la Cruz

The Stargazer Lily gumpaste flower tutorial by Edna De la Cruz is the first in Edna's line of tutorial DVDs.  Edna is a very talented sugar artist who sprung to fame through a series of tutorials on Youtube as well as a lot of helpful advice she gives in the forums at Cakecentral. 

Edna starts the lesson with a breakdown of all of the tools needed to make the flower.  She then walks you step by step through making the individual components of the Stargazer Lily.  Once the parts are made, Edna teaches how to color your flowers and assemble.  The menus are very easy to navigate and allow you to watch a certain scene over or start at a certain scene if you so choose.  This is a feature that is lacking in alot of cake decorating discs out there.  There are also alot of pictures of completed flowers to provide inspiration for your own projects.

Anyone who has seen Edna's tutorials online knows how amazing a teacher she is and this DVD is a definite must have for any cake designer.  The finished flowers are beautiful and make for a really elegant cake.  If you are interested in purchasing this dvd, you can do so here.  Edna also sells alot of the tools you would need to complete the flowers.  Her prices are reasonable, her shipping is fast and her customer service is great!

That's it for now.  I'll be back this weekend with a post about a cake that has gotten me very excited - want a hint?  It's bound to be "more than meets the eye".  I am also attending my first meeting of the Canadian Cake Decorator's Guild which I think will be a lot of fun!

Until next time,

Happy Caking!

GINORMOUS News!

It has been an exciting week!  Last week, Flour Confections advertised that they will be hosting the "King of Sugar Flowers" - Ron Ben Israel.  Ron has been featured in such reknowned publications as O, Martha Stewart Weddings, and The Knot to name a few.  His creations have also been featured on the small and big screen!  The course is costly, but well worth it.  It took me alot of time to decide to go, and when I did, it was too late - the class was sold out!  That is until Ron was convinced to add a second set of classes the week before the first set.  It looked like I wasn't going to make it, but the cake Gods were smiling down on me, and the scheduling was able to work itself out!

Needless to say, I am booked for the class, and have started the countdown - 137 days to go!  I have started fundraising to offset the costs of the course - there will be a different treat being sold each week at work, not to mention the fact that I have started taking orders for sugar flower arrangements that people can display in their homes.

Happy Canada Day and Happy Caking!

Sugar Flower Heaven

Hi Everyone!  Sorry for my blog absence recently, but I've been super busy.  I just got home from beautiful Ottawa, Canada.  I was in our Nation's Capital to partake in a sugar flower course given by the ever so talented Jennifer Dontz of Sugar Delites.  Jennifer has got to be one of the sweetest, funniest people I have ever met, and man did I lear ALOT!  The flowers we covered in class included Cosmos, Gardenia, Tulips, Dendrobium Orchids, Alstromeria, and Hydrangea.  In class, we worked with three new types of sugar paste, all of which will replace what I am currently using.

My favorite flower of the class was probably the Alstromeria - it required us to use a new paste from the UK called platinum paste which can be rolled tiisue paper thin and has a longer dry time allowing for great petal movement to make flowers that are more realistic.  Best of all, it can be colored before it is even dry!  We also dipped the wet petals to give them a waxy look - AMAZING!

Not only did I learn alot, I met alot of really cool people.  I can't wait to join them all again for another class.  The trip was so worth every penny!

I am on vacation this week, which means my wife Jaimie has me doing chores around the house.  It also means a day trip to Plattsburgh (read as GLOBAL SUGAR ART).  I will also be working this week on a graduation cake and a batmobile cake!  I am also pleased to announce that I am going to be demo-ing the Cricut to the decorators at the local store where I get my cake supplies.  At the same time, I will be discussing the details of something major!  That's right - I am taking the next steps in following my cake dream - I am going to start teaching!  More on that to come.....

For now, it is time to go lounge by the pool with an icy beverage - maybe something strawberry flavoured in honour of the great Ms.Dontz :)

Until next time,

Happy Baking!

Retailer Review: Flour Confections

I was happy to get alot of emails telling me that people enjoyed the Reatailer Review post I did a couple of weeks ago and decided it will become a regular feature to the blog.  This time around, we're featuring another great Canadian Online Retailer:

Located in Pickering Ontario, Flour Confections offers a wide range of cake decorating products ranging from basic tools to edible image supplies to the brand new Cricut Cake!  FC is owned and operated by the very talented Lisa Bugeja and her husband Scott, who I am pleased to say are very helpful and friendly when dealing with customer enquiries.  Their prices are very reasonable, as it the very quick shipping.  Some of the products that I love include the green disposable pastry bags and the vast selection cutters.  I am very excited about their new range of petal dust colors exclusive to FC - the colors look to be very intense and I plan on ordering them very soon.

Not only is Flour Confections an amazing online retailer, they also offer a variety of hands on classes taught by Lisa, as well as a bevy of celebrity cake artists.  This year alone, FC has hosted the likes of such talent as James Rosselle, Bronwen Weber and Mr.Amazing himself, Mike McCarey!  Early next year, they will be hosting a Muppets cake class with the 1 and only Lauren Kitchens, competitor in the recent Sesame Street Challenge on Food Network.  I have yet to take a class at FC, but do have it on my list of places I'd like to learn - doesn't hurt that my aunt lives a mere 10 minutes away in Ajax - now if my day job schedule wouldn't interfere with the FC class schedule :)

Take my word for it, head on over to http://www.flourconfections.ca/ and see for yourself the amazing things you can get.  A couple of things worth checking out are the Edible Image Systems (I actually told a local supplier about the deal at FC because their own system had died on them, and they still thank me for telling them about it because the system is working great) as well as the silicone plastique used to make your own molds.  I also love that they carry SugarVeil and am intrigued by the new edible crystals they are advertising!

Until next time, Happy Caking!

A Spider and a Mouse

First off, thank you to the people who either commented or wrote me to tell me that they like the review features!  Last week's cakes were so much fun to do!  The first was a 3D mickey mouse-type head.  I used RKT for the ears and nose, everything else was cake and covered in fondant.  I used gumpaste and my handy-dandy cricut to cut out the letters:

The cake was all vanilla bean with vanilla bc filling.  The birthday boy's name was Kalel.

My second cake was a bust of Spiderman:

Spidey is completely edible.  The head is RKT and the body is cake.  The webbing and logo are made from sugar veil.  If you'd like me to do a tutorial on this, let me know and I will put one together - the technique is good for any superhero and I am thinking of doing an Iron Man for my upcoming birthday. 

Not much going on this week - I could use the break.  I am however getting ready for next week's cakes.  I'll be back later this week with another dvd review (as long as the US postal service doesn't lose my package) and/or another store review.

Until then, happy caking!