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!

Retailer Review: Icing Inspirations

Hi fellow Cakers!  This week I thought I'd start a new feature - Retailer Review!  I am extremely limited in Montreal (surprising!) in terms of finding decorating supplies.  I mean the few retailers around here have wilton colors, tips, boards and boxes, but to find cutters, veiners, etc;, I need to shop online. 

The first retailer I'm going to review is Icing Inspirations.  Icing Inspirations is owned by a great woman named Chrissie, and is located in Ontario Canada.  They carry a wide range of products, icluding a large range of products from the UK.  The shipping and handling fees are very reasonable and quick.  Chrissie always has something on sale, and sometimes has deals on shipping.  This month, she is offering $5 shipping on orders over $50 for Canadian residents. 

Some of the products I love from Icing Inspirations are:
Pollen Dusts - these come in a variety of colours and give your stamens such a lifelike appearance
Rainbow Dusts - terrific glitter, shimmer and petal dusts in a huge range of colours
Petal Craft cutters and veiners

Icing Inspirations is more than an online store - they are a school as well and often feature "celebrity" cake designers including Carrie Biggers and Courtney Clark.  For more information or to place in order, visit them at http://www.icinginspirations.ca/

Until next time, Happy Caking!

DVD Review: Sheet Cake Secrets by Sharon Zambito

If you're anything like me, you do not have the opportunity to take alot of cake classes - they are far and few between even in a city as big as Montreal!  The way I have been learning has been to purchase DVDs online and watching them over and over.  I have started building an extensive library and decided I would start a new blog feature where I revies these discs to help my fellow cakers realize the wealth of knowledge available in DVDs and give them an idea of which DVDs are worth investing in.  The first dvd I'm going to review is Sharon Zambito's Sheet Cake Secrets:

This two-disc set covers everything you'll need to know for taking an ordinary sheet cake and turning it into something extraordinary!  Sharon walks you through various techniques for adding that WOW factor to your sheetcakes.  Most cake designers, myself included, would cringe at the fact that a client would ask for a sheetcake.  I mean honestly - other than an edible image, how sensational can a sheetcake really be?  Now, I find myself trying to talk customers into ordering a sheetcake instead!  Sharon teaches the following techniques for making your sheetcakes pop include:

• run sugar
• chocolate transfer
• frozen buttercream transfer

On top of these key techniques, Sharon teaches how to enhance these designs with various trims from fondant ribbons and strings to fondant cutouts and flowers.  My favorite part of the DVD is the airbrushing techniques, especially using magnets to block bleeding through.  Everything Sharon teaches in this DVD set can basically be done with tools you probably already have in your arsenal.  If not, the tools Sharon uses in the DVD are also available at her website.

For more information or to order this DVD, click here.  At 35.95 (plus S&H), this DVD is worth every penny.  Sharon's customer service is some of the best out there.  She processes orders quickly and her shipping is just as quick!  If you are looking to invest in quality cake education at a reasonable price, this is the place to start!

Until next time, Happy Caking!!

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!