04
May
Author: Heather // Category:
Fondant,
Project Cakes,
Royal Icing,
Stringwork
Well, allow me to proudly present my most recent achievement. This intricate cake was the project cake for my most recent decorating class. It’s a dummy, not real cake.
- Stringwork Cake In Sunlight
There’s a lot going on here, and some of it is hard to see in the pictures, but I’ll try to explain. Firstly, on the top we have a royal icing basket, covered with royal icing pansies, daffodils, and roses. Coming out of the basket are tiny tiny roses on wires. The cake and board are both covered with fondant, and the board is embossed around the edges with a little diamond design. On the top four corners of the cake are teeny tiny royal icing roses and leaves.
Moving to the sides, you’ll see oriental stringwork, pink and white drop flowers, a heart design in purple colourflow, and itty bitty little white hearts where the strings on the bottom join.
Did it come out perfectly? Technically, no. Some of my strings are wonky, and I still have trouble with large roses. But I think the overall effect is quite stunning, and I learned some interesting new techniques that I will be practicing. So, yay for me!
12
Apr
Author: Heather // Category:
Fondant,
Party Cakes
SWEEP!
Here’s a recent cake, for once. This one was a yellow cake (from my new favourite yellow cake recipe, “Essential Yellow Cake” from the book Wedding Cakes You Can Make by Dede Wilson) with a lemon butter filling, covered with a thin layer of vanilla buttercream (an OK Italian Meringue Buttercream from a recipe I probably won’t use again) and rolled fondant (the McCall’s brand, which is HEAD AND SHOULDERS BETTER than the WIlton kind!!)
I wasn’t happy with the writing on this cake at all. It’s crooked, and block-y, and I didn’t like it one bit. I also dropped the FoodWriter and made a mark on the cake, so I had to make the line where the mark was - hence why the lines do not meet in the centre of the button. Anyhoo, I would get a chance to re-do my writing the day after I made this. I left it on the table in a cardboard cake box, and when I got up the next day my cat had SAT ON THE BOX AND CRUSHED THE CAKE. I’m not even kidding. Thankfully, it was salvageable, and my second go at the writing looked much better. Yipes.
24
Nov
Author: Heather // Category:
Fondant,
Party Cakes
This was a cake I made to resemble our baseball team’s jerseys. It was about 300 degrees the day I made this and I was new to fondant so there are some issues, but all in all it turned out quite well. Big shout out to Clark West Drycleaners (our sponsor) whose name is on the sleeve but I obviously didn’t get a picture of it.
Go Team 15!
The cake in here was Vanilla and the filling was some sort of lemon whipped cream concoction. It tasted good, so who cares what it was, haha. I used pre-mixed black and yellow fondant, and I made the buttons from chocolate. Had I known that Candy Melts come in black, I would have used those for the buttons. Live and learn!
Note: This cake would have served about 50 people but I think 13 people ended up eating it all. No wonder we never win!
02
Jul
Author: Heather // Category:
Baby Shower Cakes,
Buttercream,
Fondant
Baby Shower Cake!
This baby shower cake was an ambitious project. I was originally going to separate the layers with pillars, but after some technical difficulty, (my blocks came out too big and couldn’t go on the top) I decided to separate the tiers with them instead. They spell out “baby” if you were to turn the cake. The baby’s gender is unknown, hence the more neutral colouring.
Only the top tier is covered with fondant (Mommy-To-Be is not a fan.) The lower tier is iced in buttercream, and all the borders and detailing are buttercream also. The ribbon on the top tier is made with fondant.
The blocks are made from Rice Krispie Squares that I shaped into cubes and covered with fondant. Fully edible, and they each weigh about a ton, haha. The cake inside is vanilla, with layers tinted blue and pink.
All in all, it didn’t turn out quite like I had planned, but it still tasted delicious and was a big hit. What more could I ask for, right?
17
Jun
Author: Heather // Category:
Bridal Shower Cakes,
Fondant,
Wedding
Ooh la la!
Believe it or not, this cake was for a boy. It was a joke of sorts; we had a “Man Bridal Shower” for him, and decided to make it a very feminine affair. The mirrored “L” topper was purchased at McCall’s in Etobicoke.
Both tiers of this cake are vanilla, with a mocha cream filling. It is iced in vanilla buttercream and covered in white fondant, with purple fondant “ribbon”, and purple and white fondant heart accents. The small purple hearts which adorn the white fondant are hand-painted. Manly!
