Cake Break

I needed a break from cake so lately I've been making non-cakey treats

I forgot to take a picture of it, but I made White Chocolate and Macadamia Rocky Road squares. It's funny because what originally inspired me to make these squares was the picture of them on the original recipe site, but mine weren't quite as pretty. I made a few tweaks to the original recipe.  I toasted the macadamia nuts and pistachios (or “smishsmashios” as I like to call them) in the oven first to enhance their nuttiness. Instead of dried cranberries, I used dried cherries that I snipped in half with kitchen scissors. I also used unsweetened coconut because that’s what I had on hand.

The only problem I had with this recipe was the proportion of white chocolate to the other ingredients. I used chocolate chips rather than baking chocolate, which was probably the wrong thing to do. I think it needs about one-third more white chocolate chips (so 180g + 60g = 240 g) in order to get it to set up right.

(I always call pistachios "smishsmashios" because it reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present/Willie the Giant in Mickey’s Christmas Carol who can’t pronounce pistachios.)

Still in keeping with my Cake Break, for my birthday supper tonight, which is to celebrate my birthday tomorrow on November 25th, I made two types of brownies: Oreo brownies and chocolate chip cookie dough brownies.

For the Oreo brownies, I mixed some chopped Oreos into the brownie batter. Once the brownies were baked and cooled, I made half a recipe of Wilton's vanilla icing (the same one I always use for cake decorating) and mixed in chopped up Oreos. After spreading the Oreo frosting onto the brownies, I pressed a few pieces of cookie into the top.

And here are the cookie dough brownies.

These are just regular brownies with walnuts that, after they cooled, were frosted with a chocolate chip cookie dough frosting, which was made according to this recipe.  I used half vegetable shortening and half butter, regular sized chocolate chips, and I doubled the vanilla.

I used brownie mixes rather than make them from scratch. I find that the boxed brownies mixes always give the best results. I’ve tried several brownie recipes from scratch and they never turn out right.

And finally, because I didn’t want a total Cake Break, I made birthday cake fudge, also known as cake batter fudge.

It gets its name from the fact that it uses boxed cake mix in the recipe. I followed this recipe but I added an extra bit of milk (about 2 tablespoons) and a half teaspoon of clear vanilla extract.

I didn’t think I could find a new favourite fudge recipe but cake batter fudge totally takes the cake. No, let me rephrase that: It takes the cake and the fudge. All of it! It takes all the cake, all the fudge, and everything there is and ever was times infinity it's so good.

I think the only way to improve upon it would be to add gumdrops to make….GUMDROP CAKE FUDGE! Oh, man. That’s the sort of dangerousness that comes from thinking. I'm going to stop that now before I get myself into trouble.

It’s been a while…

I’ve been so busy these past 6 months that I haven’t really had time to update this thing. I also had the misfortune of having my laptop crash and so I lost all of my photos of my birthday cake and my Christmas cookies and treats that I made last year.

Luckily, I still have a few photos of my Christmas Eve cake that I had saved in my email account that I can share with you.

The winter house cake was a traditional cherry pound cake with vanilla buttercream icing. I baked the cake in Wilton’s stand-up, 3D house cake pan. I made the wreath from royal icing and decorated it with sprinkles before letting it dry and attaching it to the cake. The green garlands around the door and windows were made from buttercream piped directly onto the cake and decorated with various sprinkles to look like ornaments. The snowman and the hedges were made from Rice Krispies treats molded by hand and covered in royal icing. The snowman and the icing snow on the cake board were covered in coconut to make them look fluffy. The evergreen trees were ice cream sugar cones covered in green royal icing that was piped using a star tip. I used chocolate pebbles to create the step in front of the door and for the border around the snow-covered flower beds. Originally, I wanted to dust icing sugar over the trees and the hedges to look like freshly fallen snow, but I decided against it because dusting powdered sugar never works out quite right for me. So, I left it as is. FYI, that's my Christmas tree in the background of the photo.

And here is my father’s birthday cake that I made a couple of weekends ago.

The pig pen cake is a two-layer, 8-inch brownie cake with chocolate ganache between the layers, decorated with chocolate ganache, chocolate cookie crumb "dirt," green vanilla buttercream "grass," and a pretzel fence to look like a pig pen. I made a gate for the pig pen by gluing pieces of pretzel together with royal icing and then letting it dry on a piece of wax paper. I made the pigs, vegetables, bees, ladybugs, and flowers from homemade marshmallow fondant. In case you're wondering, I made potatoes, carrots, apples, corn, cabbages, and pumpkins. Notice the pig at the top of the pen who dove right into the mud to get at his grub. All you can see are his leg, bum, and ears sticking out.

I also made some Easter brownies.

These are chocolate walnut brownies covered in a layer of chocolate ganache and decorated with homemade marshmallow fondant flowers and leaves, assorted sprinkles, and Hershey’s Eggies.

It's likely that I won't have much time to update for the next little while. For some (stupid?) reason, I applied and was accepted to another master's program. So, my cakes and cookies will be few and far between, but I'll be twice as master-y as I was before.

Nan's Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

My grandmother’s birthday was yesterday so I made her a cake for her birthday dinner while she was in town.



It’s a six-inch vanilla cake with raspberry cream filling, and it’s covered and decorated with vanilla buttercream. I used Wilton’s Decorator Favorites Patterns Press Set to imprint the designs on the top and side of the cake, and then I piped over the lines with green icing. The cake has a bit of an art nouveau look to it.

I also made some little monsters.



I’ve always wanted to make cupcake monsters but I just couldn’t wait for Halloween, which seems like an appropriate time for monsters. Anyway, these are mini vanilla cupcake monsters with vanilla buttercream “fur.” The eyes are made using Smarties on which I drew pupils with a black edible ink food marker. I used Smarties and baking gum candies for noses, and baking gums dusted with green and pink Wilton Pearl Dust stuck on top of coloured toothpicks for the antennae. Some monsters have horns and noses made from blackberry cobbler candy corn. The monsters' wonky teeth are soft gummy candies that I bought at Bulk Barn. The green monsters have an extra row of teeth that I piped on with white icing.

Two Birthday Cakes (and some cupcakes)

Summer’s here. I do enjoy summer but everyone who knows me knows that fall is my favourite time of year. So for me summer is never the main event; it’s merely a light interlude between one Halloween-Birthday-Christmas time and the next.

But I do have two chocolate birthday cakes to tell you about.

My cousin turned 18 in late April and he asked me to bake him a cake for his birthday party, a cake based on the one that appears in the video game Portal. The Portal cake that I made was an 8-inch round two-layer chocolate cake filled with vanilla buttercream icing between the layers and covered in chocolate buttercream mixed with a combination of both sweetened and unsweetened toasted coconut for texture.



I had to put down a crumb coat of plain chocolate buttercream on the cake first before the outer layer of coconut chocolate buttercream was applied as the latter wouldn’t have stuck to the bare cake on its own. The cake is decorated on top with swirls of white buttercream, large red gumballs, and a single white candle.

For my mother’s upcoming birthday, I made an 8” square chocolate cake filled with chocolate buttercream icing between the layers (I baked one layer but split it to make two thin layers) and covered it in white vanilla buttercream. When I was planning this cake, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make a birthday gift cake with a fondant bow, or a candy and ice cream-themed birthday party cake. In the end, I combined the two and made a summer birthday gift and party cake.



It was my first time making a fondant bow and curlicues, which were both made from my homemade marshmallow fondant. I failed miserably at the bow, which is why I piped in some summery yellow buttercream flowers and green leaves to cover up the gaps and droopiness. Next time I’ll make the bow well ahead of time, maybe a couple days in advance, to let the loops dry thoroughly. I made this bow the day before but the loops would have benefited from a bit of extra drying time to really set up.


It was also my first time using the Wilton Script Message Press Set to create the words “Happy Birthday” on top of the cake, which I then piped over with dark lavender icing. The presses worked like a charm and it’s so much neater than my squiggly freehand piping.



The bottom border of the cake has a birthday party theme created with miniature ice cream cones, cupcakes, gifts, and candy. The little cupcakes are mini peanut butter cups from Bulk Barn that were unwrapped from their foil and topped with buttercream icing and sprinkles. For candles, I tinted some fondant yellow and formed small flame shapes and molded them to the top half of a Popeye candy stick. I made those candles the day before to let the fondant dry, and then I used an orange Wilton Food Writer marker to colour in the orange part of the flame. I only used the candy-and-fondant candles on the front cupcakes, and not on the cupcakes on the sides and back.


I used Compliments mini ice cream cones filled with a piece of store-bought Rice Krispies treat and topped that with swirls of chocolate and strawberry buttercream with a Smartie on the top. I didn’t want to fill the cones inside with buttercream because I wasn’t sure if the moisture from the icing would soften or soak through the thin, crisp cones, so I opted for the rice treat filling instead. The cones are delicate, though, so I had to form the pieces of Rice Krispies treats with my fingers first before gently pressing them down into the hollow of the cones so as not to break them.



The larger gifts are made from pieces of Rice Krispies treat covered in fondant with fondant bows, and the smaller gifts are just fondant molded into rectangular shapes. Finally, I put a row of rainbow Smarties around the perimeter of the cake just because I thought it would be pretty. And it sure is.

(P.S. I also made and decorated some mini chocolate cupcakes to bring in to work tomorrow.)

Waiting for Spring to Spring

It's so cold this morning here in my office/craft room. Strangely, though, it feels as if winter never happened. I don't remember much about it. That's not to say that it was a good one or that it passed quickly; it was just unremarkable. And it's not as if we're having a great spring or anything that's wiping out the memory of winter. It all feels sort of...unremarkable. And yet here I am, remarking about the unremarkableness of the changing of the seasons so far this year. I'm waiting for Spring to start springing so that I can say that it has officially "sprung." If it has sprung, it has fallen flat on its backside. I guess I should stop wishing for snow days and just put away my sweaters already. Maybe that would help.

I've kept myself busy over the past few months, though. For one thing, I made some little felt magnets, which take more time than I could ever have possibly imagined. So cute yet so tedious. I made these during the winter and only just thought to take a picture of them last night.



They’re stuffed with polyester fluff so that they’re a bit plush. To get a sense of their size, the birds are about 2.5 inches wide, and the cup of tea is about 1.5 inches high. I mainly used clip art that I found online of things that I wanted to make and then resized them, printed the images, and traced the outline of those templates onto the felt. I modified this template to make the birds.



In late March, I made a 6-inch chocolate birthday cake for my father with raspberry jam filling and covered in chocolate buttercream and marshmallow fondant, which I made according to this Wilton recipe. It was my first time making fondant, and even though I only made one quarter of the recipe it turned out great.



In an attempt to make Spring feel like it was here, or at least on its way, I made mini chocolate spring cupcakes decorated with vanilla buttercream "grass", Hershey’s mini chocolate Eggies, fondant flowers, and flower sprinkles.



For Easter, I made more mini cupcakes. I made the marshmallow fondant again and used cutters to make chicks, bunnies, flowers and leaves.



And finally I made an Easter cake. It’s vanilla with raspberry jam filling and covered in vanilla buttercream.The pink icing had some raspberry flavouring added.



For some reason, the buttercream that I made didn’t turn out quite right and I wasn’t able to ice the cake to a smooth finish. In all my cake baking and decorating busyness, I likely forgot to put in the final cup of icing sugar and inadvertently made the consistency too soft. I tried to make the top look like a sky but I ended up putting a pink border around the edge to cover up the rough icing edges. Oh well. The little fondant birds don't seem to mind.