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.

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.