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.)

The end of summer and other odds and ends

My grandmother was in town recently and so to celebrate her upcoming birthday on September 1st, I made some goodies for a party that my mother held in her honour.

I made a 6” lemon cake with lemon buttercream and matching mini cupcakes.











Plus, I made some regular size vanilla cupcakes. The pink ones have strawberry vanilla buttercream, handmade white icing roses dusted with white Wilton Pearl Dust, and white sugar pearls. The white cupcakes have vanilla buttercream icing and handmade icing flowers with silver dragees and dusted with pink Pearl Dust.



Finally, I made some chocolates. The leaves are dark chocolate with toffee bits and toasted pecans, and the flowers are marbled dark and white chocolate.



Happy birthday, Nanny P.

Nan’s birthday marks the end of summer, even though fall doesn’t officially start until late September. Where did the summer go? I feel like the past two months have whipped past me, and the weather was so poor it's almost as if summer was never here. But I do have some evidence of summer. I took a few pictures of the garden a few days ago simply to document the fact that we did in fact have one beautiful day here in St. John’s this year. I even managed to grow a few tomatoes.










The garden not only has tomatoes, it also has great amenities for travelling birds, with only the most finely appointed and tastefully decorated houses and washing facilities. When I saw this little birdbath featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet sitting on a log and having a conversation amidst the Hunny pots, I had to have it. The water collects in the top of the bigger Hunny pot.




And I found this wacky mustachioed-man's-face-carved-into-wood birdhouse at the dollar store of all places. So, naturally, I had to have it.



It was next to impossible to get a picture of the garden without getting a gnome in the shot. Here a gnome, there a gnome, everywhere a gnome gnome. Also, a few of the Seven Dwarves made an appearance.








I like that this little fella on the rock looks as if he’s tutoring the turtle sitting on his book. He used to have a small lantern hanging from his outstretched hand but I think it got carried off by the wind or something.



I also discovered that there’s a rather odd-looking flower growing in the flower bed.



Looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, a rare Who-daisy perhaps.

I can't wait for fall.

Harry Potter and the "dam" good cake

I've been busy but quiet the past few weeks since I last posted. I made the decision several months ago that I would read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books straight through after finishing my master’s degree, and so since the end of May I’ve been initiated into and wholly absorbed by a much loved world of wizards and owls and Hogwarts and chocolate frogs and an evil villain Who Must Not Be Named. After each book, I’ve rented the corresponding Harry Potter movie on iTunes and watched it. I’m on the last book, The Deathly Hallows, now. In total, it will have taken me five weeks to read all 3,400 plus pages of the series, but it has been worth it. I’ll definitely be ready for the final movie which comes out in July 15th, whatever “ready” means. I missed Pottermania the first time around when Rowling was still releasing the books but I’m glad I decided to read the works from start to finish all in one go, especially now that Pottermore has been announced. I didn't understand the phenomenon before reading the books but I totally get now why children and adults alike are so in love with these stories and characters.

I do have a couple of bakey updates, though. I made two cakes last week. The first one was a summer inspired vanilla and raspberry cream filled cake that I made for a work function.







All of the flowers and bees are made from Wilton white fondant, which I tinted and formed myself. The silvery shimmer on the daisies and bees’ wings is Wilton’s white Pearl Dust. I love that stuff. I also love the edible ink pen that I used to doodle on the bees’ faces and stripes.

The second cake is the one that I made for my Dad for Father’s Day. It’s only a small 6-inch round vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream and it features a family of three fondant beavers relaxing outside their pretzel-covered dam and enjoying the longed-for summer weather, which we haven't had in St. John's yet this year.









The beavers, fish and flowers are all handmade from Wilton white fondant, which I tinted and formed into the figures. I made some dirt rubble for the river bank by whizzing toffee chips and milk chocolate chips together in my mini food processor, and the water is blue-tinted piping gel. The trees are store-bought rice krispie treats molded into cone shapes and covered in green buttercream icing. The beaver dam is a mound of chocolate buttercream mixed with cake crumbs that was molded in a plastic wrap lined small round bowl (I put it in the fridge then for a while to let it get firm enough to hold its shape), turned upside down onto the cake, and finally covered with broken pretzel “logs” to resemble a beaver dam. I used chocolate rocks to decorate around the bottom border of the cake.

I dreamt last night that I entered a Wilton contest only ten minutes before it closed. Then I was at some event or other, a conference of sorts although I can't remember what the theme was, and my mother called to tell me that I had won $25,000 from Wilton for best something-or-other. I can't remember what that something-or-other was, although I assume it was cake related. Seeing as how I’ve probably spent about $25,000 in my waking life on Wilton products since I’ve started this whole cake decorating knack I’ve been on these past few months, I figure I'm due for a bit of a payback. $25,000 is a big exaggeration, of course, but starting any new craft or hobby can be expensive when you're first buying all the new tools and decorating products. The upside is that I'll have my tools forever and can make many, many cakes long into the future with them. The downside is trying to come up with an idea that's as good as or better than my goofy beaver dam cake! But I've never shied away from a good challenge.