Summertime Dreams

It is a well-known fact for anyone who knows my husband and I... we cannot save a dime. Seriously. I am somewhat ashamed but I know we are not alone. There are many families and couples who are in the same boat.

I am fortunate to work at a place that offers an annual bonus called profit-sharing. I was also fortunate enough to realize early on that my workplace was not going to be receiving one this year. This bonus is important to me for one major reason: it funds my family's annual camping trip.

Up until Christmas, I had been wondering what we were going to do. Knowing full well we are bad at saving, I wrestled with the thought of telling our boys we wouldn't be able to go this year. No matter how I looked at it, it wasn't a good outcome... and I knew my husband and I wouldn't have as good a summer as we have been lucky enough to have over the past several years by going on our annual trip.

So when my mother-in-law generously gave us cash for Christmas, a light bulb went on, and I suggested to my husband saving it for summer camping. He was on board. Great, one third of the way there, now what?

Then over December and January, and partway into this month, the odd request for a cake would trickle through and as soon as the client happily picked up their cake and payment was made, I was running to hide the earnings and count up the new total.

I was thrilled last weekend to tell my husband we were just a little bit away from our goal. I am still marvelling at how we have been steadfast at saving this cash. And make no mistake, he's been dropping the odd $20 into the jar too. However, I have my cakes to thank for it... without them, we would be having a campout no further than our backyard, which is fine and well but just not the same! Now that I am done tooting our horns over here, (YAY US! lol), let's talk cake!

Chances are, if you are reading this, it's because you are a Facebook friend of mine and have likely already seen the cakes, but I have to show the highlights!

 

 

I LOVE playing with fondant. Love it! Loathe cleaning up after playing with it though! :)  It is like reverting into a little kid and playing with play-doh... awesome!

 

 

I wasn't as thrilled with Dora (yes, it is supposed to be Dora!) as I was with Kwazi (from Octonauts), but I learned a valuable lesson here. I pieced Dora together on the cake, and Kwazi on the table. Clearly, I need to do the latter from now on.

 

 

I have some ideas in mind for St. Patty's Day and Easter, so stay tuned and stay sweet!

This may or may not be the last cake made in 2012...

I am in love with a little girl named Dakota. She is just three years old and I absolutely love her to pieces. She is tiny and blond and stubborn and picky with what she eats. But whenever she sees me, she comes running into my arms and gives me a huge bear hug and won't let go for several minutes, like she is enjoying every second, like I am! Her mom is terrific and words cannot describe how proud of her I am, and how much I admire everything she has done and is doing in her life.

This is the second year I've been asked to do Dakota's birthday cake. I have made this cake several times, it's quite popular with the kiddos. This one is a chocolate slab, with crispy rice treats for the pillow and headboard and footboard. Vanilla buttercream, and some cute toys to go on top!

Such an easy cake to make, and every time I make it, there are different characters on top! I love it!

So happy birthday to my favourite 3 year old... I know your mom is going to spoil you this Christmas!

On another note, I am contemplating a classy cake for New Year's Eve. I am having a cousin and her family over for some festivities, and haven't decided yet. I will probably go ahead and do it, it just seems like a lot of work to me right now because I have so much to do in the next two days! :)

Whether I do or I don't, I wish you and your wonderful families a VERY Merry Christmas. Much love to you all and I hope you are all able to enjoy some quality time together. Hug your loved ones just a little bit longer this season!

Stay sweet!

Festive Cupcakes!

Last weekend, the cousins of my large maternal side of the family all got together for a dinner. Some of these cousins I haven't seen since we were little, and I've looked forward to seeing them since we first began talking about this get-together.

I made three desserts to bring, I knew many of my cousins would be bringing main dishes or sides. So I made magic cookie bars (recipe below), cheesecake dip (also below), and red velvet cupcakes.

I used my standby recipe for red velvet, and overfilled the muffin pan, so the first batch and a half turned out crappy, but I managed to save the best-looking ones and I indulged in a couple of unfilled and unfrosted, and they were sooooo goood. Light and fluffy!! I filled 12 with cream cheese icing, and topped them with vanilla buttercream, and sprinkled crushed candy canes on top. I even managed to send a few in with my husband when he went to work... he came back with none so that is always a good sign :)

Here they are:

 

 

 

So, here are the recipes for the other two things I made:

 

 



Magic Cookie Bars

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup non-hydrogenized margarine, melted
2 tbsp corn syrup
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or other nuts)
3/4 package of milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 can sweetened condensed milk

Preheat oven to 350*F. Line a 9x13 baking dish with parchment paper (I have found that this is the easiest way to remove the bars and cut them without having them stick).

Combine crumbs, margarine and corn syrup in a small bowl until well mixed. Pour and press into lined pan. Top pressed crumb mixture with nuts, chocolate chips, coconut and drizzle entire can of condensed milk on top.

*The original recipe for this actually says to put the milk on top of the crumbs but in my experience, when you cut into the bars, everything fell off, which defeated the whole purpose. So, I tweaked it, as usual :) *

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until golden and bubbly. Let cool for about 1/2 hour and cut into bars. Delicious when warm and melty :)



Cheesecake Dip

1 box Jell-o No Bake Cheesecake Mix
1 container of frozen whipped cream, thawed
1 can cherry pie filling
1 package of graham squares

Combine cheesecake package with whipped cream until light and fluffy. Refrigerate for 1/2 hour. On a platter, spoon cheesecake mixture into the center, and surround with graham squares. Top cheesecake mixture with cherry pie filling. Enjoy!

*You can save the graham crumbs from the cheesecake mix for your magic cookie bars!*

Found this recipe on Pinterest... and it was truly a hit! I think that the best-tasting recipes require the least amount of ingredients and fuss!

Enjoy, and stay sweet!

Hi-Tech Cake

Hello again!

The next cake is one for a co-worker's son. It's a vanilla slab cake, decorated in fondant to look like the computer. It was the cake I was most afraid of, with all the details, but the easiest one to actually do.

My husband crafted the monitor of the laptop out of cardboard and construction paper while I took on the details of the keys.

Now, as you can see, the keys are not exact, obviously, but my kids were wowed, and that usually means it's passed the vision test... after, of course, asking if it's "for us". Apparently I don't bake enough for them? Ha, what a crock! LOL

So here it is:

 

 

That's it! Very simple, not a whole lot to say about it! :)

 

Stay sweet!

Catching up...

Hello!

It's been busy here... aside from cake orders, I have been trying to clean and decorate my house and do some Christmas baking!

There are a couple of cakes to post about, so I will begin with my anniversary cake! I began with making vanilla cake from scratch... since we were eating it at home, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out a cake from scratch. It tasted really good, but wasn't as light as it could have been, so I need to practice the recipe and tweak things.

I made four layers of vanilla cake, and froze them. Then I made red velvet cake from scratch and broke it all up. Then I made buttercream frosting using a new recipe including butter, not vegetable shortening. I ended up with a delicious but very rich icing. I would make it again, for sure!

I took two layers, put them together with some icing and carved out the top part of the heart. In retrospect, I should have used a spoon to round it out a bit better, but hey, for a first time, I was pretty proud of myself. Then I took the last two layers, and carved out the bottom of the heart. I filled each cavity with the crushed red velvet cake and froze each half of the cake for about an hour. Then I carefully put the two halves together and did a crumb coat.

I had to freeze the cake for a couple of days because this cake was a surprise for my husband, and since he's been on days, it's harder to hide things from him LOL! So, I sent him out with one of his buddies on a weeknight and completed the cake. I used a ribbon technique to decorate the cake, and used colours from our original wedding cake. This is what I ended up with:

 

 

 

Pretty classy, huh? I thought so too! So everything was grand until he asked me who the cake was for. He had found it. I was so disappointed :(  But there was still one aspect I could surprise him with, he didn't know about the inside of the cake! This is what it looked like:

 

 



We ate it for breakfast on our anniversary, and our oldest son wasn't up to taking advantage of the situation, he was trying to tell us to eat a real breakfast first, and have a slice on the side! We nixed that one! LOL!

It was delicious, and massive, it took awhile for us to eat it!

I'll post about the other cakes seperately because it's just too much to scroll through! :) Stay sweet!

Frozen Buttercream Transfers

Back again!

I promised on my Facebook cake page that I would post about doing frozen buttercream transfers.

The invitation below was what I was given as a guide for a bridal shower cake.

 

 

I thought it was very pretty and fitting for fall. So my first thought when I saw this was brush embroidery with royal icing. I was excited about trying out a new technique, but when I sat down three days before the deadline to actually do it, the icing was not cooperating with me. I will win that battle, just not this time around. :)

 

So then I figured I would freehand the flowers using the invitation. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the flowers to look the same, plus there was no guarantee that the flowers would survive the transfer from waxed paper to cake, which is why I did three sheets of random flowers! LOL While they did look cute and were the right colour scheme, it just wasn't cutting it in my eyes.

 

In frustration, I messaged a friend from cake decorating class. Mostly just to vent, I still wasn't sure what the heck I was going to do. I explained the issue and asked if she had come across anything similar. In her reply to me, she mentioned doing a search for frozen buttercream transfers. So I did. I was wowed. Why didn't they teach us this in our classes? I felt kinda dumb to be honest... like the kid who doesn't get told that school is cancelled for the day. There's me, standing at the doors wondering where everyone is! LOL I need to be doing more research clearly!

 

 

So here is how to do it, if you don't already know.

 

 

I scanned the invitation and blew it up. I wanted it to be bigger, to cover the cake and so that it would be easier to pipe overall. Bear in mind, my hand and wrist were still in pain from the royal icing episode. Once I had a printout of the size I liked, I placed in on a flat, edgeless cookie sheet (airbake!), and placed a sheet of waxed paper on top. I had made up a new batch of buttercream, made my orange and brown, and reserved half of it as white.

 

 

WOW! Soooo much easier to trace it! I could have used piping gel, as we were taught in class but I was never a huge fan of that technique. The results were never great.

 

 

I traced all the flowers and leaves in their appropriate colours, filled them in and piped the delicate lines in the leaves (probably the most detailed part of the project). Now if I had listened to the tutorial I had viewed online, I would have tinted the white to match the icing I planned to use on the cake, which was a slight off-white to match the invitation. But I'm clearly a rebel, as you can tell from the photo:

 

 



The next step, after the main design has been piped, is to cover the entire piped area with matching buttercream and spreading it carefully on top, using light pressure to fill in the cracks. This would be the white I used instead of the actual colour I was going to canvas the cake with. I should have used a bit more pressure, but I was afraid of smearing the piped icing below. Lesson learned. Do it anyway!

Leaving the waxed paper with buttercream on the baking sheet, the entire pan went into the freezer overnight. You could freeze it for 45 minutes to an hour if you don't have that kind of time to wait.

The next day, I put the cake together. It was scratch lemon cake with lemon buttercream. The cake would have looked great with just being canvassed and adding brown and orange trim but that wasn't the goal here.

When everything was ready, the transfer came out of the freezer, and some of the edges were trimmed off of the frozen buttercream, to make room for the trim I still had to do around the top. invert the transfer and place it on the cake. Use VERY light pressure, as you don't want to break it if you can help it, gently press into the cake. To be honest, I'm not sure you even need to, because as the buttercream thaws, it should settle.

I filled in some areas I had missed and applied thin piped buttercream to the outer edges to secure it to the cake better. Then I applied the top trim and applied some drop flowers on the trim.

I am so thankful to Pauline for suggesting this method... I have learned something valuable and even though my first attempt was not perfect, I will definitely be doing this technique again.

You can see where I should have spread more white icing... I ran out of icing! I filled it in with the off-white a bit but it didn't camouflage anything! LOL

Overall, I am happy with the cake and it was a terrific learning experience! The next one will be better!

Until next time, stay sweet!

Sugar 'n' spice...

Hey my sweets, what's happening?

It's been quieter in my little cake corner lately but it's been a good thing, as we've been going through some transition as a family unit. It's definitely a positive thing, but it's taking some time to get our groove, know what I mean?

My amazing husband has been working overnight shifts for close to six years, to be at home during the day with our youngest son, Caleb. We've never liked the thought of putting our kids in day care, for several reasons I won't get into, so he made the sacrifice and since Caleb has begun grade one this fall, he has been able to switch to day shifts. Bonus for us! Our oldest son, Tyler has just been amazing. He is growing up to be quite a responsible kid and helps out sooo much. Without him, we wouldn't be able to make this whole thing work, as he helps Caleb get ready for school if my husband has to go in before they leave for school.

But getting back to cakes, it's just been good that there has been some free time for us to adjust. However, now the season is upon us and the orders are coming in... it's exciting, seeing what's on the horizon :)

So this is the most recent big cake I've made:

 

 

The cake itself was simple. The bottom was white cake with vanilla buttercream, and the top was chocolate with chocolate buttercream. Nothing fancy there. The fanciness was in the decorating.

 

This cake was for a young lady turning 16... and I haven't seen her since she was about 5, so imagine how old I felt taking this order lol! She has a love for music and girly things. I browsed several pictures and sent some to the client, who was arranging the party for this young lady. This one was the winner, and I was excited to recreate it.

 

I will quite openly admit, I am definitely my own worst critic. I know where all of the imperfections are and I just hate that point when I'm putting things together and it's "done" but I don't feel it's truly DONE... but there comes a point where you just can't do anything more, and time runs out and the client is coming to pick it up.

 

This cake was deceptively heavy... as are most fondant cakes. My biggest fear with tiered cakes like this is that the top cake will sink and the bottom tier will collapse. I was so worried about this cake, I checked it again the morning it was being picked up, before work just to make sure it hadn't collapsed. And of course again upon returning home from work lol. I used three pieces of wooden dowel to help support it and I realized that I need to do this to all my tiered cakes, there is just no support without it, and you can't get away from needing that support.

 

All in all, I am proud of it, and it scored me two more cake orders! Speaking of which, I need to finish up an order for tonight :)

 

Take care all, stay sweet!