Fizz Candies and a Chocolate Shoe

Some cakes are clearly meant to be made. When all of the little details come together so easily. When you find just the perfect source for the item you need to personalize the cake. When you literally stumble across exactly the right supply that you didn't even realize you were looking for. When the cake turns out better than the one in your imagination. When the look on the face of the recipient is even better than you could have hoped. That's when it's obvious the universe decided to lay a gift right in your hands.

Those are truly special cake adventures. They are so full of joy that you never want to stop decorating. They are precious because they don't come along everyday. Hmm… it’s probably good that they don’t, otherwise I’d never leave my kitchen!

When it was time to celebrate our new manager’s 50th birthday, my co-worker Stacy and I knew there was cake making to be done but the only thing we knew was that it wasn’t time to make another transport truck!  That’s clearly not something you want to repeat a few months later.

Thinking caps on, we decided to go with a Fabulous Fifty idea that included shoes and jewellery. We briefly thought about trying to make our own shoe out of chocolate … we’d made chocolate tires before, why not a shoe?  Then we thought better of that idea when I remembered a fabulous chocolate shoe that I’d seen at Chocolatas on Granville Island.  We made some phone calls, but couldn’t find anything comparable locally, so I placed an order and coordinated a trip over to Vancouver to see Tosca Cafe (which, by the way, was awesome!) with picking up an amazing blue shoe made from white chocolate.

I knew we’d made the right choice as soon as a I saw the shoe.  I took a picture less than 5 minutes later because I had to share my delight.  I really wanted to take the shoe with me to work on the Monday so that Stacy could see it in person, but I knew we’d be caught for sure … we wouldn’t have been able to keep the squeals of glee quiet!

So we had the shoe planned, but we still hadn’t figured out what to do for the jewellery.  Neither of us have any experience with sugar work and it seemed a little late to start learning when the cake was only a week or so away.  We didn’t want to have to use something non-edible. 

While we were still pondering our options, we got to work assembling some goodie bags for a Halloween fundraiser.  Some of the candies were a childhood favourite of mine, Lotsa Fizz. They used to come in a long strip, with individual pouches for the fizzy candy.  For me, they immediately bring back memories of the tuck shop at summer camp. 

Imagine our delight when we discovered two important facts.  One, our manger loves Fizz candies. There was a lot of rejoicing over the fact that they still make them even though they’re now in individual packages and are round instead of their old flat rectangular shape.  And two, the current batch of Fizz Candies?  They also added blue and green coloured candies, that just happen to be prominent colours in our manager’s wardrobe.  We quickly realized we had the perfect “beads” for a chunky bracelet. A little royal icing between to hold the candies together worked as spacers and made for super easy assembly.

We knew we wanted a simple design for covering the cake. We thought about making the fondant look quilted, but decided that would look too busy.  But we needed something to cover a few fondant issues … ever have one of those days when your fondant wrinkles no matter what you try?  Yup, me too! We decided to make our own fondant ribbon skirts for each cake. They helped balance the cake and matched well with the cake plate edge detail too.

Problem was, there was one visible flaw that ended up front and center.  Did I mention how much I love decorating with Stacy?  I came up with the idea of a bow and she came up with the perfect matching hat pin to use for securing the bow the next morning.

Oh, I almost forgot. The cakes were a delicious vanilla with lemon filling for the top cake and a divine chocolate with caramel filling for the bottom.  I need to get Stacy’s recipe for the lemon filling.  Talk about luscious lemon! 

We couldn’t have asked for a better response to the cake.  It was the talk of the office.  The shoe had such rave reviews that I sent a thank you email to Chocolatas.  They asked if they could post the picture and my email to their facebook page.  Of course I said yes!

Sometimes it’s all about finding just the right thing to make the cake perfect. 

Sometimes it’s all about knowing how to turn potential flaws into just the thing to complete the cake.

Sometimes, I’m pretty sure,  it’s also all just about dumb luck =)

Birthday Celebrations

I first taught myself to decorate cakes from pouring over a 1974 Wilton yearbook that my mom kept on her recipe shelf.  I’m not really sure why she had it.  They got married in 1963 so it wasn’t from deciding on her wedding cake and cake decorating has never really been her “thing”.  Don’t get me wrong, she a fabulous baker and I would have her Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake with Raspberry Jam filling and Apple Icing any day of the week.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.  It’s still my only choice for my birthday cake!  Whatever reason caused it to be there, I’m so grateful.  I found that book intriguing.  Back before there were Wilton classes available at the local craft store or before you could purchase any combination of cake decorating supplies and icing in several places in town. I taught myself how to make royal icing and make color-flow pieces to use on cakes.  I even learned how to make fondant from scratch from that yearbook.  Cake decorating was a lot of fun and I even wondered about making it a business.

Then my brother got married and I gained a fabulous niece who was almost two.  Her second birthday party was all about 101 Dalmatians and her Mom decided that she would rent a puppy dog pan and decorate it to look like Lucky, Holly’s favourite puppy.  I volunteered to do the decorating and I remember my brother sneaking quietly into her room late at night to snitch her Lucky stuffie so that we could make sure the spots matched up perfectly.  I haven’t found a picture of that cake.  I’m sure one exists somewhere, but that cake deserves a mention here because Karen’s Cake Adventures wouldn’t exist without it.  The joy that cake brought made me fall in love with cake decorating and started a tradition of Aunt Karen decorating crazy birthday cakes for her two amazing nieces.

It’s hard to believe, but today, Holly turns 21.  I don’t get to see her that often and it’s been a lot of years since I’ve been able to make her birthday cake, but I am super proud of her.  She’s an amazing young woman and she’s worked hard to make her dream of becoming a chef come true. 

It seemed only fitting to dedicate this post to her.  I’ve sprinkled it with old photos of the birthday cakes that followed Lucky: a Carousel ice cream cake for a circus theme birthday party, a puppet theatre cake to match the puppet theatre her Dad and her Poppa made just for her, and a magic pink castle cake for a princess theme. 

By the way, I don’t recommend asking a 6 year old what a castle cake should look like.  I made that “mistake” and was told “It should be pink and sparkly.  There should be a dragon and the queen should be in her garden picking flowers.”  YIKES!  Guess when I learned how to make fondant? 
Looking back at the pictures now, I’ll admit I cringed a bit.  I had so much fun making them, but I was completely self-taught.  I’ve taken 4 Wilton classes since then and decorated a lot more cakes.  My skill level has changed and when I first looked at the pictures I didn’t want to share them.  I could see all the flaws and knew all the things I would now do differently or with more skill. 

But then I looked at my niece’s face she saw the cakes and I remembered the joy of those moments.  That’s the part that matters.  When her eyes would go wide with surprise and I’d get a great big hug because she loved her cake … that’s what makes the time you invest in decorating a cake worth it … that’s why it’s okay to watch it get devoured and to see all the hard work eaten in a matter of moments. 

Those are memories that last a lifetime … and just maybe, they helped her find her path to being a chef.  I’m proud to say that for her seventh birthday I bought Holly her very first decorating set and we used it to make a bear cake together!
Happy Birthday Bear!  I love you forever =)

Cross-Stitch and Buttercream?

I first learned to cross-stitch back in the eighties. It was so much more flexible than the needlepoint that I'd learned to do in the seventies ... Wow! I'm really dating myself here. Somewhere around the same time, I first started to teach myself how to decorate cakes based on my gleanings from a 1974 Wilton Cake Decorating Yearbook that lived on the shelf with my mom's recipe books. Never would I have imagined that two of my favourite hobbies could actually be joined together. One can't help but get a bit messy at times, and the other should ALWAYS be kept far away from sweet, sticky things ... unless you decide to trade in your floss for an icing bag with a really fine tip and your cloth for a cake covered in fondant. Add in a cross-stitch pattern that just happened to be on the bib I'd purchased to cross-stitch as a gift for the same baby shower for which I was thrilled to be making a cake and you've got great cake inspiration ... As long as you're crazy enough to think cross-stitching with buttercream sounds like fun. This blog post does come with the warning that mixing these two hobbies is not for the faint of heart. Consider yourselves warned =D

To celebrate the pending birth of her first grandchild, my friend Lynn asked if I would make a cake for the baby shower. I couldn't resist. I knew how excited she was about the little one's arrival and she'd already been a great source of encouragement on my cake decorating adventure.  She’s the same one who got me started making goodies for work and who needed the Scrabble cake for a friend’s birthday.

I'd seen the idea of cross-stitching on fondant when we’d been looking through books for inspiration with a cake decorating class I'd taken several years ago. I can remember thinking it looked gorgeous, but who would be crazy enough to do that for a cake! It’s one thing to do that kind of detail work on a piece of cloth that will likely be kept for a long time, but on something edible, that will be eaten in less time than you spend creating it? That seemed ridiculous. It still does, but doing the ridiculous and making realistic looking things out of cake and icing is exactly what I love best about cake decorating. You just need to make sure you take lots of pictures to remember the moment while it lasts.

The mom-to-be liked elephants and they found their way into practically every part of the shower. I’m pretty certain I did actually squeal in the craft store when I discovered that the bib I needed to buy for my planned cross-stitched gift came with a pattern for dancing elephants.  Combine that with an idea that our manager had seen in a magazine to make a onesie out of cake and I had to try the crazy idea of cross-stitching with buttercream. 

Add some blue strips of fondant marked to look like stitching to make the bias tape edgings and some stars and hearts for to make an overall pattern and you’ve got a onesie … good thing it was for a baby boy since the shoulders are pretty broad.  Football player anyone?

If I’m ever crazy enough to cross-stitch in buttercream again, I’d make the icing an even thinner consistency.  It’s a lot of fine piping and the combination of icing that was a little too stiff and a very tired hand meant that the detail was not as clean as I imagined in my head.  The end result looked more like stamped cross-stitch than my preferred counted cross-stitch, but …

… when you pair it up with the matching bib, the combination was everything I’d hoped for.

It’s hard to believe, but Lynn’s grandson turns one today. 

Happy Birthday Cutie Pie!

Can’t wait to see you and celebrate you on Friday.  HUGS!

Personalizing makes all the difference

After the scrabble cake, I’ll admit that I was feeling a little “decorated out” and I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to pull things together for the second cake I needed to make this past week.  I knew when I volunteered to make it that the two were going to be back to back, but there was no way I was going to miss out on making a cake to celebrate another of my work colleagues and friends moving on to a new job. 

I knew that I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on prep work and we’d already decided on a castle theme since Pam’s new job is working in the ivory tower of policy.  Thankfully, about three years ago, I bought Wilton’s Romantic Castle Cake Set when it was on sale cheap at Walmart.  I browsed the ideas on the Wilton website and found their Friendly Fortress Castle Cake idea.  It wasn’t quite what I was looking for but it gave me some great ideas, especially using sugar cubes for the battlements around the top.   The biggest source of inspiration it gave though was how simple the basic design could be as long as I personalized a couple of critical items. 

A little “grass” around the bottom to finish the fondant that I had hand scored to give the effect of stone walls, the Policy banner flying high, and, a princess in her tower, wearing a purple princess dress with matching detailing on the turret peaks. 

I picked the colour and style of the princess dress based on the Halloween costume that made an appearance from Pam’s closet a few weeks ago.  I’ve only made fondant people a couple of times before … oddly one of those was for another castle cake for one of my nieces … and they looked more like the wooden Fisher Price Little People from my childhood.  I wanted to make sure that this figure was a closer reflection of my colleague.  A toothpick in the centre provided some structural stability to allow a narrower shape and I made the hair in several pieces that I scored using the backside of a shell fondant tool to give a texture that looked a lot like hair. One of the back pieces of hair even got a haircut after she was on the cake and I realized that it was much longer then the other sections.

The end result was a cake I could be proud of and one that drew lots of laughter when we presented it at the office to celebrate the our policy princess.

The Little Details Are Worth the Extra Time

I can remember watching an Ace of Cakes episode where Anna made a full Scrabble board for a cake and I thought it was a crazy idea given all of the tiny details.  This week’s cake adventure was all about the tiny details, because my friend Lynn from work asked me to make a cake for surprise 60th birthday party she was helping to plan for her friend.  Guess what game was the inspiration behind the cake … yup, that’s the one!  Scrabble.  Thankfully, I only had space for about a quarter of the board on this cake.

I pulled out some of the fondant tools that I really haven’t needed to use since I took the Wilton class, checked those same class materials to make sure I remembered how to make fondant roses and bought some edible food markers.  The cake underneath is a white chocolate cake that I modified a bit from a cupcake recipe, with a strawberry-lime filling. 

I made my own marshmallow fondant for the main cake covering since I really like how it drapes and I wanted it to be like a tablecloth.  For the other fondant work, I purchased Duff fondant because I wanted something that dried a little firmer.  I loved working with it to make the fondant roses.  It didn’t stick to the sponge mat when I was working with the petals, it held its shape well and it dried with a nice sheen for the  rose petals.  Did I mention it also tastes good … unlike some purchased fondant.  The chocolate fondant really does smell and taste like chocolate, though it was harder to knead when I first started working with it.

To make the cake even more fun, and to make sure the tile usage was following Scrabble rules, the game is already under way and it appears both players can expand some existing words to complete the cake’s message.  The rose colours were requested, yellow for their sorority and red for love.  There was a lot of time that went into this cake, but it made the adventure more fun for me … even if I’m feeling a little short on sleep.  A good adventure is worth a little sleep deprivation. =)

This cake was really all about the details, from making sure the tiles had the right point value on them, to making the tile holders. to painting the bonus point squares, to making the fondant covering look like a tablecloth by cutting the fondant with a ripple edge with an embossed detail, and adding luster dust to the red roses. Those are the things that really made this work. 

Happy Birthday Pat!