Bells Are Ringing!

...Wedding bells that is!

This is a cake my coworker Leanne and I made for a bridal shower two weeks ago. It was a very rich cake. French vanilla cake with Skor vanilla buttercream filling for the top tier, and a chocolate cake with chocolate chip/chocolate buttercream filling for the bottom tier.

Roses were made of gumpaste/fondant mix and dusted with petal dust. Chocolate hearts were made using a hearts mold.

Got the bloggin' shoes on! (part deux)

June 2011 -- tried my hand at Neapolitan cupcakes. I started with strawberry on the bottom, then chocolate, topped with vanilla batter. Some magic happened in the oven, because the chocolate and vanilla co-mingled and ended up switching places!

Got the bloggin' shoes on!

Yes I know, I haven't blogged in forever. I'm horrible! Hopefully this makes up for it!

Let's see...i'll take you back to April 2011. My grandma makes the best toffee in the world. So of course when she visited, she whipped up a batch for me! I swear I have to learn it..its like an intricate art. A delicate blend of condensed milk and sugar and some other stuff. The dentist loves us. To the right is the 1st and 2nd generation working hard as I of course run to get the camera =p

And the finished product:

Fast forward to May 6, 2011 --> my good friend and coworker turned 26! She loves history and mentioned a few months prior that her favorite battle was the "Battle of the Plains of Abraham". She knew I would make whatever cake she wanted - I swear this way she would make sure I educated myself on some good old Canadian history. So I did. And found that it was a mere 15 minute battle which led to England defeating France to claim Canada. I'm glad I did this cake, I finally got to work on some figurines!


May 28, 2011 - I took a Wedding Cakes course which I must say I was VERY excited about! I learned how to make a bow, and ribbon roses from fondant. This was the result after 4 hours.

Ordering

If you would like to place an order for cakes or cupcakes, or just want to chat about baking/decorating in general, please contact me at shashi.sabadevan@hotmail.com.

Whip Your (basket) Weave!

This cake is topped with blue/green button flowers, and a buttercream basketweave on the sides. I also piped reverse shells on the top border to bring everything together.

This is my cake instructor, Antonella, and I with my Flowers and Cake Design certificate. I have now officially completed all the Wilton Cake Decorating Courses :)

Showered with Baby Booties

This cake was made for a coworker's baby shower. I made it with light green butter cream icing (mom-to-be doesn't know the gender of the baby). Circling the cake on the sides is a clothesline with clothes and the word "baby" hung with pins. I piped green grass at the base of the cake. To make it look more "baby shower"-ish, I made white baby booties out of gumpaste and piped yellow laces out of royal icing.

The baby room's theme is "jungle safari" and is currently covered with jungle and zoo animals. I made a few animals out of gumpaste and meant for them to top the cake. However, it didn't work out that way as I liked the baby shoes on top of the cake. So the animals (baby frog, baby elephant, and baby lion) were put on the cake stand.

To display the cupcakes and cakes in a new way, I made this cake stand a few weeks ago. I covered it with baby gift wrap and circled it with green ribbon.

This is what the cake stand looked like at the baby shower - covered with cupcakes, cake, and gumpaste animals.

Not So Violet Violets

Here are some pink royal icing violets, yellow daffodils and white lillies.

The violets are quite tiny and would look good on cupcakes. These violets have 5 petals, 3 of which are long and 2 are shorter.


The daffodils are a bit more challenging, mainly because the corona of the flower has to be pretty tall without tipping over. The rim is the daffodil is the piped zigzag part on top of the corona.

The white lilles were piped using a lilly nail for support. Six petals are piped with royal icing along with a green carpel, and stamens are inserted.

Rockin The Fondant

This is the first fully covered fondant cake I have ever made. This was an 8" round layered golden yellow cake with pink buttercream icing. I rolled out white fondant and smoothed the sides with a fondant smoother. I made neon pink roses out of gumpaste for the top, and neon pink and black daisies for the sides of the cake. I also used an embellished neon pink rope border for the bottom edges. I placed on the 12" cake board I made earlier. It was a hit with the coworkers :)

A Royal Affair

I tried royal icing for the first time..i have to say, my mixer almost broke making it! Then again..i'm pretty sure my mixer is from 1985. I made a couple of Apple Blossoms which are pretty small, and some Primroses which are pretty much just larger Apple Blossoms. I also did some rosebuds but unlike the other roses i've done, these would go along the sides of cakes as they're just 1/2 a rosebud.

A Cake Break

Today is Family Day in Ontario so thought I'd take a break from flowers and tell you what I made for my cousin's new bundle of joy. He had a beautiful baby girl on January 29th and they have named her Mythilli. I had been working on a cross stitching project for some time now, to go in the baby room. This was the finished project.

And since it's Valentine's Day, I made some butter cookies! These are strawberry/vanilla cookies adorned with non-pareil decors. This was the first time I made these..I think they turned out nicely.

Button Flowers

Due to a family emergency, I had to fly to Edmonton last week and didn't get a chance to do a fondant-covered cake. I'll attempt that later this month (so stay tuned)..but in the meantime, I'm trying out more fowers. The first one I attempted are button flowers and two-toned pansies, both made out of a 50/50 fondant and gumpaste mixture.

Spring Has Come When You Can Put Your Foot On Three Daisies

But I only made two..so thats right..spring's not here yet! Although with all the colorful flowers being made, it does feel like spring!
I tried my hand at some daisies. This is my first shot at them.

I also made Mums -- the picture below is what they look like in real life and the picture under that is what I made out of fondant and gumpaste. It'll be a nice topper for cupcakes.

Today I also covered a 12" cake board in Fondant. I chose to do it in light green. But then after covering my cake board I thought it looked very plain. So before it dried out, I took two differently sized heart-shaped cookie cutters and made imprints all over the board to give it a nice pattern.

Stop and smell the roses..

Can't really do that now though, it's the middle of winter! Today we had our 2nd cake class (Fondant and Gumpaste). We put together our bows, and learned to make carnations, calla lillies, and roses. The bow didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped..next time I need to make the base flatter so that the pieces fit together better. The carnations were time consuming, but they look realistic, especially when I put in the last layer on fondant. Calla Lillies are super easy to do..can't wait to try them in different colors now! But my favorite was the rose..it got better and better with every petal added on. The calyx was a good finishing touch I thought. Now I can use these on cakes to really give them an edge.

"Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it."
— Julia Child

Practice will make perfect, but I think I found it Ms.Child..

A taste of fondant

I made this cake for a coworker. It's a chocolate cake, covered in pink buttercream icing. I used a fondant cutter to cut yellow flowers, and bows (for the sides). I'm starting to experiment with flavors so I added a tsp of ground coffee beans, mixed in about 2tbps hot water to give it a little kick. I got this idea from my aunt who makes a killer chocolate cake. It smelled good in the cake batter but unfortunately you couldn't really taste it in the cake. Maybe i'll add a tiny bit more next time.

Hello 2011!

Happy New Year everyone!
I've sort of been out of commission for the past few days..I had a couple of wisdom teeth pulled. Way to start the new year huh? But I'm back on my feet and baking again. I signed up for January's Wilton Fondant & Gumpaste course. I'm extremely excited to learn about making figures out of gumpaste and how to cover cakes in fondant. Maybe one day I can make 'em like Buddy Valastro!