Tag: cake

Pinkie Pie, My Little Pony kids birthday cake theme

Fun with Kids Birthday Themed Cakes

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I have had the pleasure of decorating a number of cakes for kids birthdays, and I have come to realize that they are my favourite kind of cake to decorate. I mean, I love all cakes, but kids cakes are the most fun because they are full of colour, happiness, and generally very cute themes.

Below is a photo summary of the cakes I have made. Each cake was really fun to make and each taught me something different about my style, which evolves over time. I frequently search for inspiration on Instagram and Pinterest, and from some of my favourite cookbooks. Most themes come to me by request and then I come up with a way to make it in cake form…. That is my favourite part, coming up with the ideas!

From a cat themed birthday, to Thomas the Train, My Little Pony, to a Titanic themed birthday, I have come a long way since cake week in pastry school, just take a look.

The Cat Themed Birthday:

This cake was fun, and the ears were the tricky part. I wanted the ears to be sculpted cake, so that part i worked on right away so they had time to set before fitting on top. I used a large grass tip to pipe the hair onto the cake, and I used swiss meringue buttercream too, my go-to frosting!

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Cake, cakes, and more cake! I love cake.

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Over the last month I have been doing a fair bit of baking and not sharing photos of my creations on here! I bake and post photos regularly on my Instagram account, so now I’m going to share a photo story with you of my recent creations. Let me know what cakes strike your fancy!

Before I get into the photos I would like to answer a question for you. I am frequently asked, “what is your favourite thing to bake/make?” And most of the time I say that like to bake everything, which is true, but ive come to learn I love cake the most. Because cake, above all other desserts, implies a celebration is in order! Whatever the occasion, cake will make it better. Here is one of my favourite quotes about cake:

I love decorating cakes and researching ideas of all kinds. You can often find me on Pinterest looking up the most random cake ideas and creations to inspire me. Obsessed might be a definition that comes to mind. I’m okay with that #cakeobsession.

Without further ado, let’s get to my cakes:

Jamaican Ginger Cake, with candied ginger on top and cream cheese frosting. A recipe I found from the UK.

The ginger cake came from this book, which is one of many books that I own about cake. It’s my current favourite cookbook. It happens to be nearly pocket sized too, which only adds to its adorableness.

I always wanted to make a circus cake! This puppy is pure red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting through and through. No fondant. I sculpted the top so it peaked like a circus tent. The cake was for a fun birthday party theme: a Murder Mystery at the Circus!

When I don’t have a cake to bake, I bake banana bread (sometimes), cause it’s like cake. To help it last a bit longer, I sliced it up and freeze it. So I can enjoy a fresh slice each day I want to. PS. Banana bread is amazing when toasted… It helps to caramelized the bananas. Ya, I know, what have you been missing?!

For a house warming event, I made this London Fog cake: early grey milk chocolate ganache layered between vanilla butter cake, early grey syrup, and frosted with honey buttercream!

Strawberry vanilla cake, for a little girl’s birthday. Marbled chocolate on top for garnish, vanilla cake inside and strawberry pink frosting.

Stay tuned for more cakes too… 

If you ever have any questions about recipes you’re making or other baking questions, please send me an email. My email is listed on my contact info page. Happy to help!  

And if you need cake for an upcoming special occasion, I would love to help there too. Just shoot me an email for a quote.

Happy celebrating!

My first sculpted cake: a skull!

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A few weeks ago a friend from my old running group asked me to make her husband’s 60th birthday cake. She requested a skull, after explaining it might be unusual, but her husband would love it. At first I didn’t know if I could, but then I researched it a bit, and realized I could definitely do this. I had not made a sculpted cake before but learned a bunch of tricks over the past few months that I knew would help.

So I said yes, I will make your skull cake. Fortunately they only needed to serve about 10 people, so I did not have to make a lot of cake.

I will share some tips in this post from what I learned while making this sculpted cake and share some photos I took throughout the process.

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First birthday cake, barnyard theme fondant custom cake

Fun with fondant: a big barnyard birthday cake and party

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A friend of mine was celebrating her daughter’s first birthday recently, and needed a barnyard themed fondant cake to join the celebration. I jumped at the chance to make the cake so I could do some more fondant work. After a bunch of nights searching online for ideas and seeing what others have done, I came up with a variety of ideas.

I need to work on my sketches a bit more, but here were the initial concepts that I ended up amalgamating for the final design. It was helpful to have a sketch to share with my friend in advance, so she could see what direction I was going with the cake. I did have a bit of creative freedom as well, as long as it suited the theme and a baby’s first birthday.

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Week 5: Five baking tips from a pastry student

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It has been five weeks into the program at Northwest, and despite my exhaustion, I still love every minute of it. I can hardly believe there are still 10 weeks to go because we have already covered so much. What else is there? Well, we still have to learn about cakes, chocolate, sugar work, frozen desserts, etc… Yes!

Rather than detailing through each day’s rises and falls with yeast, I thought I would share some of the lessons I have observed from class to share with you in your kitchen, and some more photos from class…. just because I love looking at my photos (and hope you do too).

Last week, we wrapped up the second week of bread and I think I speak for most of the class when I say we were ready to move on from bread. There was a lot of yeast, bread flour, kneading, kneading, and more kneading… all by hand too (so we are familiar with the dough feels). My hands are super dry from all the work with flour and frequent hand washing. The sampling of bread was FILLING too. I felt more tired after bread days than in previous weeks, just because of the bread samples. It all tastes so good though. Mmm. Fresh bread.

I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression about bread week though, I loved learning about bread, working with yeast and gluten, and how to make both yield the bread you desire. It’s truly a science and I found it fascinating. But after two weeks, I think I have decided working purely with bread full-time, might not be for me.

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My first brioche buns! I am holding a traditionally shaped brioche bun, with a little ball of dough on top. Brioche dough is soft and it was hard to shape – I need more practice.

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