My First Topsy Turvy

Well technically this is my 2nd topsy turvy cake if we count the quickly failed first attempt. But I did learn something from that first one, you cannot carve a super moist into a topsy turvy cake! This time I figured out the perfect recipe for the vanilla cake, it was easy to carve and didn't fall apart at all! The batter is really thick compared to most, which gave me the perfect density for this topsy turvy.
The chocolate cake however wasn't as great. It held together, but with more difficulty, so I'll have to continue testing new ones out next  time.

Part one, all cut up and in the freezer. This helps the icing set and keeps your cake from sliding around when you place your fondant over it. However you are going to want to make sure that your icing is smooth because little bumps will freeze solid as well getting in the way of your smooth finish.

Yay! I did it! They're both in one piece and both 5 layers of goodness :D

                      

Covering the layers in fondant 

I brushed on a layer of royal icing in between the two layers to hold them firmly in place together.

I also used royal icing to "glue" the bottom layer of the cake to the cake board which I covered in fondant using shortening.

First piece to go on was the girl, the picture makes it looks nice and simple, but she had a skewer through her body to hold in place which came out the top of her head when she was first placed into the cake. This created some hair loss and it had to be redone. I also dressed on her the cake to create the flowing dress which would have broken upon placing otherwise. Every cake has it's challenges, she was mine.

She might not be perfect, but she's my first and although her arm broke off,  twice, she's still special.

I made the birthday's girls name and age out of gumpaste. Now the first set I made was eaten by my 4 year old son, so this new set only had overnight to dry. Gotta love little nibblers! Luckily they held up anyhow!

I considered leaving it just like this, but my original sketch included flowers, so on came the flowers.

Turns out that my original sketch was right, the flowers added a nice touch. Just prior to placing them on I decided that our girl needed a flower as well to match.

And there we have it, I can officially make topsy turvy cakes and it was nice and easy, much more time consuming of course, but all I needed was the right cake recipe to make it happen.

Previews...

One of the funnest part of making cakes for a living? Creating fun characters to decorate them with. Each one is hand made, unique and new learning experience.

My first cat created for an upcoming birthday cake. The cake design requires two of them, but here is one of two done and ready to go.

                                           aww I'm glad I won't be there to see him get eaten :(

This next piece was more of a struggle. I was hoping to find some pointers online, but was unsuccessful, so I tried to go at it on my own. She didn't turn out all that bad, but her arms started cracking when I moved them and well her dress still needs a lot of work, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to bring it all together :) On that note, if anyone has taken classes on this and wants to teach me, I'm all for it! There only seems to be lessons for this in Toronto, no Ottawa :(

And finally the "boob" cake which is now done apart from the trim along the bottom. I was getting this cake done in a record time,I finished all of my baking and came up to check what the icing choice was only to read the first line which stated dairy free.....of course I had forgotten this little detail in my process and had made a moist cake with milk and butter, both not acceptable for this cake. So after a few moments of sulking, I started over and a few hours later, we have the final product!

  I blurred out the name here since this cake has not yet been picked up and I wouldn't want to ruin any surprises.

And the funnest part of this cake is the fact that the bra isn't glued on so that you remove it before eating and get an eye full ;)

This is one entertaining cake ;)

More to come tomorrow when my topsy turvy sweet 16 cake is all done!

Not a Cake, but still very yummy! Alfredo!

Growing up and to this day my favorite dish was never the ever popular pizza, but a rich and creamy fettuccine Alfredo.  It was my mom's creation and it was my birthday request every single year, including this one, where I prepared it and served it to my friends. There were many second servings had and it occurred to me that this great recipe should finally be shared. And the best part is, it's easy!

Ingredients (Serving 2-3 people)

1 brick cream cheese
1 brick Lactancia garlic butter
1/2-1 cup 2% Milk (depending on thickness desired)
1/2 tsp Salt
Fresh parsley to garnish
Fettuccine pasta or my favorite large pasta shells

 Are you ready for this long list of instructions?
OK
Start by boiling water for your pasta. Then melt the garlic butter in a medium sized sauce pan. Once garlic has been melted completely add creme cheese, crush into butter with a whisk. It will still be clumpy until you add the milk. Start by whisking in the 1/2 cup of milk, mix it well until all the clumps are gone and you have a smooth creamy sauce. At this point you will be able to decide if you like it's consistency or if you'd like to add the other 1/2 cup of milk. The more milk you add, the less rich the sauce will be, which is a good thing for some. I've been adding more as the years go by :)

At some point during this process your water started boiling and you cooked your pasta, I going to go ahead and assume you know how to cook pasta for this one.

Put your pasta on a plate, add sauce on top and then garish with some fresh parley.

And that's it! You now have yourself a never fail, creamy & garlicky Alfredo that you and your guests will love!

                                       Not my picture. I forgot to take some, but it looks the same

Mai & Lee's 10.10.10 Wedding

Tiny flavor explosions were on the menu for this fall wedding. Two hundred mini cupcakes, in three delicious flavors (Banana, Pumpkin & Green tea) each topped off with a rich cream cheese icing.

I began with the Green Tea cupcakes since they were new to me. I'm not a matcha pro, but I do believe the taste was a success.

The decor however,was not. Apparently mini white cupcake liners are not all created equal. And so the end result of batch one included a nice indent on 90% of the cupcakes which is not wedding worthy, not by my standards anyhow. And so off to the store we went in search of even smaller white liners. Three stores later, we discovered that it wasn't the easy task it made itself out to be and so we went with colored liners instead that would match the wedding decor. Luckily that was a much easier task and we ended up with 100 light blue and 100 light green liners....phew

Then it was time to start over and this batch came out wedding worthy....

And so things moved forward with ease and it was onto making pumpkin cupcakes......

 mmmmm pumpkin goodness....

Last but not least were the banana cupcakes, my personal favorite....

Let's not forget to include my wonderful self taken shots of the cream cheese icing making it's way onto these yummy mini cakes....

 And there you have it, after a half day of work, all the mini's were lined up and ready to go...

Their destination was Lago's Bar & Grill at Dow's Lake Pavilion. It was a gorgeous venue! I wish I had thought to take pictures of their beautiful set up and great view. I would highly recommend checking them out if you're in the midst of wedding planning.

The bride and groom had made their own stand for the wedding, which was waiting for me upstairs when I got there. After playing around with the arrangement for a while, this is what my mini's looked like before my departure.

Congratulations to Mai & Lee!

Cupcake Camp 2010

This was my first time participating/attending at Cupcake Camp at City Hall. 

I was impressed with the turn out and happy with all of the wonderful people I had the chance to meet. Like Paula from "The Vanilla Bean Baker," whom I have to thank for getting me started on blogging and also for joining twitter. 


The cupcakes were sold at an amazing rate, raising $6,000 for two charities.

I entered into the pro competition with a new recipe created just for this event. The recipe was inspired by the decorations I had in mind. The first thing I knew was that they were going to be covered with little fondant pumpkins, fall fondant leaves and tons of gold dust. After having worked on getting those done I laid in bed thinking of something that would match my fall theme,while being creative at the same time. And then it came to me, I'd never had chocolate pumpkin before, so that's what decided to try. After a day in the kitchen and a few try outs (which the kids and hubby very much approved of) came the final product...

Dark chocolate pumpkin cupcakes filled with a spiced cream filling, covered in a dark chocolate pumpkin spice icing.

Deciding which category to enter these into for the competition was a difficult choice, I leaned towards "best decorated", but then decided that since I did take the time to ensure that they tasted as good as looked, I would go for all or nothing, so I entered my little fall cupcake with it's number 87 stuck in the center into the "Best Overall" competition. 

                                         (This picture was taken prior to all entries being entered)

For the remaining hours to come I kept contemplating whether or not I chose the best category, but I am so happy to say that I made the right choice. There were great cupcakes out there that day, but my little number 87 was deemed with the honor of "best overall"! I can't explain how great it was to hear that number being called out. 

You often wonder in competitive fields such as this one if you have what it takes to make it, this was a great message to let me know that I can succeed if I put my heart into it.

Looking forward to next year's competition. And I will be bringing more than 24 cupcakes next time!

I'd also like to send a big thank you to Capri for her all of help,she's always been a wonderful assistant that I can count on. And of course to my husband Adam for taking care of the children, cleaning my mess and being such a strong support. 

Boston Cream

I told my husband that today was going to be about creating new cupcake flavors. This isn't exactly what I had in mind, but here's one for the man who takes care of everything while I get my baking/decorating done.

My first Boston Cream Cupcake
-Vanilla Cupcake
-English Custard Filling
-Dark Chocolate Icing

And of course Mini Boston's for the kids to test out as well, covered with pearl dust in they're favorite colors.

They were all pleased with the results, Boston Cream has never been one of my personal favorites, but who knows, these might make the cut for the new order list.