My hundred dollar cookie!!!

I entered this Christmas cookie in a contest and won a $100 certificate to Williams-Sonoma!!  I was so excited!!!  Sam says that now I am famous... He's so funny!

Velda's daughter turns 29...

Velda's daughter turns 39 today.  Velda wanted a "modern art" style cake for the occasion.  This was fun.  I had never done a cake quite like this one.

Gingerbread houses...

One of the first days of break from school the boys wanted to do gingerbread houses.  They had tons of fun!  I think they ate as much frosting and candy as they put on the houses...

Oh, Christmas Cookie... Oh, Christmas Cookie...

I have spent the majority of the last 3 days making my Christmas Cookies.  I tried a few new things this year.  The "snow globe" cookie was really fun to create!  In addition to the cookies pictured, I made Christmas pine trees and mittens... They have all been eaten by my monsters already!  I'll have to remember to take pictures as I go along.  Here they are:

And some close-ups:

I put some sugar glitter on the snow for these cookies.  You can't see it very well in the pictures.

Two birthday cakes for Velda

Velda asked me to do 2 different cakes for this past weekend.  The first was for a Sweet Sixteen Party.  For a girl who apparently loves movies.  Velda asked for the Birthday message on a movie ticket.  I added the popcorn and coke to make it a little more fun.

The second cake was for a Lakers Fan.  Velda sent me a picture of a cake and asked me to replicate it.  I did change a few details.  I used Royal Icing to make the Lakers Logo for the cap.  The picture she sent me had the logo printed on fondant.  I thought this turned out really well.  It looks cool!  It was a lot easier than I had anticipated.  

Christmas Party cupcakes for Grade 2...

These are the cupcakes I made for the Christmas Party for Sam's grade 2 classroom... They turned out cuter than I thought they would.  I didn't have a lot of time to make them and I was having difficulty with the oven...

Happy Birthday Dorian!

These cupcakes were for Dorian's friend's birthday. 

Seeing stripes

This cake isn't anything special on the outside....

You have to cut into it for the surprise inside:



Last week, before we left for Minnesota, Tracy sent me an email with a picture of a zebra striped cake...  All of a sudden I was obsessed.  How did they do that???  I spent a lot of time thinking about it.  I tried one before we left and it was a serious flop.  (Kyle enjoyed eating it, flop or not.)  It took 3 more tries once we returned home to get it right.  I think it looks really cool!  I would have decorated it a little more fancy but since it is just an experiment, I decided to go easy.  Plus, it was after 9 last night when I was ready to decorate!  I had a bunch of leftover batter so I decided to see if it would work with cupcakes:

The technique needs a little tweaking but I still think they look pretty cool!

Cupcakes for Sam's class...

I stayed up until nearly 1 am this last night making these cupcakes for Sam's birthday celebration at school with his class.  Bears are popular at our house!  I love that we can send homemade goods to school with the boys...

Sam turns 7.....

Sam turned 7 today... Hardly seems possible... He wanted to design his own cake.  He wanted to put lego cars and guys on it.  I made a silicone mold of a lego plate then formed the green lego "plates" on the cake from fondant.  Everything is edible except the cars and guys. 

He didn't have a party but we did have friends over to enjoy cake and ice cream.  He blew out his candles and announced that he had wished for snow in Minnesota when we are there this next week!!!  Sorry Minnesota!

Happy Birthday Makenzie

My next cake was a fun cake for Makenzie's 10th birthday.  She wanted vanilla flavored sponge and purple is her favorite color.  I always love doing fondant flowers.  I really like how they look on cake.  This is the first time I have made little fondant insects.  They were quite tedious but turned out really cute.  I am pleased...  Hope Mackenzie likes it as much as I do!!!

Happy Birthday Satina!!!

Satina's mom is throwing her a surprise party tonight for her birthday and wanted a cake.  She called Sophia at Kyle's office who called Kyle who called me... After the telephone game was finally finished, I agreed to make a cake for the party.  So this is what I spent a couple of hours doing this morning before going to the school for the boys' lunch time...



Cake for baby Kar'da

Another cake for Satina; for her Godson's christening.  She wanted a cake with a sunset/ocean theme.  I molded the shells out of fondant and hand-painted them.  It was really fun and I thought the shells turned out really well.  I enjoyed "painting" another cake.

My favorite Van Gogh

I have wanted to paint on a cake for a long time.  I have seen some pictures of "painted" cakes and they look really cool.  I decided to put my brush to fondant and make a cake replica of "Starry Night."  It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped so I will be attempting this again... Watch for a better version of the same cake...  Tasted great...

Baby Cakes

If I ever opened my own cake shop, I would want to name it "Baby Cakes" and have a big variety of gourmet cupcakes.  Of course, I'm sure someone has already taken the name...

These are cupcakes that I made and packaged for Kyle's company's summer party.  (120 cupcakes)  They are fashioned to resemble a Pina Colada drink.  The cake has pineapple bits in it with coconut and rum flavoring.  The icing is buttercream with rum and coconut flavor.  They were so moist and yummy...  All the people in Kyle's department got to have lots of taste tests over the two weeks that I was developing the recipe.  I think it took 4 batches to get it just right...  Assembling the plastic boxes probably consumed the most time for this project!

Happy Birthday Velda!!

For Velda's birthday this year, I made mini-cupcakes for everyone at Kyle's office.  Cute little bites of heaven...

A surprise girly-girl cake

Sometimes I think that I might have too much fun with my cakes...
This cake was created for Satina, a gal in Kyle's office.  She wanted a shoe cake like the one I made for Velda but there was not enough time.  I told her I would come up with something "girly-girl."  She had no idea what I was going to make until it was delivered.  It was a hit!

Drew's 9th Birthday

Drew turned 9... How did that happen????
Instead of a party, Drew chose to receive a more expensive gift.  Even without a party, I still wanted to make him a great cake!  This cake has a fondant sculpture of "Toothless" the dragon from "How to Train Your Dragon?"  He didn't know I was making it so it was a fun surprise!!!

Smokey's Birthday

Smokey is the concierge at Kyle's company.  He turned 77 and requested a cake with "the number" on it.  This is what I created for him.  Instead of writing "77," I decided to carve it out of cake.  I only had a couple of hours to do it as I had just returned from the states.  If I had had more time, I could have done something more spectacular...

Any cake...

A gentleman I recently met asked me to make a cake for him.  I asked him what it was for.  "I just want a cake, nothing fancy" is what he told me.  I only had an hour or so and this is what I threw together for him...



Another Disney Princess cake...

This Disney Princess cake was for Melissa Hassell, our landlord's youngest daughter.  This is her 5th birthday...

I hope she loved the cake as much as I enjoyed making it!!!

Chanel shoe cake

A friend of ours has a daughter who is turning 16.  She wanted a special cake for the occasion.  I have wanted to make a shoe cake for some time now and was thrilled to do this one.  This was my first time working with gum paste and it was a bit of a challenge at first.  I was glad that I started early as the gum paste took a  lot longer to dry than I anticipated.  I love this cake and can't wait to make another one!