Hockey Jersey Cake

My boyfriend is a huge Leafs fan. He has stuck with them through the good and the bad and has made me a default leafs fan.

So naturally for his birthday I was going to make him a hockey themed cake. I initially thought of making a hockey rink (arena?) but decided that there wouldn't be enough actual cake to eat or too much cake. Still want to try that sometime though.

This cake was relatively simple to make. I had originally planned on adding a buttercream border at the bottom to hide the imperfections of fondant but I didn't have enough time.

It is also much harder to cover a square or rectangle cake in fondant than it is for a round cake.

And it is also much harder to fit a Tamil name onto a tiny little maple leaf.

After I made the cake, I realized I should have done the BACK of the jersey with his name as the players name rather than the front.

I then smashed the cake into a wall and started all over again.

KIDDING

I brushed my shoulders off and put it in the books for next time.

I also just realized that this is the first 'boy' cake I've made. It kind of killed me that I couldn't put anything pink or pretty on it :(

I guess what matters in the end is that he loved it, even though he doesn't really eat cake....weirdo.

On a different note, I know I kind of fell off the face of the blogworld this past week. Its only because I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I will be back to some much needed baking soon with more pics and funnier posts than this one....I hope.

Till then...Happy Baking!!

Bharathanatyam Cake

I am super excited about this cake.

My friend recently had her 21st birthday. As many of you may remember from my previous post, 21 is a big deal in my culture...well for girls at least.

But I did not make her a key cake...I was planning to do a change up on the traditional key cake but then things got expensive and it just wasn't going to happen.

INSTEAD...I made something better! Well at least I think so :)

My friend loves to dance. She's an amazing classical Indian dancer and is most passionate about it.

I looked high and low on the internets for a beautiful "Bharathanatyam" inspired cake...and found nothing.

So I took some inspiration from other dance themed cakes and came up with the sketch for my cake. I wanted it to look like the silhouettes of dancers on stage.

I traced the dancers out from black fondant and let them dry out. I also got to use an impression mold from Wilton which I will be doing a review on soon. The inside was a marble cake and covered in vanilla buttercream.


The hardest part of this cake was obviously the dancers. I wanted them to actually look like dancers and include all the little details like the pleated fan skirt and the graceful arms. Initially I had wanted them to have even more detail like bangles and the bells on the feet but since they were small, the details didn't come through. But they look like dancers to me so s'all good!

Every time I look at this cake, or pictures of this cake, my stomach jumps a little and I get excited all over again.

All in all, a very successful personalization of the cake :)
 

And thanks to Emily again for the amazing pictures. She has her own blog now too! Check it out here 

Happy Baking!

Make Up Cake

As I mentioned in a previous post, 3 of my friends have birthdays this week. Each has a unique personality and so I decided to make a different cake for each one.

Ambitious?...Yes
Impossible?...No

I was excited about this cake for many reasons. Firstly, since my birthday passed recently, I got a lot of new baking swag. My friends obviously know me way too well. But the ultimate gift came from my boyfriend. Ladies and gentleman, please say hello to my newest love and baby

Isn't she a beauty? After suffering all the horrors of a hand mixer, I really appreciate the beautiful machine.

So I decided instead of covering this cake in fondant, I would try to do buttercream and try to get it smooth as smooth can be.

I also had the opportunity to use gum paste for the first time but didn't end up using much of it because I already had coloured fondant on hand and didn't want to colour the gum paste and also because gum paste is a lot tougher to work with.

I had tonnes of fun making this cake and it ended up looking really cute. It also tasted amazing! Not being covered in fondant helps...a whole lot.

It didn't get to be as smooth as I intended but at least it was straight, even, and relatively smooth.

Off to make cake number 2!!!

And sorry about the crappy quality of the pics. Me and my camera are in a fight. Clearly, the camera is winning. 

And see that super duper lipstick that looks oh so real....my artsy roommate made that...it makes me so proud!!

And also....if you want to be up to date on my posts and baking adventures, make sure you subscribe!!

AND FINALLY, I would love to get some feedback on what looks good and what doesn't so LEAVE COMMENTS!

Okay, I'm really done now : )

My second birthday cake!

First of all, please accept my MOST deepest and sincere apologies for missing MM this week. I had something planned but unfortunately, with moving, and my sister's surprise birthday party and everything in between, life got hectic. REGARDLESS, no excuse is good enough as this was my second week *runs into corner and hides*

BUT...hopefully this post will bring me back in the good books. I've been planning and scheming and organizing my sister's party for the past few weeks and have been ITCHING to blog about it. It's finally over and I can blog to my heart's content!!

The first birthday cake I ever made was for a very good friend of mine. It was a 2 tiered square cake. I'll do a more detailed post on it later. It was good for a first attempt and I had a TONNE of help from my roommate but I still couldn't see past its flaws. The Transformers cake I made for my sister was my second ever and took a tonne of planning and research. I made a cupcake tower...yes..the tower...as well as all the cupcakes and the cake at the top. I also had to do all this into the very late hours of the night as it was a surprise.

I used my very favourite chocolate cake recipe for the 8 inch cake. I had to buy the fondant and the buttercream for the crumb coat because I was pressed for time and had no energy. I used chocolate buttercream to fill the cake after I torted it and also used it to cover the cake. I made sure the cake was even and flat and straight. I watched videos on YouTube like this and this to figure out a technique.

I then covered the cake in yellow fondant. I coloured all the fondant 24 hrs before hand. That was definitely the most fun part about this cake....okay I'm lying. It was a pain. Especially getting the black to be black. I sweat up a storm and my shoulders ached the next day.

Once I got the cake covered, the rest was easy. I printed out a picture of the Transformers logo thingy...which in case you haven't caught on is the theme of the cake( I wondered many times in this process whether I had a sister or a brother. Trying to make a transformers cake look girly is VERY hard) and used a knife to free hand cut the different parts out of grey fondant. I guess it would have looked neater if I traced around the printout and cut it into sections but at 2 in the am, I wasn't thinking straight.

I mixed some silver lustre dust with peppermint extract and brushed it onto the cutouts. I painted some areas more dense than others to get a metally, worn out effect. Not sure if it worked :S. I then positioned it onto the cake and cut black strips of fondant to add to the sides. TA DAAA...the cake was ready to 'roll out'...get it? like the Autobots rolling out....okay I'll stop.

So that was it. I'll do another post on the cupcakes and the cupcake tower all made from scratch. I am so proud of this cake and the look on my sisters face when she saw it was totally worth it!!