And then there was one more...

I have not done a whole lot of baking or blogging in the past year for a number of reasons. Life just got too busy. I have been working on my MSc for much too long and I really needed to focus on wrapping things up. The other reason was related to being very tired...but not too tired to make this rather fun cake.

Is it obvious what is represents?

I think that I knew how I wanted to announce my pregnancy before I actually became pregnant. Of course I wanted to tell my family through some sort of cake project. I liked the idea of a 'bun in the oven' cake and I love things with a vintage look, hence the vintage oven. I think that had I known they make modern 'vintage' ovens now, I may have gotten one for our kitchen renovation, although I might not have been able to commit to a colour.
Having a higher than average risk of miscarriage, we decided to wait 3 months before making the announcement to our families. We were approaching the end of summer (almost 1 full year ago), and we had not entertained at all. We had decided to have some landscaping done in our backyard late summer, so we got everyone over under the guise of seeing our new and improved yard. The photos  of the cake aren't the best as I didn't have time to take pictures before we had everyone over.

To start off, I made a square cake. I must say, covering cakes with corners are a lot harder than round cakes. Since the cake was just for family, and I was rather tired, I wasn't as picky about how perfect it looked.
I really wanted the bun to be in the oven, rather than just on the front. This meant carving a shallow section out of the cake once it was covered in fondant, and lining it with black fondant. I had to be careful not to have it too close to the edges, so the cake wouldn't fall apart on that side. To have the oven rack elevated (because it just wasn't accurate to have the bun sitting on the bottom of the oven where the element should be), I used a black rectangle of modelling past in the back of the oven to prop up the gumpaste shelf. I used royal icing to pipe the oven rack. The tray and the oven door are made with gumpaste.

I wasn't in love with how I did the elements on the range but it wasn't the most important part of the cake and I still had to fit some naps in my schedule. Growing a kid just so happens to take a lot of energy! 

The date on the range 'clock' was our due date.

We hid the cake upstairs while we had food. When it was dessert time, I brought the cake downstairs. It was perfect as both of our mom's were facing the direction of the cake as I was walking in. The fun part is that English is the second language for both of our moms, so the phrase 'bun in the oven' was a little lost at first. My mom was asking my dad, 'What does that mean? Does that mean she's pregnant?' My mom was so sweet, she asked if she could bring the little bun home. She wondered why we chose blue for the cake. We did not know what we were having at that time. I chose turquoise as I think I would have chosen that colour for a range in our kitchen.

Here is a photo of the hubby and me with the cake. I love my polk-a-dot apron. It was perfect for hiding my little baby 'ponch'. I have matching oven mitts too! 

Now that our little guy is here, I really don't have much time for baking. He is a cat napper which translates into really not getting anything at all done during the day. Just as his naps start to improve, he will be starting solids so my time in the kitchen is going to be spent making baby food rather than sweet treats. 

I am loving parenthood so far. I am sometimes saddened at how quickly time is passing and how fast he is growing but I am excited by each and every new accomplishment. Just this week alone he has started saying 'mmmm' (in preparation for the delicious baby food I'm going to make him), spitting (not the greatest thing but so cute), eating his toes, rolling over and sitting in a tripod position for a couple of seconds. I look forward to when he is old enough to help out in the kitchen and we can cook and bake things together. 

That time I made an edible colon...

Over the years, word has gotten around that I make cakes as a hobby and sometimes I get requests to make cakes for friends or acquaintances. If things align with my schedule and it's something that I think is feasible in terms of my skill set, I will try to do it. This cake request came at a really busy time in my life and at a time when I wasn't sure how I'd be feeling health wise (more on that in a future blog post) but I could not pass up the opportunity to make such a fun cake combining two things I love: healthcare and baking. Notice how I didn't say 'colonoscopies' and baking...because that would just be weird...who would want to combine a colonoscopy and a cake?? Ahem. 

This blog has primarily been about sharing my experiences making cakes. I think I have posted one recipe and I have not done any tutorials. The lack of tutorials is because I am not an expert at cake decorating and also because I am usually pressed for time and cannot take step-by-step photos. For some reason, I felt compelled to take step-by-step photos of how to make the colon for all those people searching the internet on how to make an edible colon. If by a minuscule chance you've arrived at this page by searching on edible colons, I hope you find this helpful. If you weren't looking for cake decorating information, I just don't know what to say. 

It has been over a year since I made this cake. Time has flown as always with other things on my plate and I also wanted to edit the names off of the front of the cake for this post but had no idea how. Please note that my photo editing skills are non-existent. 

Since the colon was going to be on top of the cake and was relatively small, it didn't make sense to carve it out of cake. Making it out of pure fondant, gumpaste or molding chocolate is too heavy and would also be difficult to transfer to the top of the cake. I went with good ol' rice cereal treats. As I've mentioned in the past, I find the prepackaged treats easier to use as I feel you can condense them much easier into the shapes you need and get a smoother surface versus freshly made homemade rice cereal treats.

Alright, so where does one start when making a colon? The first step was to make a template for the colon. I did an image search for a colon I was happy with (I think it was from a textbook) and printed it to a size to fit the top of a 9-inch cake. I printed it slightly smaller than I wanted the final colon to be as items tend to get larger as you add layers of fondant/chocolate (1).

I taped the colon onto a cardboard cake board and covered it with wax paper for my work surface. That way I could easily see the picture of the colon and also had a way of sliding the completed colon onto the finished cake.

Next, I rolled little balls of rice cereal treats to closely resemble the size of each distinct section of the colon as per the picture (2). Once I completed all of the pieces (3), I melted some white chocolate candy melts and used a small brush to attach everything (4). After that, I painted the entire colon with melted chocolate to be certain everything was secure and it makes it yummy (5).

The next step was to give the colon a bit more dimension. I used modeling chocolate to round out some sections and to adjust the size, as well as to shape the rectum (6). Once I was happy with the overall shape I used a flesh-coloured mixture of modeling chocolate and fondant to cover the entire colon. I added details using the same chocolate/fondant, such as the polyps and the appendix, and finished off by using various colours of petal dust to add depth to the colours (8).

I let the colon settle for day (covered in the fridge) prior to transferring it to the cake, and while I worked on the endoscope controls, the cytology brush and forceps. Now for my PSA: Cancer Care Ontario recommends all individuals over the age of 50 be screened for colorectal cancer every two years (Fecal Occult Blood Test or colonoscopy depending on your risk). Now before you start running, my cytology brush and forceps are not to scale! If caught early, colorectal cancer has a 90% chance of being cured. So get screened!

The forceps and cytology brush were made with both modelling paste and gum paste. I used small scissors to make the teeth on the forceps and the bristles on the brush. 

The "semi-colawn"

So there you have it. This is the closest post I have to a tutorial and it's about a colon. 

I had a lot of fun making this cake. After it was complete, I threw the printed picture of the colon (which had been severed by this point) into the recycling. The following week, my husband was leaving for work only to find the colon picture on our lawn. My husband sent me a picture and I laughed out loud all the way to my doctor's appointment. I had to phone my sister so I didn't look crazy walking down the street laughing to myself. His friends started making colon jokes like, "did you perform a colawnoscopy?" or "was it a whole one or a semicolon?". 

My husband said that I have a knack for making scary or gross things cute. I hope I achieved that with this colon cake! 

My next post (if I ever get to write it) will be about why I haven't been baking/blogging very much in the past year so stay tuned...

Celebratory Layer Cakes!

I have disappeared for the last several months - almost eight months to be exact. Life has been busy and I have not had very much time for baking and blogging. I've been working, researching, organizing, purging, crocheting, singing and doing a little bit of baking here and there. I thought I would take some time to post a few of the cakes I did that I didn't get a chance to write about as I do not foresee a lot of time for blogging in the near future - more on that later in a couple of posts.

I had no idea what to call this post. What cake isn't 'celebratory'? These are two cakes that I did for family way back in May 2014. It has been so long that I'm not even 100% sure of what the flavour of the first one was. It definitely had something to do with almonds! I rarely do cakes that don't involve fondant decorations but I wanted to try some simpler but no less scrumptious looking cakes.

The first one was a Mother's Day cake - I know it doesn't look very Mother's Day-ish but really it was about the flavour. My mom doesn't like chocolate cake - although she has admitted to enjoying mocha cake with dulce de leche buttercream. I know she likes coffee flavour, so I made an almond flavoured butter cake with espresso based swiss meringue buttercream (I'm 98% sure that was the flavour) and garnished with toasted almonds. 

I was insistent that the almonds had to be sliced almonds but not blanched. Without the skin, they would just blend into the colour of the buttercream. They were a little harder to find but they look much better than blanched! 

The second cake was for my sister's birthday (same weekend!). I learned that my sister really enjoys chocolate malted milk balls and decided to run with that for a cake flavour. I wanted the cake to have the flavour of malted milk throughout and have a similar texture. 

I started out with a chocolate butter cake. For the crunchy texture found in a chocolate malted milk ball, I thought dacquoise would work well but it is a meringue that is traditionally made with nuts like hazelnuts or almonds and layered with buttercream or whipped cream and I did not want any nutty flavours overshadowing the malted milk flavour. I ended up making pseudo-dacquoise which was essentially large layers of chocolate meringue (piped in a large swirl) that I also added Ovaltine (original, not chocolate) powder to in place of some of the cocoa powder. The swiss meringue buttercream was chocolate with more Ovaltine added to it. I was worried that the Ovaltine might add a gritty texture to the smooth buttercream but it ended up being fine. The result was my cake version of a chocolate malted milk ball. It was very hard to cut into slices to serve but the flavour and texture was exactly what I wanted. 

I wanted the outside of the cake to be fun and birthday-like and you can't achieve that any better than with colourful sprinkles a-la-Sweetapolita. I originally did not plan to put the sprinkles that far up the cake but I got a little carried away - it just got higher and higher. You can never have enough sprinkles though. I decorated the top with large piped shells and chocolate malted milk balls. I must confess that I think I bought a pound of malt balls of which only 17 ended up on the actual cake and the rest ended up in my stomach - not all at once but they were gone much faster than I'd like to admit!

Bachelorette Cake

This cake was made for a friend's bachelorette party back in February (yes, all the way back in February). Given my time limitations with work and school, the bride-to-be's sister kept the design request relatively simple and picked a fun and flirty bustier in purple and grey to match the wedding colours.

I am self-taught in terms of cake carving. I have seen some bustier cakes online in which they use a heart shaped pan for the top and bottom of the cake. I've also seen cakes in which the bust part is created using a bowl or ball-shaped pans. I am sure that this approach 'wastes' less cake (there is no waste of cake in this household!) however I don't own any heart-shaped pans and also wanted more control over the shape. Also, carving layered cakes versus using a bowl or ball-shaped pan ensures that every bite of the cake still has a good buttercream to cake ratio. 

Once again, I did not plan to take pictures of the process of cake-making, so this picture is taken with my iPhone with less-than-optimal lighting (not really complaining about a sunny day as we had so few this winter). I used a 9 x 13 inch pan and traced it onto a large sheet of freezer paper. I then sketched the outline of the bustier within 9x13 space. I cut this out and used this as my carving template. To make the top of the bustier (it feels strange to write about breasts and cake together but also feels immature to say 'cake boobs'), I baked and filled three 5-inch round cakes. I cut the template apart where the cups meet the bodice and used it to carve away the top of the bodice part to make room for the cups. Once everything was in place, I worked on carving the curves working very gradually until I was happy with the final shapes. I crumb-coating the entire shape, put it in the fridge to set and then covered it in purple fondant. 

It is very challenging to get dark purple from white fondant. I would have liked a darker purple but time was not on my side. I used a ribbon cutting tool for the detailing on the bodice and around the cups. To make the frills, I cut about 1-inch wide ribbons from fondant mixed with some tylose and used a bulbous gum paste tool to ruffle the edges. 

The cake was chocolate filled with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream. With the cake and the fondant-covered large board, it ended up being quite a large and heavy cake to transport. I was extremely worried about dropping it. I somehow managed to hold this cake with one arm while locking the door to my house, and then proceeded down my icy steps and very icy driveway in very high stiletto boots to a taxi. I safely made it out of the taxi, across a very slippery lobby floor and got the cake to the party in one piece. Whew!

I have a couple of more projects to write about and will do that gradually when I need breaks between analyzing my data for my research. Cake-making will continue to be infrequent but I hope to be up and at it more frequently after the summer. Alternatively, if any of you blog-readers out there are statistics aficionados who like to help out random people on the internet, I can get back to baking sooner!

Welcoming a little peanut

I have no idea where the past few weeks went. Spring is fast approaching and while I am very excited about spring and summer (we kind of missed it last year with buying a house and renovating) I feel like time is flying a bit too quickly. Before I know it, birthday season in my family will be here. 

I'm also seeing deadlines quickly approaching for goals that I've set for myself for getting my thesis done. Scary. 

Carrying on with a baby theme, my last baking project was for a baby shower honouring my friend's sister. The theme was elephants and the colour palette was grey and yellow. 

I wanted the elephants on the cake to match the invitation, so in order to make a mommy and baby elephant, I photocopied the invitation onto card stock to use as a template for the gumpaste. One of the challenges with 2-dimensional elephants was figuring out the most stable way to insert these into the cake and ensure they would stay put during a car trip. Initially, I carefully inserted floral wire into each of the legs. I found that I could see the floral wire through the elephants and it did not have as clean of a look as I would have liked. Instead, I recut the elephants and made long and tapered legs that I could stick into the cake. After covering the cake in fondant, I lightly indented where each of the legs would go. After the fondant set and I had the cakes stacked, I made slits for the legs, filled them with a bit of royal icing for added stability and inserted the elephants. The balloon was made with gumpaste and floral wire. This was also secured with a bit of royal icing. I didn't think these elephants were going anywhere, but just in case, I made a few backup elephants for the car ride -- understudies, if you will.

I must say, stripes are not my favourite (translation: not the easiest) thing to do with cakes, especially with 3 alternating colours. My brain is just too tired in the evenings after work to mathematically figure out how many stripes I need to ensure that the colour pattern is continuous and I don't end up with two of the same coloured stripes side by side and how far apart to space said stripes. My math skills seem to be great these days (I really think that it was sheer luck) as the repeating colour pattern worked out perfectly!

I love polk-a-dots and I think it went nicely with the stripes on the bottom tier. I did a pearl border around the base of each tier to finish it off. 

The cake was chocolate with dulce de leche buttercream. I am still using Satin Ice for my fondant of choice. I find that it dries a bit too quickly and that you need to work really fast when covering the cakes to avoid an elephant skin look (would have been ok in this case!) but I love that it does not stretch as much when you are picking up the fondant and it dries to a nice hard finish which I think gives a cleaner look to the cakes. I'll have to see how it behaves in the warmer/more humid weather. 

I was really happy with how this cake turned out and really loved the colour combination of grey and yellow. I also loved the simplicity of the 2-dimensional elephants. My friend did an amazing job putting together the baby shower. Everything was so beautifully coordinated and I was happy that one of my cakes was a part of it.

Now let the countdown to birthday season begin. Will I reign myself in and keep things simple? We shall see.

A happy Harry Potter birthday

So after Christmas and the werewolf cake, I decided I was going to take it easy for a bit and just focus on some simpler things. That didn't last very long, in part because I have a very difficult time saying 'no' and I really like Harry Potter. That is how I ended up doing Harry Potter cupcakes and a cake in the past week. 

I kept the cupcakes simple as it was a very busy week. I used modelling paste (half fondant, half gumpaste) for the decorations. The striped scarf was made by 'gluing' red strips to a piece of yellow modelling paste and then running it through a pasta machine. 

I made two little cauldrons and filled them with bright green frosting so that two of the cupcakes could hold candles. I also did Harry faces, lighting bolts and glasses although I think that without arms the glasses look a little like quidditch goggles.

Next was the cake. I wanted again to keep the design simple and cute since it was for a children's party.

The characters are made from modelling paste. The face details are using edible marker and the stripes on the ties painted on using gel paste mixed with a bit of vodka.

To make the hair, I used an extruder. For Hermione I twisted each strand for the curls and attached using edible sugar glue. The modelling paste dried very quickly so I didn't have to worry about the curls coming undone after attaching them.

For Ron, I made him looking a little worried as that is typically how he was throughout the series. When I was attaching the hair, I got a little extra sugar glue on the side of his forehead. I didn't bother trying to clean it off as it actually worked by looking like a little bit of perspiration (although I suppose that it's not very appetizing for a cake, but I've done worse!)

My husband felt that from a side profile, Ron looked like he was mad at Harry Potter. This seemed to work, especially considering the last couple of books. Maybe Ron is just tired of Harry getting all of the attention or he has a horcrux hidden somewhere on him.

The wand was made using gumpaste. I used a few different shades of brown twisted together to make a wood-like colour and used dresden tool to make a wood grain effect. I then painted it with brown gel paste mixed with vodka.

Other details for the cake included gumpaste glasses. This one took two attempts as I broke the first pair.

The scarf was made from fondant. I roughly measured each piece, lined them up alternating the colours and then cut along the sides so it all looked like one piece. Then I placed it on the cake with sugar glue and carefully trimmed any pieces that had stretched when transferring to the cake.

I made a parchment scroll out of modelling paste on which to write 'Happy Birthday'. I did not have time to cut out letters in the Harry Potter font, so I freehanded it using edible marker. It actually didn't turn out too bad considering I left this to the last task and with the time crunch, my hand was shaking.

Unfortunately with time limitations, my photography was not optimal. I really should have  used a flash. To give an antique look to the cake, I  used a large brush to dust the cake, the board and the edges of the parchment with a mix of brown petal dust, gold and apricot lustre dust. It did not really show up in the pictures. Perhaps I should have used a greater proportion of brown petal dust, or just used a flash. You'll just have to trust me that it looked a bit antique.

I really enjoyed making this cake but I have to say, I am tired! I really mean it this time, it's time for some simpler projects!

It's close to midnight...and it's my last cake of the year

For months I had my sister try to convince my nephew that he wanted a Despicable Me themed cake for his 3rd birthday party as I just had a hankering to make some cute yellow minions. This worked for short while but soon he changed his mind and requested a Harry Potter werewolf cake. Not really wanting to try to come up with a design that might fit that request, I continued to have my sister show him cute videos of minions. Enter my older nephew. He was watching a video for Michael Jackson's Thriller and the younger one became fascinated with it. Not only did he want a werewolf cake, but it had to specifically be a Michael Jackson werewolf. For weeks leading up to the party, I hoped that he would change his mind. Once the invitations went out, I started the planning process on how I would make a Michael Jackson Thriller werewolf cake.

We celebrated my brother's birthday a few weeks ago. My sister-in-law brought out this delicious chocolate cake and my nephew exclaims, "werewolf cake!" I looked at the chocolate frosted cake and thought to myself, 'wow, if he thinks a frosting-covered chocolate cake is a werewolf, this is going to be an easy cake'. And the he added, "but I want a face on it."

For the past few weeks I have been thinking about how to make a werewolf. I definitely wanted it to be cute/cartoon-like since it was for a 3-year-old child. I thought about making the whole cake a standing werewolf but then I thought about how I didn't think my nerves could handle the drive with a cake that required significant structural support. It also would have meant the possibility of not having enough cake servings unless I wanted to make a 3-foot-tall cake.

I decided to make the werewolf jumping out of the cake. The body was made from rice cereal treats. I have recently found it easier to work with pre-made rice cereal treats vs homemade. It is much easier to get a more condense and solid shape and I don't have individual pieces of rice cereal and gooey strings of marshmallow sticking all over my hands. The head was also make from rice cereal treats. I have to admit, looking at the cereal form, I really didn't know how it was going to end up looking like a wolf. I used modelling chocolate on the head to form facial details like eyebrows and to fill out the cheeks and the mane. At this point it looked like some form of voodoo mask. I covered the head in fondant and used a modelling stick and additional fondant to make the fur. I added variations in fur colour with white, brown and black petal dust. The position of the arms ended up being a bit funny. Instead of an 'I'm going to get you' position, he looks more like he's saying 'I don't want any trouble!'

The hands, nails and teeth were made with gumpaste. I used a stitching tool to give a ribbed looked to the collar of the varsity jacket.

I also dusted the cake with petal dust to make it look like dirt and more graveyard like. I painted his name on the cake using red gel paste mixed with vodka.

I enjoyed his reaction to the cake. He hung on to his dad and said, "It's scary...."
After singing 'happy birthday' I played the Thriller song and video on my phone for him. He is so entranced by that video. I don't remember how old I was when I first watched that video but I would think that 3-year-old would be scared, especially when the zombies are rising from the graves. He can't take his eyes off the video. It's like he sees it as an instructional dance video. He does the zombie walk and he sings along and mimics all of the dance steps. He even does an excellent MJ spin!

It was certainly a fun cake to wrap up a busy year of work, school, moving and baking. I have to say, I am pretty tired though and I am happy to put the cake decorating supplies away for a couple of weeks. I think I'll start off the year with a few simpler projects. I look forward to the baking challenges of next year. I'm sure my nephews will dream up some impossible cakes for me to make.
Happy New Year everyone!

Celebrating the year of the dragon and a year of blogging

I started this blog about one year ago with my first entry about a cake that I made for my mother's birthday. After a two and a half-month baking and three month blogging break, I am returning with a cake for my mother's birthday (her 60th birthday to be exact, which is a big one!).

I have not decorated a cake since August. At that time, we were wrapping up our life chapter in our first home. The baking and blogging break coincided with the transition from our condo to our not-quite-finished-being-renovated house. A delayed permit from the city meant throwing all our belongings in the basement and living with my parents for a short time. This is the first cake that I made in our new kitchen. It has taken me a month to write a blog on this cake due to the ongoing process of getting settled into the house (our basement is still full of boxes), work, singing and school commitments. 

This dragon cake is appropriate in a couple of ways. The first and foremost important is that my mom is born in the year of the dragon. The dragon is a symbol of power, strength, luck and prosperity. Interestingly, the dragon also represents change and mobility. This has certainly been a year of change and mobility - literally. We bought a house in May, sold our condo in June, took possession of the house in July and started some major renovations that finished in September. Instead of designing cakes, I was designing rooms in our house. It is a lot of work picking out fixtures, tile, appliances, flooring, doors, etc. 

I am happy to be somewhat settled in and working on cakes again.

The flavour of this cake was mocha with dulce de leche buttercream as per my mom's request. 

This is the second cake that I've carved. The first one being Mater for my nephew's birthday last December.

When thinking about the best method of getting the dragon shape, my original thought was to use a straight-edge bundt cake pan and arrange the pieces into a snake-like shape. After cutting out a paper template, I did not feel that I could get the width or shape that I wanted. I ended up cutting a piece of freezer paper to the size of the cake board (20" diameter) and freehanded the shape of the dragon. I then took out some baking pans and looked at the best combination of pan shapes/sizes to create the dragon. I ended up using a 9x13" pan for most of the body and a 8-inch round pan for the tail end. It was much easier than baking a half sheet size cake.
I still had quite a bit of leftover cake that I used to make cake pops later that week.

One of the challenges I had with the carved cake was how to get it on the cake board. Normally, I cover my cakes in fondant before placing it on the fondant-covered cake board. In this case, since the cake was an awkward shape and in 3 pieces it was necessary to cover the cake once it was already on the board. It wasn't too bad. I used my freezer paper template to see where I wanted the cake to be positioned on the board. I then used an inscriber tool to lightly mark the outline of the dragon onto the fondant. Each piece had it's own cake board which made it easy to transfer to the large cake board. Once placed on the board, I covered the shape in pieces of fondant rather than one large big piece since any seams would be hidden by scales. I just had to be careful when trimming off the excess.

The scales were cut out of modelling paste and then thinned using a ball tool. This took a really, really long time! It is really best to leave the modelling paste wrapped overnight to firm up a bit. It makes thinning the circles easier and neater. I discovered this while making the cake as I was running out of coloured modelling paste. My poor sister was frantically colouring more fondant mixed with tylose and cutting out circles the afternoon of my mother's party. The dragon was dusted with various colours of pearl lustre dust. Teachable moment: when you are severely behind in making a cake, it is very important to stay calm and focused. For this cake, I did not remain calm as I was becoming increasingly late for my mom's birthday dinner. While dusting the dragon, I was gently/or not so gently blowing excess dust off of the cake board. At one point, instead of blowing on the cake board, I blew into the small container of lustre dust. I ended up with an orange face and orange teeth.

The head was made from Rice Krispie treats. I had grandiose plans for decorating the face, however I ran out of time, so it was decorated rather quickly and less precisely than what I would have liked. It looks a bit muppet-y to me but the overall dragon look is there. 

The most important thing is that my mom was surprised and she loved the cake. 

My baking projects will likely be a little less frequent in the coming year as I try to wrap up my graduate studies but I still hope to be baking and blogging once in a while for fun and stress-relief.