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.

Bright baby shower cupcakes

My baking projects and subsequently my blog posts are becoming a tad few and far between. As much as I would like to spend more time on baking and blogging, I am learning the importance of finding balance in my life. Baking is my hobby - 'an activity done in one's leisure time for pleasure'. I have realized that when it no longer fits into 'leisure time', the 'pleasure' aspect of it can become diminished. I am always happy with the outcome of the projects I choose and never have regrets for taking on a project at the end, however sometimes the process in itself may not be so fun and that defeats the purpose of Sweet-D Cakes. 

These cupcakes were an example of a nice light, bright and fun project. People frequently ask me if cupcakes are easier or less time consuming than putting together a fondant-covered cake. I can't say that they are less time consuming because it can take hours to put together many toppers each containing small details that are in themselves time consuming. The benefits over doing a full cake are they tend to be less messy - no cake crumbs from trimming, levelling or torting cakes and I typically use frosting rather than swiss meringue buttercream for my cupcakes which is faster to make and makes yummier leftovers to eat with a spoon later on. The cons of cupcakes is that often they can be more time consuming due to a large number of small details versus fewer cake topper components that can be made up to 2 weeks in advance. Also, you cannot really bake the cupcakes ahead of time and maintain good quality control as they will dry out much quicker than a cake as there is more surface area and with a cake and you can seal in moisture when you cover it with buttercream and fondant.

For these cupcakes, I wanted a little more oomph than the typical pastel colours associated with babies, so I used a hint of electric/bright coloured gel pastes: fuschia + electric pink, lime green, turquoise and egg yellow (okay, egg yellow is not that bright but I didn't want them to be blindingly bright). I think that I could have used a bit more lime green in the scalloped circles as the green is not very discernable from the yellow.

All of the decorations are made from a mixture of fondant and gum paste in about a 3:2 ratio.
The little booties were very simple to make and very cute. As they were simple and plain, I added a couple tiny little flowers to each set.



For the baby faces, I rounded the edge of each fondant circle, added a hat with a little pom-pom and created a ribbed knit effect using a quilting tool. I dusted the cheeks with a bit of petal dust to add a bit of baby rosiness.



The cupcakes were red velvet with cream cheese frosting piped on with a large star tip. I used brown cupcake paper rather than white so that the red did not obviously clash with the cupcake toppers.
The result was a neutral base for bright and cheerful baby-themed decorations.

A pink winter wonderland

So what do you do for a baby shower where the mom-to-be doesn't want anything too cutesy? As this baby girl is expected to arrive in January, the baby shower had an elegant snowflake theme including these cupcakes. 

Originally I thought about piping the snowflakes with royal icing on parchment for topping the cupcakes, but I thought that it might be a bit too finicky and may result in a lot of broken snowflakes and one frustrated baker. I ended up buying a snowflake plunger by PME Arts and Crafts and I was very happy with the results. I used fondant with a little tylose powder added in to make a modelling paste as it sets harder.

The cupcakes are a devils chocolate with vanilla frosting. The cupcakes are extremely light and fluffy in texture and deliciously chocolatey. I used regular Dutch-processed cocoa but would love to try using an extra dark cocoa to get an even darker/richer brown. I haven't made frosting for a while and my last baking expedition was using swiss meringue buttercream (SMB). I must say, I may be switching camps here when it comes to icing (don't tell my husband). The flavour of a sugary frosting on a cupcake is delightful and nostalgic, however for those whose palates have an equal appreciation for lovely textures, you cannot beat the SMB. The frosting ends up having a bit of a gritty texture from the icing sugar which is reduced slightly after it sits for a bit but is still detectable. I topped each pink-frosted cupcake with some course icing sugar for a snow-like effect as well as a fondant snowflake.

Now while making these 3 batches of cupcakes and 4 batches of frosting, I noticed that my KitchenAid Professional 6-quart mixer was showing signs of being on the fritz i.e. shaking more than it should at a speed of 2 and motor oil dribbling down the back. I choose not to panic. My husband and I have an agreement that if anything should ever happen to the stand mixer, we would promptly replace it. Whew. After a telephone consultation with my father (he seems to be able to fix absolutely anything), it sounds like something may be loose in the motor. I am now anxiously awaiting his arrival to see if this can be fixed before my next baking project.

Now to display these pink winter wonderland cupcakes, we (my sister-in-law and I) made a cupcake stand using three cake drums and two 4-inch high styrofoam dummies. We covered the drums in a white polk-a-dot wrapping paper, covered the edges in pink ribbon (just a smidgen too narrow for these drums unfortunately) and wrapped the dummies in pretty pink and brown paper that was also used for the invitations. I was quite happy with the overall display.

Stay tuned for an update on my KitchenAid and whether it will survive my next baking project...