Apron Giveaway at Grosgrain!!

Here is a great opportunity to do some baking in style :) I know I love a good giveaway and thought I would share this one with my fellow bakers. Go check out Grosgrain they always have great giveaways going on so make sure you stop by every once in awhile.

CocoaDreams Aprons Gift Card GUEST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Purple and Silver Ribbon Cake

This is the wedding cake I made this weekend. A simple in design cake with ribbon for decoration. The bottom tier was chocolate and the top two tiers were vanilla the entire cake was covered and filled with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. The was also a slab cake of one layer chocolate and one layer vanilla also covered and filled with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.

Blue Bow Wedding Cake

This is the cake I made last night for a wedding gift today :) As for the design of the cake all I was told was they wanted a medium blue and silver for accents. So having free reign of the design of the cake was at first great. But then I realized without direction I went on to changing the design of the cake at least 6 times before I settled on this. Its really funny how at first I was excited to be able to do whatever I wanted but then my imagination took over and I couldn't decide which design I would like best. I went with the bow design since I had loved a lot of these cakes I had been coming across lately. Also because it was up to me I wanted to obviously do something I hadn't done before. The bow on top and ribbons were made out of the medium blue fondant but brushed with some silver luster dust to give it a shimmer and tie it into the silver ribbon around each tier. In the end I thought it was super cute and had a great time making it!

Yikes, Clearly I'm behind on the blog posts!

Shame on me.. Not sure whats been keeping me so busy but clearly I have been slacking on the blog posts for the last couple weeks. My bad :( Well here are a few of the cakes I did the last two weekends. Two weekends ago I made a Chocolate cake with Chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream filled with cherry filling and a Carrot cake with Cream Cheese frosting for a wonderful twitter friend. Her husband had just come home from being away for a long time (Army) and she was having a small gathering of some close friends to welcome him back :)

Then last weekend I had a Wedding out in Devon I made a cake for. This cake completely stacked was probably over 60 pounds. Outrageous how heaving a cake becomes once you make a wooden cake base and the entire cake is covered in fondant. Fondant is soo heavy! Anyways, here is a couple pictures of it as well. Hope you all had a great 2 weeks and can account for your time better than I can :) LOL

The cake table setup

Chocolate Cake with Cherry filling covered in Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Carrot Cake covered and filled with Cream Cheese Icing

Wine Bottle Birthday Cakes

When I received the order for these cakes I wasn't super excited about making them. The client did not like fondant so they had to be covered in buttercream with only fondant accents so I wasn't sure I could make them as nice as I would have liked for them to be. Well I am actually very happy with how they turned out. I also ended up having a lot of fun making them and didn't realize it until I was almost finished and it was 3:00am. The only thing I had left to finish this morning was the grapes and vines. Both of the cakes were Chocolate with Raspberry filling and then covered in Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I love that my time management is four times better than what it was three months ago. Especially with wedding season right around the corner.

Burgandy labeled bottle

Green labeled bottle

Closeup of the grapes

Here is the second cake I made for this weekend. A pink Chanel purse cake. I LOVED making this cake! Perhaps because I myself have somewhat of a purse obsession? I was up until 4:00am working on this for its pickup this morning. But I enjoyed every second of it :)

Closeup of the tag

Navy Cake

This is one of the two cakes I made for this weekend. Although this was the first artificial cake I have made. I like how the cake turned out although that could be partially due to the fact that its not pink which seems to be all I am using for colors lately. It was a nice break. It was also interesting using hot glue on a cake, something I have obviously never done before :)

Butterfly Cake

Here is some pictures of the order I had for pickup today. It was for Madison's 1st birthday! It seems like all Ive been doing lately is pink cakes :) Not that I'm complaining since it is one of my favorite colors but all of them have had something bad happen in the process of putting them together. I was labeling all pink cakes cursed in my mind. Well this one finally broke the cycle and nothing bad or drastic happened while making it. Thankfully :) The cake was Chocolate and it was covered and filled with Vanilla Swiss Meringe Buttercream.

Closeup of the Cupcakes

Cupcakes all packed up and ready to go!

Group shot! Order ready to go :)

GOODIES!!

My mother in law stopped by last week. Apparently she had been seeing things every once in awhile that reminded her of me or she thought I might like and had ben starting up a little bag for me. She came by last week and dropped it off for me and these were a few of the goodies inside!

Closeup of the Cupcake Ribbons :)

Closeup of the Cupcake Stamps :)

Pink Wedding Cake

I am starting to get the feeling that pink cakes are cursed for me. I had a huge filling disaster last night. It was a product of too runny filling. I knew that if I didn't take the entire cake apart clean off all of the filling and start over that it would have turned into one of those bleeding cakes you seen horrific pictures of. Those used to be pretty cakes sitting on a table at the reception that have red filling oozing out from under the fondant icing.. by the end of the reception the entire table is red surrounding the cake... Ya I really didn't want to ever associate myself to making one of those so start from scratch I did. At least the end result looked good. My blood pressure cant handle many more pink cakes.

Scuba Diver Cake

Here is the second cake I had for pick up this morning. This cake had hours and hours of work. The diver took hours because of the putting a bit together and then waiting for it to dry or harden up a bit and then adding some more. A lot of back and forth. The cake had to be large enough for 50 guests. It was a 6", 8" and a small 9"x13" slab. The entire cake was Red Velvet and was drizzled with Royal Chambord, filled with Raspberry filling and iced with Cream Cheese. I had wished that I had made a 4" cake for myself :( Such a good flavor combo. Anyways here is some pictures of the cake and a closeup on the sign that I tried to look like wood(first time attempting this).

The entire cake

The wood sign

Strawberry Shortcake Cake

One of the cakes I made for pick up this morning. This cake was Strawberries 'n' Cream cake with Marshmallow filling. Outside was covered in Vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream and Fondant decorations. Alexia's 4th birthday! Her mom was putting a strawberry shortcake cake topper on top so I had to leave room for that.

Almond Cake

Had a client tasting for a Almond wedding cake with Chocolate buttercream. Below is the little 4" cake I made for the tasting and this cupcake was one a few leftovers. I have been super busy with client meetings and last minute shoppers for wedding cakes. I booked 2 wedding cakes for April and another one for May in the last week. I can't imagine waiting until that close till the wedding to start looking for a baker! I have a Scuba diver cake and a strawberry shortcake cake due for Saturday. Should be fun :) Hope you all had a great March!

Almond Cake with Chocolate Buttercream - Client tasting

Spring Cupcakes

Made a dozen spring looking cupcakes for my mother's neighbors last weekend. She had been mentioning to me about placing an order to thank them for all the help they had been this winter when my father passed away. So I figured since they have two little girls I would whip up somthing bright and colorful.

Easter Cupcakes

Today I decided to try out a couple new recipes. A chocolate butter cake recipe, which is now my new favorite chocolate cake recipe and a whipped chocolate ganache recipe. The cake recipe was amazing! Its moist and yet fluffy with a delicate crumb basically in a nut shell it's perfect. I have been searching long and hard for a chocolate cake recipe that was perfect and finally I have one :)

For the whipped ganache, although it tastes delicious, the consistency was not that great so I will have to look further. Although I definitely will be using it again as a cupcake or cake filling as it tasted like a truffle filling, not to sweet. Very yummy :) Anyways here is some Easter cupcakes to get you into a spring baking mood! Enjoy :)

Chocolate Butter Cake with Whipped Chocolate Ganache with Royal icing flower

Chocolate Butter Cake with Whipped Chocolate Ganache with Fondant Rose Bud

Pixie Cake

Making kid's cakes are becoming my new favorite. I had a blast making this cake. Especially the little frog :) I gave the little girl having either the pixie sitting on a lily pad or a flower. She picked lily pad and so this was what I came up with for the design for the rest of the cake. I learned a lot of useful things while making this cake. Most importantly:

Always attach the head to the body before adding the hair.

Pixie Closeup

Mushroom Closeup

Frog Closeup

Pink Cake

Well as cute as this cake turned out it was a huge pain trying to make. I hope I never get an order for a pink buttercream cake! If you just nick this cake you end up with pink on you which inevitably ends up on something white. I ended up going through two ribbons around the base of the cake plate because the first one managed to get pink on it somehow, never mind trying to roll out white fondant without tinting it pink! Lots of frustration with this one but I think the end result was worth it in the end. Very Cute :)

Lightroom

I discovered Lightroom today. It has been so much fun that I have been distracted all day and now behind in my work for this weekend. Good thing it's a cake for my family :) This program is great for doing really neat things with your exsiting photos. I wanted to make my cake photos into "glamour shots" for a album I plan on putting together one of these days. There is soo many different ways or changing your photos for the feel you may be going for. Anyway's, I love this program so much I had to share it with the rest of you! Here is some shots I worked on today of cakes and cupcakes I have done.

Deer Head Cake

Made this cake earlier today for a extra special client of mine. I'm starting to think she caught a cake bug. This is the second cake she has ordered from me in 3 weeks and when she emailed me to order this one she also asked me about one for next week as well. I was starting to think I should make a "cake stamp card" for her. Sort of like Slab's ice cream card, buy so many and you get a free cone, or cupcakes.. in this case :) Anyways, I wanted to share a photo. Yummy chocolate rifles.. lol...

Dinosaur Cake

Here is a couple shots of a birthday cake I made today. I had alot of fun making this cake and may have to use the dino again in a birthday cake for my son :) While I was out shopping yesterday I came across some letter cut outs in a shop I wouldn't have expected to find them in and was happy I put them to use already! The cake was White Velvet filled with raspberries and cream filling, covered in vanilla buttercream. I hope Kingston had a great 1st birthday!

Full view Dinosaur cake

Cupcakes!

Here is a couple cupcakes I made this weekend. I love the leaf ones. I wish you see the shimmer on the leaves. They were a gold and coppery orange color. Just beautiful. Then a cute coconut cupcake :)

I also made a super cute Dinosaur cake which I will add in another post!

Coconut Cupcake with sugar heart

White Velvet cupcake with Vanilla buttercream