Valentines Day

Matt and I don't usually celebrate V-Day and now life with a baby makes it entirely impossible. For most of the day we'd even forgotten it existed. We are in dire need of a good grocery shop so there wasn't much to choose from for dinner, but with Ellie still on the mend and how busy any restaurant would be we didn't have much choice. So I made us some pancakes and eggs and made some gum paste calla lilly's and put those on top.

Wish I took a picture :P Sorry I've got nothing to show you but it was cute. Matt of course actually ate the Calla Lilly's LOL - I did use a gum paste/fondant mix and flavored the marshmellow fondant so it was actually much sweeter than you'd think...but still I'd never actually eat those LOL

I hope everyone had a good snuggle with their sweetie!

Gum Paste Fun

I've been missing this week - nothing exciting baked just a couple batches of banana cupcakes - decorated very boringly...

I did have a class today. We learned how to make roses, carnations and Calla lily's out of gum paste.

I'm actually quite pleased with my very first attempts at each!

Here are my roses - actually turned out beautiful! I wish I hadn't dusted them with the pearl dust, I think it cheapened the look of them as I didn't do it very nicely - ah well!

Some Calla Lily's (had a bit of a time with the Callyx on this damn flower - I'm not so sure I like it..) Also Trista said something along the lines of the middle of these flowers always look like caterpillars and now I can't get it out of my head LOL

And lastly my carnation - very pleased with it - especially since its just the first, I'm sure all of them will get better with practice

Ellie has been sick so needless to say I'm exhausted and just not in the blogging mood today! I'm sorry to dissapoint - hopefully I'll get back to it this week, I have a lot of cakes coming up I need to prepare for!

WMI

Well I'm in the very last course of my cake decorating now...and I'll be so sad to see it end. I love having my day out with other cake-a-teers!

Sooo....I applied to be an instructor :P I need that day out and why not spend it doing something I love?! Who knows if they'll actually hire me but I figured I'm not going to loose anything by applying!

No cakes today, actually I don't have any orders for cakes for a couple of weeks - I wonder what I'll do with myself? Maybe I'll have to make one for a playdate or something just to get my fix

Fondant Cake

So I went with a yellow fondant last night! I also flavored it. It was a hot sticky mess but actually turned out great and much more pliable than the stuff from the store.

Because I still have no kitchen table (long story!) I had a space of kitchen counter about 20 inches wide to roll the fondant out on - on top of wax paper which just kept moving all over the place...needless to say I could not roll it out enough to drape over the cake - so ended up putting it on in pieces, it looked awful the seams were terrible. Oh well long night - went to bed.


Today we went over to Trista's to make some cupcakes and finish this cake. After some running around to various craft stores we decided to get cracking on the cake. Still with no particular design in mind - Trista wanted to learn some flowers so I showed her the button flower and away she went! She was particularily good at getting the flowers out without damaging the petals (something I need to work on a lot). Basically she created all of the elements of the cake and I put them on. In the end it turned out amazing.

Trista also youtubed some instructions to make a gum paste/fondant bow and tried it out and it turned out fabulous. We then painted over it with a water/vodka mix to keep it shiny - almost metallic looking. I'm quite impressed with this cake - best one so far..so here it is!!!


The fondant covered disaster before decorating:

and the final product

YUM - Bananas!

You know - I love the smell of my house since I started up this hobby. It always smells so delicious. Today I'm taking that recipe that I toyed with to make the banana mini cupcakes and making a big cake! Getting ready for a birthday celebration!

Ellie and I are headed over to Aunty Trista's tomorrow to work on decorating the cake and making some cupcakes so I figured I should get this one baked, iced and covered in fondant tonight so its ready to work on - I'm so looking forward to it!

So its a banana cake with banana cream filling - and of course, has the signature rainbow touch. Royal blue (for welcoming the newest member of the family) and bright pink (for the birthday girl!)

I haven't put much thought into the design of it - I want to use a bunch of flowers but I'm just not sold on anything in particular...I might go with a bunch of button flowers and random dots - keep it clean and simple...more importantly I need to decide on the color for the fondant for the base of the cake - I'm almost tempted to stick with a white? Hmm...maybe I'll do the fondant tomorrow when Trista can weigh in on it.

Aaahhhhh

That was the sound of my sigh of relief...the cupcakes made it all (mostly) in 1 piece. I drove so very very carefully I was so tense. I had my younger brother help carry everything in and he tipped a container and 1 tipped slightly and the lily dug into the icing of the cupcake next to it but I don't think anyone other than me could really tell.

They seemed to be a hit! Only about 14 or 15 were eaten but it was in an office setting and I know sometimes in those settings not everyone is comfortable eating cake/cupcakes or food in general..so not everyone had one but for those that did they loved them! Some asked for my card - which I obviously don't have LOL I'm glad they seemed to enjoy them. There was a lot left over but the mom-to-be really enjoyed them so I lent her the caddy containers to bring them home with her (they are her cupcakes!) I'm so glad she enjoyed them!

I didn't even realize how anxious I was - which is totally silly but I was so concerned if they would be liked or not! Driving home I felt so relaxed - it was over...sigh


And now onto the birthday cake/cupcakes for a family birthday this weekend! I'm baking the cake tomorrow and on Friday Ellie and I are headed over to Aunty Trista's to ice, fondant and decorate with flowers for the big day!

Anyways I'm so tired I feel like I'm rambling in circles - off to bed with this cake-a-teer!

Lily Catastrophe!

I've been having so much anxiety over these baby shower cupcakes today. Its so different making them for fun and just showing up to occasions with them compared to being asked for specific ones - they just never go the same. I worked so hard on them yesterday, exhausted dragged my butt into bed..where I lay WIDE AWAKE until 4 AM because I'm so nervous - will people like the way they look? taste? will they think they're totally lame?!

So this morning I just wanted to finish icing them and stick the rest of the lily's on and get it out of the way...oh boy what a catastrophe! I only made the lily's last night so they haven't had much time to set - I made 6 extra just in case. Well I broke 12...so I made an executive decision that the coconut ones would have a white rose with airbrush'ed orange tips instead of a lily. Finished that, put them in the carriers (I have 2 that are just baking pans with a plastic cover and handle on top and 1 Wilton one that is huge! The wilton one worked great, the others, well started crushing my lily's and smooshing my icing! AHHHH

So I made a quick trip out to Wal-Mart (I found the Wilton one on Monday on sale for $10!! there) looking for another 2...went to the aisle where there were lots before - GONE! luckily I remember they were also at the end of a completely seperate aisle and found a few left there. I was so relieved. I came home transferred the cupcakes to their new carriers, fixed up the broken ones and can now breathe a semi-sigh of relief.

Now I'm just worried about the delivery, I'll put them in the trunk (flattest surface and drive really, really carefully and pray really, really hard..

wish me luck today!

And of course some pictures of the finished product (before the new carriers of course LOL)

All together!

 

Chocolate/Devils Food (BTW we decided against the banana filling)

Vanilla (note the awesome carrier that they all now currently reside in!)

And the coconut (sorry for the fuzzy picture I was shaking with anxiety over these things!)

CUPCAKES!!!!

Wow today was a LONG day. I get to deliver my very first order of cupcakes tomorrow so I spent the day baking. I made the 3 dozen full sized cupcakes as ordered, and used the remainder of the batter to make mini cupcakes

Here is the results:

Then I had to finish making all of the lily's to top them all with. I'm really nervous - mostly about the coconut one...I'm really not a fan of coconut so I'm a terrible judge - I tried one and I thought it was pretty good considering it was a flavor I don't usually go with. Matt is due to get home any minute now and I have a plate of my mini cupcakes for him to taste and judge. 

I'm not overly pleased with my Devil's food cupcakes - I'm thinking of perhaps filling them with banana cream before I ice them (the only ones not done tonight). Again I made samples filled and not filled for Matt to taste and let me know what he thinks.

With all of my remaining batter I experimented a little, one of them adding some banana extract (who knew such a lovely thing existed?!) and it was absolutely delish! Best cupcake I've ever tasted. I let Ellie have one (they're so tiny!) and she devoured it! For a kid who hardly eats anything ever, I've never seen her so excited and eat every last crumb like that before! I guess I haven't really let her have sugar before so that probably had something to do with it LOL - but it was such a tiny little cupcake I figured one little treat wouldn't hurt!

Anyways here's a preview of one of the cupcakes for tomorrow

(please ignore the cupcake drizzled stove top in the backround! 

It didn't turn out exactly as I'd imagined in my head - the lily is quite huge so it does look a little silly, but I think its just the right amount of silly and am quite pleased - the coconut version I put shredded sweetened coconut on top of the blue icing so you can tell the difference between the two.

I'll post some pictures of them all set up tomorrow. Cross  your fingers Matt thinks they're a hit!

Have a delicious day!