Globetrotter

This cake makes me so very envious. It was for an 80 year old man who has been to ALL the places marked by the thumbtacks. Seriously though. There were close to thirty thumbtacks. If I will have travelled this much in my lifetime, I'd be beyond happy. This is absolutely amazing! And he's not done either. His next destination, Hong Kong, is marked with a little flag. The adventure continues! 

The World is an Open Book

That's it. Summer is officially over. It's back to school, the weather is starting to get cooler, and I guess there's isn't much else to do but curl up and go into hibernation. No more sun, no more heat, and worst of all, no more vacation!

Nothing says summer like vacation time and that means travel! Travel themed cakes are always popular in the summer months. One of my favourite cakes from a few weeks ago was one for a guy who loves to travel, and never stops learning. His girlfriend designed the cake, and she had big ideas! She wanted an open book with a globe on top. And on top of that globe, an airplane, and a figurine of her boyfriend. Sounds crazy right!? But I was obviously up for the challenge. I had so much fun making this one, so many fun shapes to carve :) 

The figurine is made of gumpaste, the airplane out of rice crispy treats, and the book and globe were chocolate orange cake – one of my new favourites! 

Orange You Glad It's Cake!?

There's nothing I love more than making cakes that look like food. Okay, maybe it's a close second after cakes shaped like zombies, but seriously! The illusion of a cake looking so much like something else, and then tasting like chocolate heaven is so deceivingly delightful! I love it! 

So you know I was super excited about making a cake shaped like an orange! And the Tropicana orange from the juice boxes no less. I was asked to make it chocolate orange flavoured, and completely vegan. Yay! A challenge! I can't even put into words how much fun I had with this little one!

Enjoy!

I had a grapefruit lying around, so obviously I had to take a picture of it with my cake :)

Prehistoric Hammers

Sports themed cakes are always the number one go-to for guys' birthday cakes. Or maybe I just know a lot of sporty people? Whatever it is, I've made so many soccer balls, basketballs, footballs, jerseys, you name it! They can get a bit repetitive after a while, but the fun part is always the team logo. And there's almost always a really fun team logo. But my question is, where do these logos come from!? I've replicated logos with babies, animals, and now, with what look like two prehistoric hammers... 

This yummy hockey jersey was a chocolate cake with mascarpone filling. Soooo good! 

Heigh Ho!

Here it is! My big project of the year! OK, maybe just one of many big projects I take on... but still, a biggie! My niece has grown up being spoiled with some crazy birthday cakes, and this year was no different. As she gets older, she's a little more specific with what she wants. First off, the cake had to be chocolate-chocolate. She asked for Snow White, the dwarves, and they had to sing and dance! I'm guilty of feeding her some of these ideas ;) 

We came up with a design where the cake was the dwarfs' quaint little house; chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream in the layers, and masked in a dark chocolate ganache. The mines are made out of rice crispy treats, and all the figurines are fondant. So, entirely edible! 

Check out the video of the cake in action! 

It was entirely devoured, cake, rice crispies and all!

Go Bananas!

This is the perfect cake for me to blog about today. I just came back from an amazing week in the sun, and I'm fighting some terrible winter blues! This was a cake I made right before leaving on my trip for an adorable little birthday girl who loves monkeys and bananas. Put 'em together, and you've got this super cute combination! 

Lately, I've been asked to make the inside of the cake as fun as the outside. Whether it's rainbow or obmre, it's super fun to cut into a cake to find a surprise. This time, I was asked to make something I had never done before - checkerboard! I had no idea how it was going to turn out until right up to the cutting, so that made me super nervous. In the end, it looked better than I hoped! 

Golden Delicious

Last week I got asked to make a Sri Lankan themed 50th birthday cake. They wanted me to incorporate some festive colours, roses, gold jewelry, and a woman dressed in a sari while drinking tea. So many elements, I wasn't sure how to make it all work! Here's what I came up with in the end.

I've started making my own moulds recently, which is so very exciting! It allowed me to make some of these super intricate fondant jewels. I love them! 

Kaketonite

Yes, that's my pathetic attempt at coming up with a clever name for this blog. It's my kryptonite... 

I hope you had wonderful holidays, lovelies! I'm incredibly behind on my blog posts from the past month. So many cakes, so many parties, so little time! A friend of ours celebrated his birthday right smack in the middle of it all, and I was asked to make him a superman cake. Since I had just made another superman cake a few weeks ago, I decided to take a completely different route with this one. I love comic books, and admire the art quite a bit. So, for this cake, I thought I'd try my hand at replicating comic-style artwork.

Seeing as there's really no way to trace on fondant, I had to completely freehand it, which caused me quite a bit of stress. I printed myself out an image to base the drawing on, and went at it with my food colours. 

I also airbrushed the cake to add to that comic book effect.

 The nerd in me loves this cake!

It's a Bird! It's a Plane!

... No! It's Superman! 

It was a family friend's birthday this weekend, and my parents asked me to make him a cake. He's nicknamed superman among his friends, so they thought it'd make a fitting theme for the party and the cake. I stuck with simple blue and red tiers, some kryptonite, topped with a brown superman.

I've never masked a cake in ganache before, but after seeing just how much smoother cakes are when using ganache instead of buttercream, I gave it a go! I'm sold! No air bubbles, super straight lines, and oh-so-decadent to boot!