Bowtiful!

This baby shower cake is bow central! But really, what screams baby girl more than pretty pink bows? And lots of them! These teeny tiny bows are my new favourite accent. They're ridiculously cute! Also, how beautiful is the name Abigael! Love, love, love everything about this cake!

Traditional Wedding Cake

This weekend, I had a very last minute wedding. By last minute, I mean I met with the bride and groom a week before their big day! Eek! Luckily, I was available to make them their cake, and I was able to make a sweet couple very happy. :)

They were having a fairly small wedding, so they didn't need anything too big, but the bride wanted it to be as tall as possible. She wanted a traditional pillared cake, which usually isn't my cup of tea... but my brides get what my brides want! I put my own little spin on the picture she came to me with, and I have to say, I ended up liking it way more than I expected. Instead of the usual piped detail, I mimicked the same look using fondant pearls and fondant swags, all topped with some orchid bouquets.

Bold and Gold

I made this cake a few weeks ago for a woman's 50th birthday. I was given a color swatch for her outfit for the night and was asked to match it. Since the color was so bold, I decided to keep the rest of the decor fairly simple, topped off with a golden flower! 

Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage!

This weekend I had the pleasure of making a baby shower cake for a beautiful momma-to-be. The cake features a tiny sugar replica of her, along with a delicate little baby carriage. I decided to keep the rest of the design simple - pink with a little touch of ruffles - very appropriate for a baby girl! The inside is red velvet and cream cheese frosting, a super popular flavour lately here at Periwinkle! 

Troll in the Dungeon!

A few weeks ago, I was asked to reproduce a scene from Harry Potter in cake. For those muggles that haven't figured out which scene from the picture, it's this one: 

Apparently this is birthday girl's favourite scene, and she's a huge HP fan. And so, I was asked to make the troll and Hermione in the bathroom. This girl is a very cool six year old, I think we'd get along very well! ;) I had a ton of fun making this cake, and of course, watching the entire movie for research purposes! The sides of the cake were brick walls, complete with sinks and bathroom stalls. For toppers, a face off between tiny Hermione and a giant, dimwitted troll.

The colours are bit funky in the next couple of pictures, no clue why... 

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!

Red, White and Black

Last week, I had the chance to make one of the classiest first birthday cakes! It was an Olivia the Pig themed birthday, complete with black and white damask, and polkadots. The entire party's decor was stunning! They had banners, food labels, little tags and toothpick "flags" that they put into my mini cupcakes. An absolutely beautiful setup! 

They were kind enough to share some pictures from their party, and in there, they had a stream of ten or so pictures of the birthday girl eating her cake... and then a picture of what happened when they took her plate away. It made my heart melt! It's moments like this that make me love what I do. I just had to share these oh-so-adorable shots! 

The cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting. The little one has wonderful taste! 

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!

Scrumptious Sketches

I've been working hard this past week, and for once, it doesn't involve any sugar, eggs, or fondant! I've been designing cakes... digitally! Let me back up and explain a bit. I'm a complete novice when it comes to things like photoshop, they are way too complicated for my liking, and I never had the patience to learn how to use it properly. I've tried a ton of different programs to draw out my cake sketches, and none have been simple enough for someone like me, and I always resort to drawing them out by hand. So, my search for a digital option continued... until I got my Mac, and I came across this program called Artboard. Finally, I had a simple way of bringing my visions to life, and available to share for everyone to see! :)

After a week of learning the basics, I know I'm nowhere near mastering this program, but I thought I'd share a couple of sketches anyways. To start things off, I decided to make a sketch of a cake I've already made. Look familiar? (Fit For a Fashionista)

I also made another sketch, based on a trend I'm seeing a lot in wedding cakes this year. When I was at the Elegant Bridal Show last week, I noticed a whole bunch of cakes with ruffles, cascading ribbon flowers, and an oval quilted texture. Voila! Wouldn't it be awesome to get a sketch of your wedding cake before the special day!? 

Yummy Minnie

I don't usually make cakes that aren't covered in fondant. Fondant is smooth, clean, and creates the perfect blank canvas. So when a repeat customer asked me to make a buttercream cake for her daughter's first birthday, I reluctantly agreed, explaining to her that I'd still use a bit of fondant to recreate the decor and topper she asked for. I probably could have made it entirely out of buttercream, but the OCD in me would have hated the imperfections! I worked extra hard on making the buttercream as flawless as possible, and topped it off with a 2D gumpaste figurine of Minnie's head.

I have to admit, the buttercream makes this cake look extra yummy! Doesn't it just want to make you stick your finger in it for a little taste!? :P

Wedding Cake Bliss

It's wedding planning time! Now that I'm engaged, I'm finally allowed to start pinning endless floral arrangements and sweet table ideas on Pinterest without looking crazy! There's just one question that everyone has been asking me without fail. "Will you be making your own cake??" As crazy as it might be, and at the risk of becoming the most insane bridezilla, I have to! As to how my wedding cake is going to be decorated, I have NO idea! That's something that will take a while to decide!

When my sister-in-law insisted that I enter the wedding cake category at the Montreal cake show last month, I was at a loss as to how to decorate the cake. The contest was about creating what we thought the wedding cake of 2013 would look like. Modern has been done, and classic is well, classic. We tried to come up with something new, techniques and patterns that haven't really been done yet. Being an interior designer, she suggested I work around some patterns we found in some wall flats from Inhabit. We also found this floral lamp, and we were set. Here's the sketch she came up with. 

So I got to work, trying to make sure her visions were reproducible in fondant! Some of it took quite a bit of trial and error, but in the end, it looked amazing! Modern and elegant.

The coloured tiers are actually painted inspired by watercolour paintings. The lampshade inspired tier was formed out of gumpaste over a dummy cake, and then suuuuper carefully placed over the painted tier. 

And to top it all off, a giant gumpaste rose, dusted in a pink/purple petal dust. Instead of sitting it straight on the cake, we thought we'd make it even more different by making it stand just an inch over the cake, with a thick stem showing. 

Bundle of Sweet Joy

Last week, my best friend and amazing cake apprentice came over to work on a friend's baby shower cake. I love working with this girl! She's got quite a bit of talent, and she's already proved herself during my insane wedding cake week ;)

Together, we came up with a design to match their jungle themed baby room. There were quite a few things that are kind of been-there-done-that, and we were absolutely set on staying away from them... Blue, baby bums, and blocks, just to name a few. So we got to work, designing a cutesy jungle-themed baby shower cake. The cake flavour is my latest favourite, it's chocolate cake with a fresh raspberry buttercream.  I made these in cupcake form for the cupcake challenge, and they were such a hit! It is beyond yummy! 

For the outside of the cake, we decided to go with a beautiful shade of green, and she made all sorts of tiny, detailed baby animals to go around the sides of the cakes. 

And while she slaved away on those adorable animals, I got to work on the cake, and this super cute baby elephant! We make quite the awesome team! 

She's even decided to give you a little insider's scoop on her experience in making this cake!

The amateur's perspective:

Fondant looks absolutely stunning, but it's no piece of cake. Imagine that playdogh stuff you used to play with as a kid. Well, instead of it drying up after an hour because you forgot to close the lid, image it drying up in 10 minutes because you forgot you left a piece outside to work with in "JUST A BIT". It's one of the most challenging materials I've ever worked with (and for all those OT's out there, yes... more annoying than thermoplastic D:)

That being said, I couldn't have made these figurines without Chef Periwinkle close by my side, validating every little move I made. From sticking on eyeballs to spotting the giraffe, it had to been done Periwinkle style, elegant with perfection. 

What has this experience taught me? I have a huge appreciation for what this girl does. She loves her work and her passion effortlessly  transpires through. She's a sugarsweet genius :)

Once a Princess...

Always a princess! No matter the age, girls will always love tiaras and pink! This pretty little cake, all decked out in bling, is just so perfect for any princess. This was my first sugar tiara, what do you lovelies think? 

ConGRADulations!

I've made cakes for just about any occasion, and in all sorts of shapes, but graduation cakes are definitely something new!  When I was asked to make a friend's grad cake, I crossed my fingers and my toes hoping he wouldn't want something typical including hats and diplomas... To my relief he asked that I make a  cake version of the McGill arts building! It was a ton of fun to make, and I think it was my first cake replica of a building. The inside was a chocolate cake with a choco-hazelnut buttercream, sooooo delish! 

Don't forget the miniature McGill flag, hand-painted, of course! 

Periwinkle Takes the Cake!

This weekend was Montreal's first annual cake show. To see what I was up to on Saturday, check out my last blog post. On Sunday, they announced the winners for the cake expo entries. It was insanely nerve wracking, but it turned out much better than I expected. Aside from the cupcake challenge (where I won Finest Looking Cupcake!), I entered 3 other categories in the expo. Overall, I ended up taking home prizes for 3 out of my 4 entries! Amazing results! 

As Halloween was on its way, and I was way too consumed with my caking to do our usual candy giving madness, I needed to get my zombie fix elsewhere. So, for the sculpted cake category, I decided to enter a zombie cake. I had so much fun making a zombie head for an order a while ago, so that was  obviously what I had to make again! I was super excited... until I reread the rules and realized my cake had to stand at least 24" tall and be made entirely of cake. Yikes! As scared as I was, I changed my zombie head to a zombie body, and went ahead with it. Being so huge, no part of making this cake was easy. Not the carving. Not the masking. And definitely not covering him in giant pieces of fondant. What a nightmare! 

He turned out great in the end, but when we brought him in to the expo, and looked for our number on the tables, my heart sank. Right next to our spot was this beautiful, multicoloured owl sculpture that totally drowned out my zombie. Chef Zombie looked dull and unimpressive next to THAT! So, when they didn't call out my name for 3rd place, or 2nd place, I really didn't expect it when I got called for FIRST! I was stunned! AMAZING! Chef Zombie look home the GOLD in the advanced sculpted category! 

My last winning entry was my Valentino inspired shoe. It's something I've made a couple of times before, and I keep getting emails, and comments about it. Its something I was very confident making, and knew I had to enter into the sugar shoe category. So I did, and of course, it came home a winner too! 

So there you have it! My winning entries! I also entered a wedding cake, but with all the amazing talent in that division, my cake didn't win :( But that's a-okay... I'm already planning my cake for next year ;) I'll share pictures soon!