Cake Critters

I love that my caking business grows along with my clients. This little one's first birthday cake was one of my first big cakes ever, and I've been making all her cakes for the past four years! How time flies! 

This year, they did something extra special, and had a wonderful animator from Educazoo bring a whole lot of critters to the party. There was a rabbit, a few little rodents, some ooey gooey reptiles, and a snake! All the children, and even a few of the big kids, got to interact with the animals. The star of the show was a ferret who did tricks, and even danced a little :) He was also the star of my cake! The ferret was made out of rice crispy treats, and the rest of the critters were made of sugar. Apparently kids love devouring sugar critters! ;)

Here's birthday girl and her sister, along with the animator, trying to capture a shot of cake ferret with the real ferret... Ferrets don't really stand still for pictures :p

Cake Makes You Fat

Well then, no cake for you, Grumpy Cat!

This cake makes me chuckle every time. This poor misunderstood kitty is really just a big fuzzy ball of cuteness! Hands down, my favourite meme, and one of the most fun cakes to make. I love painting, and this little guy is entirely hand painted using food colouring on a fondant canvas.  

The lovely birthday girl was such a doll, and let me share these amazing pictures. Her reaction is priceless! 

My cake also got attacked by the phone paparazzi! 

Cakes Are a Girl's Best Friend

I wasn't given too much to go on for this cake, nor was I given much time! A really sweet guy contacted me the night before his wife's birthday party, and wanted to get her a cake. He was just so determined to make this night extra special for her, I couldn't refuse!  He described her as classy, dainty, and modern. She likes leopard print, and loves black. This is what I came up with based on his description. A little bit of bling, some leopard print, a delicate flower, and a touch of black. She's a beauty! 

Playing Favourites

My cakes are all my babies. Each and every single one of them. Any good parent knows not to play favourites, and yet, apparently so many do so anyways. I usually have a new favourite every few weeks, but this one has been one that I've fallen hopelessly in love with! The cake features some really pretty details; gumpaste roses, a hand painted floral pattern, some vintage photo frames, and old parisian postcards. It's chic, it's vintage, it's parisian, it's irresistible! What's more, my vintage teapot and teacup got to make a special appearance :) 

Oh The Places You'll Go!

It's graduation season! It's always very exciting to move on to bigger and better things. My little niece is starting kindergarten in the fall, so she had her daycare graduation last week. This has to be the cutest grad I have ever attended! It was complete with little ones stumbling across stage, amazing performances, teeny graduation hats, and a proud parents paparazzi crowding around the stage with a million cameras. It was all quite the sight!

As a little present to my niece, I made her a graduation cake. I based it on the Dr. Seuss book, Oh The Places You'll Go! I've been dying to make any Dr. Seuss themed cake, and this book is just so terrific, and a classic for graduations. 

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! 

Good Things Come in Little Packages

I'm always decorating large(r) cakes, so mini cupcakes, cake pops and macarons are a welcome treat! I was given the invite to a baby shower, and asked to make a set of matching goodies. I was so very excited to see Tiffany blue paired with gray chevron. There was a ton of fun stuff to draw from these invites!

For the cupcakes, I made little fondant toppers, copying the onesies and the chevron. Macarons are cute enough as they are, but oh so much cuter with the added touch of some hand-painted chevron and polkadots! Finally, for the cake pops, since there was already so much going on with the rest of treats, I kept them relatively simple, with some adorable mini neckties. 

A Cake at the Beach

Last week, I was sent a picture of this guy's swimming shorts, and was asked to replicate them for his birthday cake. Birthday boy is hanging on the beach with his six pack of Heineken in some sugar sand. 

These Heineken bottles are super tiny! I wish I had taken a picture of them next to a penny! 

Sweet Tweet

Last week, I was asked to make a retirement cake for someone who will probably be spending his well-earned time off gardening and with his lovely feathered friends. I was told he grows exotic flowers, specifically angel trumpets, so I was asked to include them in the design. 

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!

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. 

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!