Tool Box Cake

When we traveled to Ontario to make our first wedding cake, we decided to also surprise the couple with a groom's cake.

Greg, the groom, is a contractor - he owns a lot of tools, which explains Sachin's love for him. They have the greatest bromance ever told.

Greg is also Italian and loves himself some chilled Lemoncello.

Fittingly, Sachin decided to build a toolbox cake. The cake was baked in a loaf pan and is a Lemoncello pound cake. It was then sliced into three layers, which he brushed with a Lemoncello glaze. Then, to top it off, it was iced with a deliciously decadent Lemoncello frosting.

The cake was absolutely delicious, fresh and moist. Easily one of Sachin's best.

Then, Sachin took it up another notch. He decided to decorate the cake, too!

Joanne is usually the one who decorates the cakes. Sachin had never covered a cake in fondant and just decided to go for it.

The cake turned out really well - he was a complete natural! He even make hinges on the back, a latch and a nice little black handle.

The groom was really surprised and everyone raved about the cake - both its look and taste.

Now, Joanne is worried; Sachin might turn out to be a better decorator!

Our first Wedding Cake!

We'd been avoiding accepting wedding cakes because it's a lot of pressure. But when our friends, Jenny and Greg invited us to their wedding, we decided it was time to give it a shot.

Jenny emailed us a photo with the concept for her cake. It was cute and whimsical with a cute couple made of fondant as the topper; Joanne loved it right away.

The next step was adapting the inspiration to their wedding: their colours were purple and green.
Jenny came over a couple of weeks before their wedding and we blended the fondant together so that we could make sure to match the fondant colours with those of the wedding.
Now, what you need to know is that this wasn't just any wedding. This was a beautiful, small wedding (40 guests), all to be spent outdoors, on a private island in Lake Huron.

This meant good things, and not so good things.

Good thing: with so few guests, a 10" round base for the cake would be sufficient to feed everyone, so the top two tiers could be make in advance on Styrofoam, and travel reasonably well.

Not so good things: not only would we have to bake the cake in Markham, and travel ~2-3 hours in our car, in 30 degree (Celsius) heat, but once we arrived where we were staying, we would have to build the cake and transport it by power boat to the private island! STRESS!
The cake is a chocolate pound cake (it's more solid, so easier to transport than the moist chocolate cake we usually make) with vanilla buttercream and a fresh strawberry spread between the three layers of cake. It was pretty yummi.

Soooo... this is how it turned out!We were really pleased with the way it turned out. It tasted delicious and looked really great with the decor. It was the most stressful transport of a cake in our cake career, so far, but it was worth it; people seemed to really enjoy it.


In the end, though, what made the day so great was the beautiful couple saying "I do"!

Congrats, Jenny & Greg!

Golda's Galore!

We just got home from an incredible vacation in Ontario where we attended the wedding of friends of ours, in Georgian Bay. (We made the wedding cake, it'll be up shortly!)

Anyways, while there, Leena, Sachin's sister, was kind enough to bring us over to Golda's Kitchen, in Mississauga. This place is like the ultimate toy store for anyone who likes to spend time in the kitchen.

So... nearly $500 later, we've got tonnes of new stuff and we can't wait to use it! We finally purchased some square cake pans, which we can't wait to use. We also bought some beautiful damask stencils and plenty of new cutters.

Now, we just need to get more orders to use it all.. (and absorb the damage!).

Get well soon, Janet!

The girl who makes the mail deliveries, at Joanne's office, has been off on sick leave for the past couple of weeks. She lives just up the street, so, a few of her colleagues pitched in for a dozen cupcakes.

They are the moist chocolate cake with an almond buttercream.

The toppers were cute little mail-inspired items; since she's not able to bring us our mail, we thought we'd bring it to her :) There's even a newspaper with the headline: "Janet comes back!"

Joanne and her colleagues really hope she comes back soon.. Janet is missed very much!

Look out! Here comes the Spiderman!

If you know Sachin, you know he loves his comic books and super heroes. That includes Spiderman.

This weekend, we made a Spiderman cake for a little boy celebrating his 4th birthday.
The cake is a white cake with raspberry mousse filling and vanilla buttercream.

The weather is really hot and muggy, in Halifax, this week, and it's definitely not helping the fondant stay dry... still, it turned out pretty decent.

Spiderman, Spiderman... la la la.. Look out! Here comes the Spiderman!!!

Lego!

Joanne has a colleague whose son LOVES Lego.

For his 12th birthday, he was having a small party with five friends and she wanted something that would be special. During their latest trip to the States, they went to Lego Land and she picked up a cool cake pan in the shape of the mini fig (official name of the Lego man).

The cake is marble with vanilla icing. each cupcake is topped with a piece of Lego made from fondant.

Cake Decorating Classes!

So, to those of you who know us, you'll know that Sachin and I started cake decorating a few months ago, kind of by fluke. Everything we've done so far has been with the help of friends and family, giving us pointers or ideas and many, many, Google searches.

We felt pretty good, being able to say we were self-taught, but have decided that it might be best to take some classes, so that we can actually know what we're doing, as opposed to crossing our fingers and just hoping for the best.

So, last night, we started the Level I of the Wilton Cake Decorating Course.

We learned how to properly fill our icing bags, how to use couplers and how to use a cake leveller. It's very basic info which we had already kind of figured out as we had been going, but we still learned a few good tidbits of info. We can't wait to continue the course to put more of this stuff to use!

Cottage House Warming

Joanne's Aunt Petra and Uncle Marc have just completed the construction of an oceanside cottage, in Gilbert's Cove, Nova Scotia. To celebrate summer, the cottage and Petra's 50th, they invited scores of people to the cove for a big party.

Uncle Marc is an avid sailor who loves anything with a nautical theme, so we decided to make some cupcakes.

We made some vanilla cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes, all topped with an almond buttercream. Then, after searching online (thank you, Google) and some lengthy arranging of letters and colours, we create a message from nautical flags.

They spell out: "Welcome" "Bienvenue" and "Comeau" and are accompanied by a couple of Canadian and Acadian flags.

*Note, this picture was taken after someone had already swiped an "M" flag!

Happy Canada Day!

Ok, ok, so we're a little late updating the blog, but it's been a really busy couple of weeks.

Joanne's little sister, Quésha, graduated from high school and so we were busy with getting her ready for prom! Then, we travelled to Fredericton for Joanne's cousin, Karoleen, who was also graduating from high school! Both received scholarships and looked stunning at the grad ceremonies.

Then, all of a sudden, it was July 1st!

Sachin decided to make some cupcakes for us to bring to the office, as a treat. The cupcakes were a yummi maple cake and they were topped with maple buttercream. Sachin then rolled out some fondant and finished them off with a fondant maple leaf and some maple leaf sugar sprinkles.

He had been looking for these maple sprinkles earlier, this year, during the Olympics, but they didn't get onto the shelves until June.

Colleagues from both of our offices loved them!