Foodie Food

We all know someone who loves to cook! We were asked to make a cake for someone's 40th birthday. When we asked what theme to go with, they said he loved to cook and cycle. He is also French.

So, how do you incorporate food and cycling into a cake? We decided to make it with lots of food and an apron on top, along with some recipe books and a cycling book ("Vélo" is French for bicycle).

The cake was three layers of cake, chocolate, vanilla and chocolate, all pulled together with our yummi chocolate hazelnut buttercream (Joanne's favourite).

The cake was a HUGE hit. This is how it turned out:

And Sachin sculpted most of the toppers.

Winter Wonderland!

It is winter, and everyone living in Halifax knows it; how many snow days have we had these past few weeks?

So, Joanne got some new cutters in the shapes of snowflakes and boy are they cute!

Here are a few cupcakes we've made, so far.

This first batch was for a fundraising bake sale at Dalhousie University for the INDISA student society. They are chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing. The snowflakes are fondant with some sprinkled on non-pareils.


The second batch was brought to class as a Happy Friday treat. They are chocolate cupcakes topped with fondant.


And this final batch is two dozen cupcakes, in a cupcake tree (which we rent out for $5 with an order) that we donated to the Camerata Xara Young Women's Choir, for their Sweet On You fundraiser, held at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. These are chocolate cupcakes with some chocolate mousse filling and topped with vanilla buttercream. The snowflakes are fondant and they are also sprinkled with the snow-like non-pareils.

Nothing like some yummi cupcakes to warm up any chilly winter day!

New Year's Eve Wedding

Ok, ok, so it's been way too long since we've updated the blog. It's been a busy winter, so far, with Joanne going back to school full-time to finish off her degree at Dalhousie.

It doesn't mean we haven't been making cakes, though! We had an exciting order for New Year's Eve: a wedding!

They wanted 10 dozen cupcakes (yup, that's 120 cupcakes) with a small cake on top with a topper. The wedding was hosted at a local hotel, in downtown Halifax.

The cupcakes were: a few dozen red velvet with vanilla cream cheese icing, a few dozen white chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and a few dozen chocolate cupcakes also with minty buttercream.

The topper cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling and vanilla buttercream. Yum! They provided us with the cute little couple cake topper, too.

This is the cake:

The whole tower with the cupcakes looked like this:

Some cupcakes were topped with flowers that had pearl centres, others had just two differently-sized pearls on them and finally some had some tiny little snow-like non-pareils sprinkled on. As you can see, the colours were white and red.

The cupcake tower itself is ours and with an order, we will rent it for $25. It's modular and can have up to 7 levels!

Congratulations to the happy couple and happy New Year to everyone!

Jungle Boogie

We were asked about making a jungle-themed cake for a little boy's first birthday. The theme was so cute that Joanne couldn't wait to get started. She started with a lion to go on top of the cake and sit next to a palm tree. Then, she added an elephant on the bottom tier and a crocodile swimming in the water, next to the cake.

The cakes are both the moist chocolate cake with dark chocolate mousse filling and vanilla buttercream.



Here is the elephant!

And what jungle would be complete without a monkey??

This cake is what Flynn's mother called the "smash cake" - a separate cake for the birthday boy to have his way with. Apparently, it was quite the show, here's what we heard:

"It was so sweet when he went to eat it...he very carefully ate one eye at a time then stuck a finger in a corner and tasted the cake. He slowly worked his way up to grabbing a whole fistful of cake and shoving it into his mouth. Not sure who enjoyed it more...Flynn or everyone watching him!!!"

Here's hoping it was a wild party, happy birthday, Flynn!

Black and White Elegance

This order came in for a woman who was celebrating her 40th birthday. Her friends were throwing her a surprise birthday party and the theme was vampires. The cake is the moist chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and almond buttercream.

There is a small, six inch cake and a dozen cupcakes. They are covered in white fondant with black flowers and silver dragées as accents.



The vampire theme came out when the cake was sliced and the buttercream was dyed red!]

The cupcakes were decorated to match the cake and are also chocolate.

Wedding Bells

Sorry about the radio silence for the past month - it is a very crazy time of year!

We've been busy with work, Joanne's schooling, some friends and family events (we both had birthdays in the last 6 weeks!) and, of course, cakes!

Here is a wedding cake we made for a bride and groom who just arrived in Canada from Germany to have a small wedding with the bride's family (who is from Nova Scotia) before heading back to Europe. They were already married in Germany but wanted to come to Canada and have a ceremony here, too.

The order was put in just a couple of weeks before the big day and the cake had to travel from Halifax to Sydney, Cape Breton!

It was a reasonably small wedding, so the top tier is Styrofoam. The middle tier is vanilla cake with strawberry mousse filling and vanilla buttercream, while the base is the moist chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and the same buttercream.

This picture is from the kitchen as I finished placing the satin ribbon we were given (to match the Maid of Honour). Then, the cake board was cleaned up and it was boxed for its travel to Cape Breton!

Here's what we heard: "Everything went really well and the cake travelled perfectly. Everyone loved it and said it was delicious! My sister and I, both being pregnant, had a few too many pieces but it was so worth it!!"

As soon as we have pictures of the cake at the wedding, we'll post them. Congratulations to the happy couple!

Everyone loves a companion. Especially when they're a cube!

This cake was likely among our biggest challenges, but boy did it pay off!

A few weeks ago, we were contacted about making a "Weighted Companion Cube." I had no idea what this was, but Sachin got excited; this entered the geek domain, one in which he is at home with his Green Lantern Tshirts and deluxe collector's Stormtrooper helmet.

So, initially, I thought this was a computer, or a video game console and innocently went about explaining it as such when asked which cake I was working on.

*obnoxious buzzer sound to indicate I'm wrong*

Turns out, the Companion Cube is not a real thing.. well, it's real, but it's an object from within a video game, called Portal. And it looks like this:

Okay, so it doesn't go on someone's head - I just thought it was funny.

Anyways, Sachin helped by laying on the cake layers, the raspberries, the pressure. "Honey, you have to get this one right. You have to be accurate and make it perfect or else they'll know."

So, first steps first, make it delicious. The cake was a moist chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and fresh raspberries.

Yum! There were four layers of cake, piled high onto each other and two layers of fresh raspberries in between. It was a 6" cake and we had to make it into a cube, which was a challenge in itself.

I started covering the cake in fondant and after getting the first layer of pink on and then adding the darker shade of grey, it was getting quite late. Sachin had to force me to go to bed, because I would have spent all night on it. The bad part was, however, that it just didn't look right. The pink lines were wide and uneven and I just wasn't happy with it.

I woke up early the next morning - on due date - and knew what I had to do: I was going to peel off the fondant, re-ice the cake and start over. This was just piling a bit more stress onto an already stressful order, but I really needed to get this cake looking just right.

And in the end, I was happy with it. What was even better, was that Sachin gave it the thumbs up, calling it a "kick-ass Companion Cube cake!"

The next big test was to get it to the client's house and get the thumbs up from him. I knew he wanted it to be perfect: he had ordered this for his girlfriend and had clearly put a lot of love and thought into making her birthday party perfect - the cake was an important factor in this.

Luckily, he loved it, saying it looked even better than the Companion Cube cake photo he had sent me when he initially put in the order! Very. Cool.

"The cake that you made was a huge hit. Not only was everyone really
impressed with how perfect it was in its appearance, but it was also
delicious to boot! Thank you so much. You helped make a good birthday
party great!

I will send you photos of the night, also we will be sure to link to
your blog on facebook.

Thanks again,

you are a real artist."

Now that felt really good. But then, to make it even better, I got this:

"Thank you so much for making the absolute most perfect birthday cake I've ever had. It was amazing looking and probably the most delicious thing I've eaten in a long time. All of my friends were so impressed by it. I'm really glad you could make one of my most favourite video games into a delicious dessert.

In this cake, the cake was not a lie, it was just delicious.

THANK YOU!"

How can you not feel like a million bucks when you find out something you made elicited this?

Happy birthday!