Birthday Cake

About a month ago our neighbour stopped in, said his wife's birthday was coming up and he was wondering if I could make a cake on short notice. He basically left the design up to me, he just wanted something fairly simple and enough cake for 30 people.

I try to use these opportunities to do something a little different or try something I haven't done before - all while keeping it fairly straight forward so the cake turns out in the end!

I had some roses left from the wedding cake I make for my brother and sister-in-law, so I decided to use them. For the leaves I wanted to try making them from green dipping chocolate wafers. I dumped the chocolate in to a piping bag and traced out the outline of a few. I wasn't too sure about them, but figured if all else failed I could make buttercream leaves. With melted chocolate chips I made the letters for Happy Birthday, as well as some lattice looking things.

The only thing about using chocolate is that as soon as you touch the pieces they start to melt. Usually I'm so freezing cold so I'm not sure why my temperature spikes the second I started placing the chocolate pieces on a cake! I had to be super careful and actually ended up using my decorating tweezers to minimizing touch the chocolate.

In the end I was happy with how it turned out, simple and elegant.

I was really happy with the chocolate leaves. They brought a brightness to the cake and really pulled it together. I'm glad they turned out!

Chevron Denim Rag Blankets

I made these a while ago, and I must say I love how they turned out. I had a couple bins of denim that I finally decided to something with. By the time I cut all the squares I had blisters on my fingers and had to take a break for a few days because I couldn't even hold a pair of scissors!

Instead of sewing an x across the squares to hold the batting I stuffed them to create puffed rag blanket. I made the squares 6 1/2 inches square. I don't know how much bigger you would want to go if you were stuffing them.

For the boy blankets I put the rag to the front,

For the pink and purple I did the rag to the back. I think I like this way better.

I would love to make one of these to fit a twin size bed, only with flannel on both sides. A lot of little squares - but it would look good!

The Backyardigans Cake

I made this cake back in September for my co-worker's granddaughter. She loves The Backyardigans. I on the other hand weren't too sure who they were so I had to do some research. I'm glad they weren't the coloured blobs I had originally thought they were - I'm not quite sure what I was thinking about; maybe Teletubbies? Is that even a show anymore? I watched part of an episode of The Backyardigans, and while it helped with what the characters looked like, it really just confused me. They weren't in a backyard, but in a city - one was driving a streetcar, I think one was being a doorman. The streetcar probably lost control going down a hill and had to be saved. By the doorman. I don't remember - 5 minutes was enough for me!

I originally decided to make the character out of colour flow, however when I went to use them I found hadn't dried properly and some of them ended up breaking. I couldn't figure out why because usually colour flow turns out so well. It wasn't until a day or two later I realized it was because I used one of my plastic cutting boards instead of the 2 arborite ones I usually uses. There was moisture trapped under the wax paper which prevented proper drying. Another lesson learned! My kids were delighted they broke because then they got to make a fancy dessert with cake scrapes and broken Backyardigans. Luckily the letters for the name, and the 2 were okay.

I got out the fondant, which is what I should have done in the beginning and made the 5 characters.

I'm actually glad the colour flow didn't work because they turn out pretty cute. The moose is my favourite.

I haven't decided if the blue one is a penguin or just a bluebird, and I think the purple one is a kangaroo. I have no idea what the pink one is. No idea. Wikipedia doesn't know either.

I glad I made the flowers, it really brightened it up and made it more little girly.

There they are, hanging out in the backyard. Everyone getting along.

Kinley loved her cake and the characters were a hit. Although one of them fell victim to their dog - dogs get to celebrate too, right!?

Sunflowers and Roses

Last year, shortly after my brother and his girlfriend got engaged, my brother asked me if I would make their wedding cake. Of course I was delighted - and then a little nervous when he said he would design it! We talked about it a few times throughout the year but there were no real decisions made until a couple months before the wedding. He wanted the cake to be at least 5 tiers, decorated with sunflowers and roses (Shannon's favourite flowers!) and with pillars so the cake topper could be in the middle. The rest of it was up to me!

I pulled out my square and round cake pans, sat down on the basement floor and started stacking them in various ways. I'd text a picture of the cake pan cake to my brother and he'd make a suggestion and I'd adjust it accordingly and text him another picture. It didn't take long before we had one he liked - 5 tiers, with pillars. I told him he would have to find a fairly short cake topper if he wanted it to be in the middle. He told me he had it taken care of!

I started with making roses, adding lots of red colouring to make sure they didn't turn out pink! Then I switched over to sunflowers. I had never made sunflowers before, but following Wilton's directions they were surprising simple to make.

The tricky part of make this cake was the location of the reception - about a 2 hour drive from my place. I didn't know if I should haul all my stuff to the city and decorate there, or decorate it at my house and carefully transport it. I had this on-going list of pros and cons going on in my head for weeks. Finally I decided (the week of the wedding) that it would be easiest to decorate it at home and hope the cake made it there in one piece.

I started with decorating the bottom layers,

and then the top layers. As requested the cake was different flavours - lemon, chocolate, white and vanilla.

We loaded up the cake, an emergency cake repair kit, our wedding clothes and the kids. We hit the road just in time to make it to rehearsal (a half an hour late!)

The cake, much to my relief, survived the trip! The buttercream boarder didn't even melt despite the sun beating through the windows!

The wedding was beautiful, the reception was a lot of fun and the cake was completely eaten! I loved the cake topper my brother picked out - it was a perfect choice. And I was worried he wouldn't find one that would fit nicely between the tiers! He did a brilliant job of designing the cake as well. I don't think I ever would of thought to put sunflowers and roses together. It really was a great combination for a fall wedding. I might just have to consult him on all my cakes!

Pontoon Boat Cake

My boss retired this spring and to celebrate this milestone, along with her husbands 65th birthday, they planned a party for this summer. She asked if I would make a cake that had her and her husband in a pontoon boat with their little dog.

Up until the day before I made the cake I was still tying to decided whether it should be a pontoon boat cake or a pontoon boat on a cake. I didn't think a pontoon boat would have enough cake in it for everyone so I decided to do both - a pontoon boat cake on a cake.

I was a little unsure about how big the boat should be (and since I doubt my people making skills!) so I was having visions of giant people in a little boat. In my mind, the most logical way to make sure this didn't happen was to make the people first and then make the boat. That way everything should be in proportion. Fortunately this plan worked out and I didn't end up with giants or a boat that wouldn't fit on the cake (which was my other worry!).

Since I wanted to make the boat as edible as possible I made the pontoons, walls and benches out of fondant covered rice crispy cake. The base of the boat was cake.

The dog was surprisingly not that hard to make, and is probably my favourite part of the cake.

Their pontoon boat is actually black, but since it takes so much food colouring to get black fondant I figured it would taste more like dye then icing and so I just left it white. I almost forgot the motor. That was a last minute addition.

Truth be told I was a little nervous about making this cake. Having never made a pontoon boat before I wasn't too sure what I was doing. I almost never got it done on time - but that is because I ended up going to a movie. Ant Man was in town! I couldn't miss it!

In the end the cake turned out pretty well and my husband even thinks my people make skills are improving! The party was lots of fun as well and the supper was fantastic. Usually when I make a cake for someone my kids have to watch it leave knowing they don't get a piece. They were delighted when I told them that they were going to the party too! Thanks for inviting us, and thanks for asking me to make your cake!

Trailer Park Boys

I never thought I would find myself making a Trailer Park Boy's birthday cake! Never say never, I guess! I actually made it the same weekend as the Iron Man cake, and am finally getting it posted!

This cake was for a surprise 50th birthday party for my brother-in-law's sister-in-law's husband. I wonder if there is an easier way of saying that?

I struggle with making fondant people, but these guys actually turned out not too bad! My husband helped me get the details right!

Iron Man Cake

The first time I made a Iron Man cake was years ago, before the Avengers were really popular. I didn't really even know who he was - just that he was my husband's favourite comic book super hero. It didn't turn out so well. Now there are all sorts of Iron Man cakes ideas on Pintrest, which is exactly where I turned when I was asked to make this one. I put a few of the ideas together to come up with a cake that I thought little Joshua would like.

The best idea I came across was putting a LED light in the cake as Iron Man's arc reactor. I knew I'd seen them in the dollar stores, but wasn't sure if they came in red. As it turned out, luck was with me, they did! They also had blue and silver, in case you were wondering! I wasn't sure how long the batteries would last so I left putting it in until the morning of the party just to make sure it wouldn't burn out.

One of my favourite things to do on a birthday cake is to write their name out of cookies. I've done it a couple times, and it always goes over well - cookies and cake all in one! I had to squish Joshua's name together to make it fit, but in the end it was better then having the letters in a straight line. I also made Iron Man's helmet out of a cookie. The template I found on Pintrest, where else!

It was a fun cake to make, and I'm really glad the light idea worked out. My source told me Joshua was thrilled with Iron Man cake and knowing that one of my cakes brought a smile to someones face is the best part of it all!

A Castle Fit For a King

For my son's 7th birthday I was unable to make the cake he first picked out. I needed the dump truck cake pan to make a candy mold. I looked everywhere with no luck. A few days before his birthday I told him he was going to have to pick something else out. We started going through my cake pans, and I mentioned to him that I had a castle cake pan. He was pretty interested in finding that one, so I thought he might like to see the castle set I have. As soon as he saw that his mind was made up.

I think I've only used this set one other time... or maybe twice, so even though it was a little elaborate for amount of time I had, I was up for making it. Of course, he wanted it complete with a moat and drawbridge.

Each turret tower had to be wrapped in fondant, imprinted with a little square cookie cutter. It went a lot quicker then I thought it would, although by the end, had a stone layer guy in the mid-evil times laid the stones as unevenly as I was, he probably would have been executed. Never the less, I got it done, and it looked okay. Windows were cut out and stuck on. The castle was actually suppose to have several more windows on the side and back walls but it was getting really late so I skipped them.

Getting the top tower to stay was a little challenging. I ended up propping it up with empty paper towel rolls and left it dry until the morning. Luckily it stayed after that.

We had to move this cake around a bit since we were having the birthday party in the backyard and to my surprise the top tower stayed in place! One of the side ones fell off, but that was no big deal, it was just stuck back on. After Happy Birthday was sung they were all coming down anyway!

9 Foot Retirement Cake

This cake has been about a year in planning. When my dad started thinking about retiring, he wanted to make sure he did it right. He told me he wanted a cake that showed every job he had ever had for his retirement party. I told him to make a list. I new he had quite a few jobs, but I wasn't expecting 17!

First off I scoured the internet to find suitable picture that accurately described each job. Some were easy to find, others a little more difficult. I then made a paper model, true to size, so I could determine the proper sizes of the pictures, and figure out how long it was going to be.

Once the paper model passed my dad's inspection, next came making all the pieces out of colour flow. Colour flow is pretty fragile and needs to be handled with care. Because I was going to have to transport them 5 hours south on some pretty awful highways and because I am not always as careful as I should be, I decided to make 2 of every piece. This doubled the work, but I was taking no chances. If one piece broke, the cake would be ruined. It took me approximately 20 hours to finish making every job. I used wax paper covered cardboard, thinking it would be the easiest. Normally I use my cutting boards. Colour flow takes 48 hours to completely dry and so by the time was done I had colour flow on the both of my counters, the table, the highchair and in the china cabinet. Cooking and eating supper was a challenge for a few days.

My husband and I decided the easiest way to transport all the colour flow pieces would be pizza boxes. I have some pizza boxes that I use to put flowers in, but they weren't big enough. I called our local pizza place and asked if I could get some extra large boxes from them. Luckily they said it wouldn't be a problem. 10 pizza boxes plus 2 other boxes later the problem was solved.

I had a list going of thing I needed to take for baking and then decorating the cake, even so I was paranoid that I was going to forget something. My new method of packing things (besides clothes!) is to put everything in a laundry basket. It makes life so much simpler. Everything is all together and it is easy to carry. Every time I remembered something it went into the laundry basket.

I drove down to the farm on the Thursday before for the retirement party and spent Friday baking cakes. 5 different kinds, 15 cake mixed in all.

Saturday morning a few of us headed to the hall, they cleaned up, and made meat trays while I started decorating the cake. There were tables set out for supper and I covered all of them with my pizza boxes and cake supplies.

I covered the 2 x 10 my dad had left for the cake with tin foil and got to work. I did break a couple of colour flow piece so it is a good thing I had duplicates.

6 hour later I had used 8 batches of icing on 9 feet of cake.

On the side of the cake are signs telling where the job was, and the brown signs on the cake state the job description.

In case it is a little hard to read the jobs are: Farm Hand, Ranch Hand, House Mover...

CPR Switch-man, Gas Attendant...

Custom Combiner, Painter, Graham Construction...

Garbage Man, Dragline Operator, Coal handler...

Apprentice Industrial Mechanic, Journeyman Industrial Mechanic, Farmer...

Foreman, Oil Analysis, Training Co-coordinator, Retirement!!

This is with out a doubt the biggest cake I have ever taken on. Everyone had such nice nice things to say about it, and a few discovered the easiest way to take a picture of it was actually to take a video and walk along side of it! I was so pleased that it turned out as well as it did with no disasters to speak of. (Except that while my husband and I were at the hall, one of our darling children overflowed the bathroom sink at the farm and caused a flood!) After working as long and as hard as he has, my dad most certainly deserved great send off into retirement.

Transformer Cake

So, I'm a little behind on my posts! This is my son's birthday cake from a few weeks ago. He told me months ago he wanted a Transformer cake, more specifically a cake with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee. And then he rattled of his birthday cakes for the next 3 years. I hope he remembers them because I sure don't!

I kind of mess this cake up - all my cake pans except a couple are still in the garage (the basement is getting closer to being complete! We are at the painting stage!) so I used the one I had in the kitchen hoping it would be big enough for both of the Transformers. But it wasn't. Never underestimate the size of a Transformer. I should have just gone to the garage and found my big sheet cake pan. Instead I ended up have to make 2 cakes, one for each Transformer.

To make Optimus Prime and Bumblebee I used the frozen buttercream transfer method. It is super easy and they turned out really well. I might have to start doing this more often.

He wanted Optimus Prime in truck form,

and Bumblebee in...Bumblebee form?

And then I tried to put them together so it looked like one cake and that is how it was suppose to be.

He was delighted with his 2 cakes, and wasn't at all upset when he found out his dad had eaten the last piece of his Optimus Prime cake because as he said - "It's okay! I have a another cake, right Mom!"

Frozen Birthday Cake

When a friend asked me if I could make a Frozen cake for her niece's birthday the first thing that popped in to my mind was sparkly snowflakes. And Elsa, Anna and Olaf. But mostly sparkly snowflakes. I just thought they would look so pretty on a blue cake.

Making princesses out of colour flow is something I've only done once before, and since they turned out not too bad I thought I try it again. The trouble with making princesses is that they are so detailed and they have to big enough for the detail to show, but small enough to fit on the cake. It can be a bit of a challenge and sometimes the smallest icing tip isn't small enough. Anyway, I gave it a go (and I actually bought little plastic Frozen characters for back up in case of a disaster!) and in the end they looked like Elsa and Anna. With bad makeup. I need to work on that.

The snowflakes turned out beautifully! Although I did break a couple and had to repair them!

If I made this cake again, I think I'd do it a little differently, although I'm not too sure what I would change. Elizabeth liked it, and I guess that is all that matters!

Mine Craft Quilt

For my nephews birthday, my sister-in-law planned to redecorate his bedroom. She asked if I would make a quilt for him. She had found one she really liked and wanted me to make him one similar. It was just simple patchwork, using the colours from Mine Craft, with a nice wavy quilting design. I didn't think it would be that complicated.

I had gotten the top all sewn together when, unfortunately, we had water issues in the basement. Since the basement was out of commission I had to set up my quilting frames in the living room which literally took up the whole room. That was the least of my troubles - all of my supplies, for all of my hobbies, were packed away in boxes in the garage. There was no hope of finding my quilting needles or my good thimble. (Luckily I did have a thimble that didn't get packed away, but it wasn't the best.) Since our fabric store closed there is no place that sells sewing supplies. I did finally find a little sewing set at the Dollar Store (I was pretty desperate) that consisted of a bunch of needles, a couple of thimbles and a seam ripper. For $2. The thimbles were completely useless, as was the seam ripper, although I didn't need that. It was the needles that I really wanted.

So I got to work quilting - sitting on the couch, because there was no room in the living room for a chair, using Dollar Store needles and a thimble with very shallow pits. Hardly ideal quilting conditions! I broke 7 needles quilting the first row. I was frustrated, to say the least! When the weekend finally rolled around, the kids and I drove into the city, took in my sister's basketball game (they won!), and went to Fabricland. I bought some real quilting needles and a decent thimble!

After that things went smoother, although I was so behind schedule I was worried I wasn't going to get it done in time. I talked my husband into helping me. I was shocked that he actually agreed! It took him 10 minutes to do 4 stitches, which was long enough for him to decide that I was crazy and that I really needed to invest in a quilting machine. Those 4 stitches were pretty nice though!

I did get it done, but I didn't get it done for his birthday. That was okay though, since his room wasn't ready yet.

I made matching pillow shams as well, that I machined quilted on my sewing machine.

We took it over to them the other evening and my nephew was just so excited to have a Mine Craft quilt! Seeing his smiling face made it all worthwhile! It will be fun to see his room when it is all put together!

Basketball Cake

This is the cake I made for my niece for her 14th birthday. She plays on the junior basketball team at her high school and just happens to be #14!

This is the third time I've used the ball cake pan. It always turns out good, but the getting it to stay in one place can be a little tricky! Even with a stick through it, it still wanted to shift. With some extra support underneath I got it to stay.

A little tricky to transport! I had to hold it on my lap and keep it balanced on the way to the birthday party. Luckily they only like a few blocks away!

Stampy Cat Cake

For his 9th birthday my husband's nephew decided to have a Stampy Cat themed birthday party. When they asked me to make the cake, I had no idea what a stampy cat was. Turns out it is a character in mine-craft.

The good thing about mine-craft is that everything is in cubes. The bad thing is that it ends up to be a lot of squares!

I made Stampy out of Rice Krispie Cake and covered him in 1/4" inch squares of fondant. For the cake I used 3/4" squares. When I was searching for pictures of Stampy Cake there were quite a few of him with a cake. I took that to mean he likes cake, so I also made a Rice Krispie fondant covered cake.

Crib Mattress

Last fall my sister and I went to the Western Development Museum Craft Show. It was fanatic, there was so much to look at! I did buy a couple of things, but the thing I was most excited to find was a doll bed. This guy, I think his name was Carl, had a booth full of wooden toys. They were amazing! I'd been watching for a nice wooden doll bed for a while and this one was perfect.

I sewed up a little mattress and pillow and we gave it to our daughter for her birthday.

My mom was going through some stuff before Christmas and found a doll blanket I had sewn when I was young. I think it was probably one of the first things I sewed myself (or mostly by myself!) She sent it to me in the mail and I was so surprised when I opened the package. I had completely forgotten all about it!

So I gave it to my daughter with the doll bed.

She was so delighted to have a bed for her baby. She even tried it out a couple of times and we had to convince her she was a little big for it!