Barbie Cake

I made this for my roommate's birthday this year. She helped me make it and we had a lot of fun.

 

I always thought the barbie in the cake looked a bit too much like it belonged on Cake Wrecks. But this one ended up looking alright. 

 

Structural integrity issues aside...

 We also originally didn't have enough cake... some improvisation with cake scraps occurred.

 All done!

 My roommate's party was 'Burgers on the Beach' so here is Barbie on the beach!

 Glamour shot!

SkyWeb NEXT Cake

I made this cake to celebrate the end of a major project at our office. It's the company logo with the project name.

UCM Grad Cake 2013

For the third year in a row, I made the grad cake for my church. Grad was in April... but I'm posting the cake now. Oops...

I wanted it to be a three tiered cake... but I had some structural integrity issues. So it ended up being a two tiered cake with an extra cake off to the side.

 

Covered in grad hats of course!

Panda Cake!

I made this cake for my summer roommate's birthday. She loves animals and all things cute. And her boyfriend told me panda's were her favourite.

Isn't he so cute? I think its the cutest cake I've made. It was hard to cut him up and eat him.

Gummy Birthday Cake

One of my close friends loves gummy candy of all kinds. So for her birthday I made a cake... and covered it in gummies.... lots and lots of gummies.

 There were a lot of gummies on this cake. The goal was 95% gummy coverage... I think I made it.

 If you look closely the cake say 'Lisa' on it. But this turned out to be hard to see.

 Wrapped around the base of the cake were 3 foot long gummy snakes. They ended up having to take scissors to the cake to cut them.

Gummy overload!

Flamingo Cake

I made this one for a co-worker's 40th birthday.

Apparently flamingo's and 40th birthdays are a thing... I really don't know why, but I've been told they are.

Veggie Tales Christmas Cake

I made this cake yesterday for a Christmas party with a bunch of my friends. It also happened to be the day before the birthday of a friend of mine who loves Veggie Tales. So I incorporated the two into one cake.

Teen Girl Squad!

I haven't posted in a while, but I have good reason for it. Since the last post, I have moved! No longer at home, I'm out on my own now with a couple of roommates. Getting used to a new kitchen is a little different, but it's working well and I'm super happy.

Yesterday was my one roommate's birthday. Last year, I made her a flower cake for her 11/12ths birthday (because she was moving to Africa for her real birthday). Now she's back and so this year, I went a little different... Teen Girl Squad!

From Teen Girl Squad Episode 9!

Tuxedo Cake

 I made this 'Tuxedo Cake' for a friend's birthday yesterday. It was inspired by the version Tuxedo Cake that Costco sells.

To make it, I started with my Black Forest Cake recipe, because I knew the cake needed to be sturdy and my usual chocolate cake recipe is not quite dense enough.

I made it in a 9x13 pan.

2 cups + 2 tbsp flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour the 9x13 pan. Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix well. Add in eggs, milk oil and vanilla. Mix well. Pour into prepared pans. Bake 35-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

I allowed the cake to cool and then I cut it in half. Then I cleaned out the 9x13 pan that I had baked it in and then I lined the pan with tin foil so that it would be easy to lift the finished cake out.

To make the filling, I used cook-and-chill pudding, as opposed to chill-and-serve, because it solidified more.

I started with the vanilla filling and I followed the directions on the box for cooking, except that I used half milk and half whipping cream, instead of all milk to make the pudding. When it was ready, I poured the vanilla pudding all over the cake and spread it evenly. Then I chilled the cake in the fridge for an hour or two.

After this, I made the chocolate pudding, again using half milk and half whipping cream. I then poured this on top of the vanilla pudding. Then I chilled this a bit more, before topping it with the second half of the cake, and putting it back in the fridge.

Finally, I made some chocolate topping using 2/3 cup whipping cream and 1 cup chocolate chips melted together, and then cooled slightly. I spread this topping all over the top of the cake, and then I let it chill some more.

Then, just before it was time to leave I took the whole thing out of the pan, trimmed off the excess around the edges and topped it with white and dark chocolate shavings.

The bowl of leftover goo, from the cake trimming.

UCM Grad Cake #2

Last year I made a grad cake for my friends at my church group. This year, I insisted on making the grad cake again, even though I was one of the grads and so I wasn't supposed to do any work for the grad party. I had fun making this cake, even though life was insane and I didn't really have time to do it. But two of my friends came over and we worked on it together and had a lot of fun.

Birthday Cake for the World

This was a cake I made this past weekend for a huge birthday party celebrating anyone from our church group who had a birthday in February, March or August. So I decided to make a cake trying to incorporate all of the inside jokes from our group of friends.
My mother saw the final product and commented "that cake looks a little schizophrenic".
I had a lot of fun with this cake, because of the variety of stuff to put on it, all the laughter about all the jokes that went into it, and because for the first time, I had someone else working on the cake with me!
Also, I think this is the best cake reaction I've ever had, considering everyone spent about 10 minutes discussing the cake, and trying to pick out which piece related to them the most.

One of the challenges with this cake was all the colours we used to make it. And running out of icing tips and icing couplers.
Also, some stuff was too complicated and really hard to illustrate. Like the "Be A Man" song from Mulan.
Overall, though I think this was probably my favourite cake to decorate. :)

Shamu Cake

This is a cake I made for a friend's birthday the other day. She's one of those people I just love making cakes for because there are so many ideas for her, and also because of how much she loves whatever design I decide on. Last year, I made her a Jedi-Mickey Mouse cake. This year I considered going Disney again, but then I decided to go for Shamu instead. She has a Shamu lunchbox, and so I decided to base the design off of that.

I had another friend secretly take a picture of her lunchbox, so I was able to try and copy it.
Isn't he a happy Shamu?

Starbucks Cake

This was probably one of my favourite cakes to make. It was a fairly basic buttercream transfer, that just turned out really well. Plus I had the great fun of surprising the friend I made it for. :)

Spanish Birthday Cake

I made this cake last weekend for a good friend who's spent time doing missionary work in the Dominican Republic (as well as some other places) and who is hoping to go back there soon.

There is a map of the Dominican Republic, along with their flag. And also a donkey, which was supposed to be an inside joke that no one (not even the birthday girl) understood, except for the person who told me to put it on the cake.

Flowery Birthday Cake

Sometimes simple is the best way to go. I needed to do a birthday cake for a good friend this past weekend and I didn't have enough time to make something really epic or elaborate. So I just made this really simple flower design, and I love how it turned out.

The flowers are made from melting chocolate wafers, with yellow sprinkle-like things for centers.

Celebration Cake!

This past week we had a combination celebration for my parent's 25th wedding anniversary, my Dad's 50th birthday and my brothers 16th birthday, so naturally I had to make a cake.

So I decided on a three tiered monstrosity with one tier representing each event. Unfortunately in all of the insanity of the party this is the only picture I have of just the cake.
The top tier is supposed to be a replica of my parent's wedding cake. The second tier is characters from Minecraft and on the other side there is an illustration of the Angry Birds game. The bottom is guitars and bicycles for my dad.

Overall I was not happy with this cake. As you can see the second tier was not exactly structurally stable, (hey, I'm an Electrical, not a Civil) which meant that the top tier didn't stay on for much longer than it took for a few pictures. Then we took it off to prevent it from falling on the floor.

Also, I wasn't really impressed with my piping job, although the front of the cake (which I don't have a good picture of) looked a lot better than this side. And I just was overall not happy with this project.

However, I also made another cake for a family friend who turns 50 the day before my dad, and I was quite happy with how it turned out!
Well... except for the corner where I squished the icing when I was trying to put a lid over it...

The Journey of A Cake

This is a cake I made for my friend's birthday two weeks ago. I realized I had posted the photos on Facebook, but not on here. This is the story of one cake's epic journey, 5 hours by car, 1.5 hours by ferry, 1 hour by transit and up 3 flights of stairs to the Flat for Wayward Adults.

The Cake's Journey begins in the my refrigerator. Ready for the travels ahead.The Cake is then snugly secured in the trunk of my car for the first leg of it's Journey.The Cake prepares to board the "Spirit Of British Columbia"The Cake relaxes on the ferry boat and eagerly anticipates the journey ahead.The Cake waves hello to the passing ferry boat in the Gulf Islands.
The Cake is ready to do all of the touristy things that Victoria has to offer.
The Cake enjoys it's time on the wonderful Victoria public transit system.
The Cake reads (and signs) the guidelines for the Flat For Wayward Adults.

The Cake is ready for a PAR-TAY!

But, you might be wondering, how is the cake dressed for the party?
...with some fishies...

...and a crab or two......a lobster and a squid join in the fun...
...along with a sea turtle and a jellyfish.......an orca and an octopus....
...and a whole gang of other friendly sea critters!


I was really, really happy with how this cake turned out, decorating wise. I was also especially happy that it managed to survive the trip.

Because the friend I made it for is on a sugar-restricted diet, the cake itself was made from a sugarfree yellow cake box mix and the chocolate icing was also a store bought sugarfree icing. The decorations, however, were done with my regular icing. Personally, I can't stand the taste of Splenda, so I was pretty much unable to eat my own cake, but everyone who can't tell/doesn't mind the taste of Splenda thought that it was great!