Poker Cakes II

 I tried to get a little more creative this round. On cupcake wars a lady made cupcake cups out of playing cards, I thought it was a cool idea and gave it a try. Personally, I found it infuriating! It was hard to get the sizing right, then to tape them together was a bit of a chore! 
 Pain that they were, I do think they add a little something special to the presentation, and I'm glad I did it :)





 These were 24 vanilla C-cakes with poker pieces on top of butter cream. And I decided to jazz up the box a little with a few hands :) I am super pleased with the way they turn out.

Just on a side note, I learned a lesson that night. If your bag of icing sugar has a hole in it...it is no good. (makes sense right? pfff) I made two batches of icing with the same bag of sugar and they were both gritty. Very gritty! :( Justin was looking online to help fix the problem and he said maybe it was the sugar! To which I promptly replied..you know.. there is a hole in the bag. So on to batch number three...after a quick trip to walmart for more supplies ( a new bag of sugar and some butter) This batch was perfect! Two things learned, Justin is a genius! and DO NOT use bags of sugar with holes in them!

I cant believe it took three batches to get to this point. But hey! Thats what an adventure is all about!

Poker Cakes

 I was asked to make C-cakes for two poker night events. My original idea was to make fondant pieces of all the suits in a deck of cards. I drew out some sketches of how i thought they should look and then got to work putting things together. I searched and searched and SEARCHED for tiny cutters in these four shapes. I found 3" cutters were too big, and the only small ones i found had to be ordered online and I certainly didn't have time for that. So i decided to make my own...but how? I was almost at a loss when one day at lunch i was looking at a tiny coke can on the table next to me and it came to me..  aha So i asked the lady for her can and this is what i came up with:

I am so pleased with the way they turned out!! For this first order I made 4 dozen mini chocolate c-cakes with small fondant toppers, and butter cream icing :)
See Poker Cakes II

Disaster Cakes

Oh...I think that the pictures are pretty self explanitory...

PM

AM

Ok so our apartment was really warm, and i did not place these in the fridge ...maybe i should have. Just a thought. Eeeep

Mmmmmm Chocolate chip cookies!!!

 Mmmmm who doesn't love a good chocolate chip cookie?

I decided to make my B-friend a giant cookie because she had a rough start to her week <3 And cookies, chocolate, and love tend to make people (..women) feel better.

We were recently in the states and I bought a bag of dove chocolate (it's suppose to be the best chocolate ever..!) I had one or two, they were indeed delish! Buuut when i made the decision to make the cookies I realized I was lacking one key ingredient.
You guessed it! THE CHIPS!!! I unwrapped all the chocolates in the bag and chopped them into 'chips' for my giant cookie! I really think they added something extra special to the batch. It could be because on the inside of each tiny wrapper is an inspirational phrase like "you are beautiful" and "think of something that makes you smile". OR it could be because the chocolate is just THAT good! Who knows! I hope that they did the trick and cheered her up :) Because I love her <3 (as you can see ) aha

To good cookies and the best of B-friends <3 Love you lady!!

Jam & Maple PB cookies!

 Peanut butter cookies! A crowd favorite- (A justin favorite)! <3 I  found a great recipe on allrecipes.com (which i LOVE btw- it is a great website!) I stuffed some of these pb cookies with homemade strawberry jam made by my mum <3 and some of them are stuffed with maple spread. I marked each cookie appropriately ...which in effect looked like.. Well...Justin and Molly.. hehe shaped like hearts...I'm a total dork! and very okay with it :)





I discovered very quickly that peanut butter cookie dough is extremely trying on my patience. I had trouble getting the hearts off the paper when they were cut, and one of them I stuffed too full of maple and in the oven it exploded maple over the rest of the pan and surrounding cookies...I was really not impressed...


 Anyway, justin loved them... Ate quite a few right out of the oven <3

Then I dropped them off in IT in the early AM as usual. (I <3 baking for IT)

Heather's Birthday

 We celebrated Heathers birthday with a weekend in Niagara Falls! It was a great, shopping filled, girls weekend away.
I decided to make Jack Skellington cupcakes for her. (She loves Jack Skellington!!)

I had to do a bit of research before going through with my plan, and over all i think it went alright.  I used the homemade c-cakes with a touch of box chocolate cake, so they were just a little dry but still tasty. I used sculpting tools to make each of the faces then painted on the details with fondant dye. It was mess, the black dye most certainly stained my hands...and my lip when I wanted to know what it tasted like.(at the time I was unaware that it would stain...though when i look back at the situation it does make sense...ahah)

All wrapped up and topped with a bow for a birthday girl :)
Happy birthday Heather, and thank you for inviting me to share your birthday weekend! :) I hope you had a blasty blast!

Dot's Birthday (Part 2)

 :)

 Early Friday morning, I got up and put these beautiful flowery cupcakes into their box, tied it with ribbon and topped it with a bow!
I delivered them around 730 that morning to a very unsuspecting lady, who I believe teared up a little. <3

This was so much fun, and so very exciting! I can't wait to do it again.

 Happy birthday once more to a lovely lady who celebrates her special day today! and Happy Halloween!

Dot's Birthday (Part 1)

 Dorothee is a beautiful lady, inside and out. She is one of my absolute favorite people.  I've known her for a number of years, and each year just keeps getting better :)
Her birthday is on Halloween, and I really want to make her something special.

C-cakes is obviously where I led myself. SO here we go!

I just finished baking the cupcakes themselves...from scratch! (NOT EASY!- I say this is both from the perspective of an amateur and a perfectionist...Its hard to get them to taste JUST right) I believe I did well with them but my true test will be with the receiver of said c-cakes. Tomorrow I will ice and decorate them. Then delivery is on Friday in the early AM!

For decorating I am trying my hand at a little fondant decoration. Flowers! Pink flowers, dusted with a little silver luster dust and a silver ball in the center. Nice, simple, and cute. I'm also going to whip up some butter cream for a bed for the flowers :)

I tried to get a little creative with my photos here, showing off the flowers but also the tools and mess that came with them :)

After the weekend I will post the finished C-cakes for you to see. I cant wait to see them!

'Love you Dot!'

IT rainbow C-cakes!!!

 I really like to make delicious items and give them to other people(that way I dont eat them all ahaha) I think my favorite crowd is upstairs in IT. I really enjoy making them all cheery and smiley...not to say that they arent generally smiley people...but they do take a lot of flack at work.

Rainbow C-cakes! Seriously what on earth is more cheery than rainbow cakes??? NOTHING!! they're so vibrant and inviting! So cute. Someone in IT thought that maybe they were flavoured accordingly...they are not. Next time though! I think thats a great idea! I'm quite exited for my next round of rainbow C-cakes, I had a lot of fun doing these. It gave me plenty of opportunity to take bright rainbowy (yes. rainbowy) pictures! (I've decided that this blog is a great opportunity for experimenting with photography, so stay tuned for photo posts in days to come) --- I'm so extra super excited!!

 They're so beautiful!  They make me cheery just looking at them! :)


On a small side note...I really wanted sprinkles to go on each of the colours and I couldn't find the right colours all seperated...(it was kind of late for a Sunday night when I started looking)... So I bought rainbow sprinkles and I definately took about an hour and a half to separate the colours.
...yep. ahaha

Happy Monday IT!

I hope that you all have a wonderful week.
We shall see what next week brings in the world of sweet ;)

Cupcakes for two!

attempt 1

attempt 2

I occasionally feel like baking for the sake of baking...or blogging, aha...(oh who am I kidding! I can't stop thinking about baking!) I have decided to start  playing around with recipes for two cup cakes.

I found an easy one bowl recipe online, and gave it a go. The first time I made it I thought it looked really runny, so I added a bit of flour to thincken it up(keep in mind I'm relatively new at this aha.) I also made a chocolate icing from some of the chocolate that i had left from my cake pops.

While they looked so pretty...

They were really quite heavy due to that extra bit of flour! Oooops
They were tasty and floury and cute!


I tried again last night, not adding any extra flour to it this time, I followed the directions precisely!  They were still a little heavy though. So next time I'm going to fiddle around with the ingredients...Mess around until i get it right ! :)
They didnt look very good! I had just made a whole batch of IT cupcakes for tomorrow without any extras!...so by the time I was finished I really wanted a cupcake! I was a little tired and it was about 1030 last night,  I was ready to stop. So I mixed them up quickly and just spread on some of my leftover icing from the last batch on while they were still warm. They dont look fantastic, but they were yummy.

Perfect for a small C-cake fix <3