Snowman Cake

I have 2 god daughter's whose birthday is around Christmas. One before and one after. So we always celebrate their birthday at the Christmas gathering.
This year, they requested a Snowman cake.

Luckily, I had some fondant left and I was able to make it.
It was actually pretty easy.
Cover the cake with white, color some of the fondant and roll it out for the hat.
The extra strip on the hat is optional.
Then use a knife to make the markings on the hat.

The most difficult part was making black fondant because black is hard to make from white.
I started off mixing in all the colors together to make the fondant darker. Then I added the black coloring. I find that has the best result. If you try for black right away, it'll turn grey because the fondant is white.

If I didn't have fondant, I would have used white chocolate ganache cream to cover the cake and color the cream and pipe the hat etc etc.

Happy decorating.

Chocolate Swiss Buttercream Cupcakes

Here's an other new flavour I tested. Chocolate.
Yes, it's weird, I've baked for so long but never tried making a chocolate buttercream before.  It's actually so much easier then the fruity flavour creams I make that I don't understand why I didn't do it earlier.
Worked well on top of vanilla cupcakes but I can see chocolate lovers putting this on top of chocolate cupcakes as well. Double whammy.
I know some people use melted chocolate but I used cocoa powder instead.
The cream was smooth, no powdery clumps and nicely flavoured.

Why I used cocoa powder?

Several reasons:
1. I always have cocoa powder on hand as I use it for the cakes. Chocolate on the other hand, you'll want to buy specifically dark baker chocolate so it's deep in flavour and it has less added sugar.
2. It's bitter so it's great to use to balance the sweetness of the cream so it actually doesn't taste too sweet.
3. Easy to use! No need to slowly use a double boiler to melt the chocolate, wait for it to be the perfect temperature before you mix it in etc
All I did after the Swiss Buttercream was finished whipping was scoop in cocoa powder and mix.
4. Easy to adjust flavour. You can easily add more flavour by adding more powder where as if you melt chocolate, if you didn't melt enough, you have to go through the whole process to add more and it's honestly a pain.


Try it out! Easy and pipes very beautifully.

Green Tea Buttercream Cupcakes

I love drinking green tea and eating green tea flavoured food.
So I figured, why not make green tea buttercream?
If you can make it into ice cream, you can definitely make it into buttercream.

So, with my trusty matcha, I added it until I got what I wanted. It reminded me of the ice cream with a different texture.

The wonderful thing about matcha is that it's dried so you don't have to worry about the buttercream breaking due to too much liquid.
It's also bitter so you will not make your cream overly sweet. If anything, it'll help balance the cream out to be less sweet because of the bitterness.
Good matcha is also very strong in flavour. So depending on the cream's batch size, you may only need 2 Tbsp of Matcha.
I used around 2 for enough buttercream for 16 cupcakes.
I usually add a little vanilla extract as well to help enhance the flavours. Vanilla might be a little boring on it's own, but it's a wonderful enhancer and usually adds that little touch to your baking.

I've tried this cream on both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. Both are wonderful with green tea.
People who have never tried green tea flavour food before like the results.
For the Asian people who love eating green tea ice cream, they couldn't stop eating the cupcakes and went back for seconds.
All in all, I believe that means success.
Next step, bake green tea cupcakes and then put the green tea buttercream on top.
Maybe I'll make it even more Asian and add red bean paste in the middle too.

(It looks much greener under bright lights)

Raspberry Swiss Buttercream on Chocolate Cupcake

It was time to make a new flavour and add it to my collection of buttercream flavours.

I personally love berries so I decided to try to make a raspberry Swiss buttercream.
I used the same method I use for strawberries.
Cook the raspberries down until it's concentrated and mash it up.
The more it's cooked down the better so you remove as much liquid as possible and left with flavour.

Even though the puree is about the same color as the strawberry one, the difference in the buttercream colour is huge.
I've never had such a dark deep beautiful red color before with strawberries.

I also find I have to use more raspberries then I do strawberries when flavouring buttercream.
It seems like out of the 2 berries I've tried so far, strawberry is the strongest flavour so you don't have to use too much of it.

An other difference between the raspberries and strawberries is the number of seeds. For such a tiny berry, there is a ridiculous amount of seeds in it.
Honestly, seeds makes the flavour feel more real but it's a pain to pipe roses as the seeds get stuck in the piping. I also feel like the seeds add more fibre so if possible I would like to keep it in.

My co-workers loved the result. As always, the sweetness is at such a level that people don't feel guilty eating multiple cupcakes so they went back for seconds.
I also asked them about the seed and no one seemed to care if there's seeds vs no seeds.

So my conclusion about this flavour, if requested, I can seed the raspberry puree and use the 1M tip for piping the cupcakes.
If I'm using it within cakes or just a circular tip, then I can leave the seeds in if they do not make a request.

Right now, I take personal orders from friends and family for cakes and cupcakes as I continue to grow the number of flavours I can create on a consistent basis.

One day I'll open up a store ;)

Rustic Fall Theme Wedding Cake and Decorations

I'm so excited I finally got my wedding pictures from my photographer.
I had a fall wedding this year and did my own wedding cake.
The reception was at the Hart House at the University of Toronto.
It has a nice rustic setting and it's simple and elegant.
I wanted to do something to match the place and the fact that it was the fall.
So all my decorations for the wedding and the cake just ended up as a fall theme wedding.

I baked a 3 tier cake for my wedding. The top 6in is a dark chocolate cake with pistachio buttercream.
The 9in layer is a white chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream.
The bottom 12in layer is a vanilla cake with a mango and citrus buttercream.

Covered by fondant. The brown ribbon is also fondant.
Used leaves and a branch with pumpkin as decorations.
I used fishing wires to hold the leaves onto the cake.


This is the center pieces on the long tables we had. The color leaves we used in an effort to match the cake. All fall colors. We scattered small acorns and pumpkin along the long table since it's so long.

Along with some candles as well ;)

I weaved all the baskets myself. Rolled newspaper, white glued the rolls into tubes and used them to weave. After the spray paint job you can't even tell it was newspaper!


The headtable had garlands of fall color leaves for simplicity sake.

And our table seating was pretty much harvest color as well.

:) I'm so glad everything turned out so well. Had such a great time and I'm glad our guests did too.

For our cookie wedding favour, Click Here.

Birthday Cupcakes Oct 2014 - Strawberry Buttercream and Lemon Buttercream

It's been a while since I posted since I was crazy busy with moving and the wedding. But I finally did something I want to post about (besides my wedding cake, I'll do that when I get the official pictures)

This year we celebrated 4 birthdays at the same time as Thanksgiving. My husband, brother, niece and nephew are all born in October.
So what sort of cake do I make to celebrate 4 birthdays?
This year I went with cupcakes! Multiple for everyone.

Actually I was super excited this year to try out a new buttercream recipe.
I recently experimented with Swiss Buttercream and found out just how big of a difference methods contributes to the final product!
I used the exact same egg white:butter:sugar ratio as I normally do for my Italian Meringue Buttercream (minus the water because I don't need it anymore) and it was amazing!
It was every fluffier then normal!
I was so happy. This is now my new go to method.

Ratio-wise I'm still playing with it to see if I can decrease the butter and sugar a bit more to see if it'll get even fluffier.
I'll eventually settle on something I really like.
I also need to check if making my own butter helped too. That was also quite easy. Machine did all the work :)

Until then, here is the method I'm now using.

1. Mix sugar into the egg whites and whip over a double boiler set up.
2. Keep hand mixing until whites are 160 degrees F
3. Once it's at 160 degrees, remove from heat and mix in stand mixer Thick, glossy and cool. Can take up to 10 mins.**
4. Add in the whipped butter and mix until smooth. (if the butter is not pre-whipped, you can add it in little chunks at a time. I find with my stand mixer and pre-whipped butter I can drop in the entire thing)
5. Flavour accordingly

**Whipping time depends on the mixing stand you use!! I have a Bosch Universal Plus and it only takes about 3-5 mins to whip up on speed 4! I talked to the ladies at healthykitchens and they said with older Bosch machines you should use speed 3 and it takes about the same amount of time.
My friend uses a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer and it takes her about 10 mins. So please watch while it whips. I've tried whipping it for 10 mins before and nothing really changed too much, maybe a little less fluffy but at least it didn't collapse.

This time I made Strawberry and Lemon butter cream :) both were a hit.
I added a small fondant star for decoration on them just for cute factor

Have fun experimenting!

Simple Flower Pattern with Strawberries

It's summer time and it's almost time to pick the July strawberries.
Strawberries are not only yummy but they make great decorations for your cakes!
You can make simple yet elegant designs all by slicing up strawberries and placing them in specific patterns.

The default shape of the strawberries are great to work with. Pick out the small and large strawberries and dedicate them for different roles. (large sharp ones for the base of the flower, smaller pieces go go in the middle etc)

This flower design is actually very easy. The only thing that took a lot of time was slicing up the strawberries.
The cake I baked in this post is the Almond Chiffon cake from the Cake Bible.
They're 9 inch in diameter and 2 in tall each.

I used Raspberry Greek Yogurt as the filling in-between.

Take your strawberries, wash them and pluck out the greens at the top.
Then slice up the strawberries vertically.
Once you have a good pile of various sizes, you can start assembly.

Use the bigger pieces with a pointy end first and lay them in a big ring. I centered mine so that it'll end up right in the middle.
Once you're done 1 ring, lay the next ring overlapped on the first one. Overlap them halfway on top of the first layer and put the new slice in the middle between the strawberries that are already there.
Keep on going until you're almost in the middle
With my 9 inch cake and the first layer about an inch in from the edge, I only needed 3 layers of strawberries before I started using smaller strawberries and standing them up.
For the middle, use smaller slices and slant the first batch. Keep on going and eventually your middle ones will stand up straight.
If you want, you can even use a whole strawberry in the middle with the pointy side up.

Since I had left over strawberry slices, I did the sides as well.
No need for any yogurt or cream to stick the strawberries.

Pretty and simple!
Enjoy your summer treat!!

2 tier Birthday cake

Catching up on posting.  :)

I have a niece born before Christmas and one after Christmas.
So we celebrate their birthdays during Christmas dinner

This year, I made a 2 tier cake so they each get a layer.

The bottom layer is a white chocolate strawberry buttercream cake

The top layer is a dark chocolate pistachio buttercream cake.

For the buttercream,  I liked the butter to egg white ratio from Keiko Ishida's book but I don't like how she doesn't cook her egg whites.
So I'm still experimenting with the right syrup ratio so I can add more liquid type of flavor (ie strawberry puree) before the cream breaks.
Both cakes are from Rose's Heavenly Cake book.

The decorations are made of fondant. I used cookie cutters for the shapes but I used a sharp knife to cut out the words myself. I think I'll go invest in Alphabet cookie cutters soon. Took too long to do the knife work.

How to make stack the cakes:

You need to build structure for the bottom layer so the top cake doesn't sink in.

I use bubble tea straws as support.
I like to use 5 because my 6in cake is heavy.

Put the straw beside the cake and cut to the right height.
Cut all your straws.
Use your 6 in pan and lightly press on the top of the bottom cake with it too make and indent for where you want to place your cake.
Stick the straws you cut inside the 6in circle indent evenly spaced apart.

Move your top layer on top and your done.  :)