I'm Catching Up!!!

Yes I am!!!  It feels great to be almost caught up on something in my life!  Seems like there isn't enough time in a day to get everything I need done...I wish there were at least 5 more hours to a day or six....just round it off to 30 hours instead of 24!  Anyways, here are my creations for February!

Princess Themed 1st Birthday.  All pink and girly is what I was going for on this particular cake.  I was pressed for time, so I didn't have time to make my own crown...I bought one.  It worked well on top of the cake though.

Another Princess Cake!  This one I am really proud of.  I found this design and loved it, so I wanted to make it myself.  Making this cake taught me alot!  I learned the quilting technique, which looks very elegant as well as the crown I made from royal icing.  Oh and the draping.  Brooklynn was a happy little girl!

I made these as gifts for a Facebook fan page referral contest.  I didn't get as much response as I wanted, but I'd do it again...with a better prize that is!  It was close to Valentine's Day so I thought these were fitting. 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Andreas-Tasty-Treats/139377868866?ref=ts

Join my Facebook page!!!

I was asked to donate a dessert for a silent action in February.  It was for FASD fundraising banquet.  It's hard for me to find time to volunteer with the kids at home, so giving this dessert felt really good!  I would definately do it again!!

Do do do do Da Dora, Do do do do Da Dora!!  Dora again.   I was so happy to do this cake for a friend of mine as well as Ryan's cousin.  Heather also was the one who took our wedding pictures back in September of 2008.  Check her out!  http://www.pixelpiephotos.com/   Here daughter was born very close to Valentine's Day and she had a Dora Valentine's birthday party.  Heather and I worked together on this one and got a lot of the inspiration from one of the books.  I love how this cake turned out!!  Here's what she said "Beautiful job as always Andrea. And such a yummy cake too! I can now officially spout off praises for the way they taste too! Daysha absolutely loved her Dora Valentine cake! Thank you again!"

The BOOBS!  I ran into a lady at the grocery store and she wanted a 30th birthday novelty cake for her husband.  The boobs were a challenge.  I had a hard time getting them smooth and the ribbon on the bra was a bit difficult.  There were matching cupcakes as well as some bulldog ones ( I got the idea from Hello Cupcake!), his hockey team was Mad Dogs. 

"It was awesome. He said that it was the best chocolate cake he ever had. The whole pub got up and checked out his cake. Everyone was shocked at the amazing detail lol. All the guys were definetly smiling. Thank you! I'm really happy with eveything."

Minnie Mouse giant cupcake cake.  I've been waiting a long time to make a giant cupcake.  I didn't want to make a cake for myslelf, so I waited until I had a customer who said run with any idea.  This was for my friend Cherry's little girl.  All she wanted was Minnie Mouse and it turned out I had a little figurine I had purchased months prior hoping it would get used.  This is one of my favorite cakes!!

Snowboarding!  For a friend of mine who I used to work with her husband.  Her son is getting really into snowboarding and doing well at it.  She though this would be a perfect cake for him.  

 "In short: ur cake was a big big huge hit!!!!!!!Thank u very much!!!!!  The kids remarks were " this is the best cake ever!" etc and Ricky gave one look at it and just said that his cake is awesome cool!!!"

2010! January

Twenty ten, two thousand and ten, whatever you want to call it...This was another busy month for me.  Wait  a minute, it seems every minute of every day of every month is busy for me.  I love it.  It keeps me on my toes and I can't really say I'm ever bored.  Whether it's playing with the kids or doing laundry or making cakes, I'm always doing something!  January brought in the new year with such beautiful weather.  I am used to it being -30 to -40 and it was so nice we could play outside almost everyday...which my full of energy kids need.  Here is what I made in January.

It started out with Alyvia's 5th birthday.  She loves to plan things and love to create.  We made all these treat boxes for her guests at the party.  They were so cute, we had to take a picture.  You can download the printable template from this really cool website.  http://www.simplynabiki.com/en/2009/12/cloud-treatbox-free-printable/ .  Check out the entire website, since she has such neat ideas for kids and everyone else. 

Alyvia palnned her party for months, probably six!  She really loves Halloween and wanted a halloween cake, but I convinced her to pick something different.  She chose a wedding cake!  Every five year old girl wants a wedding cake!  I did my best to make a wedding cake to here specifications.  She didn't want it covered in fondant only buttercream and she wanted butterflies.  Every wedding cake needs flowers, so we found this flower weath hidden away and it worked perfect.  All her friends loved her cake and she was so proud of it!  Isn't she beautiful?!

This 2-tier was for sweet, adorable little twin girls.  I've never done a cake for twins, so I was pretty excited.  There mom contacted me a few months prior and mailed me out the napkin she was using for the party, so I tried to match the cake to it.  She didn't really care what I did, she just wanted it girly, pink and sparkly.  This was my first time making fondant roses.  They do take  a while to get the hang of, but eventually I got a few to use.  With my follow-up e-mail she told me the cake was delicious!!  Always great to hear!

Super Mario Brothers...woohoo!   This was for Austin's first steps teacher.  She ordered it for her son who turned 8.  She found a little candy topper which I placed on top of the cake.  Cupcakes are always fun for kids and easy to take to parties that aren't at home.  I was told Tyler loved it!

My friend Sylvia has a cute little boy named Drayton.  He loves cake and gets so excited about it!  You'd have to know Drayton to get it! lol.  Anyways he already pre-ordered his cake about ten times prior to his party.  Eventually his mom took over and wanted this car that Buzz Lightyear drives created.  I was totally up for the challenge.  I knew seeing Drayton's face woud be worth all the effort and it was!  He was so happy and didn't notice the parts I left out.  I made this cake the night before and was up until 3am.  It was a long night.  It's not exactly like the toy, but pretty close! :)

Barn Cake #2.  A bit different from the last one, the customer told me exactly what she wanted down to the color of the cat, cow and coveralls!   I'm still learning to make people a bit better, they always seem to look fat and my cow has extra large legs, but I couldn't get him to stand without them! I think it turned out pretty cute!

Here's what most of January looked like.  The frost on the trees was so gorgeous, I usually don't get a chance to take pictures, but I took so many that month!  The first picture is the road infront of our place and I took that on the way to Drayton's party...it just looked so peaceful.

Here are my three little munchkins.  I LOVE this picture!!  I didn't pose them this way, I just told them all to look at me and smile.  They spent most of the month playing in the snow and enjoying the mild winter we had.

December Creations

December is always busy with Christmas and family.  Here is what I came up with in the snowy month!

My Little Pony...I really love this cake. The mom knew exactly what she wanted and I think I delivered!  We were invited to the party and one lady said "Usually pretty cakes don't taste good, but this one is great!".  That felt so good to hear!

My little man's birthday was at the beginning of December.  Aidan turned 2!!  I still can't believe he is 2 already...feels like yesterday I was bringing him home on a -40 celcius day!  Well Ryan and I didn't know what kind of cake to make for him.  He really loves Hot Wheels cars and Ryan found this little '69 Chevy in the toy bin.  This truck was Austin's and now a favorite of Aidan.  So Ryan said "Make this one!".  I knew it would be a bit of a challenge, since red and black are not my fav colors to work with.  All in all it turned out well. Pretty rushed though, I made this the morning of the party!  Me and my leaving it until last minute. :)

Who doesn't love ice cream cake...never mind Turtles and Skor ice cream cake!!  Yum.  It was just simple, but good.  I even made the kids and I one.

This would be my third John Deere tractor cake.  I really don't like making the same cake more than once, but since she wanted fondant instead of only buttercream I was excited.  I think the fondant looks great on here compared to the previous buttercream only tractors.

Since about September I had wanted to try Christmas yule log cakes out.  I was so happy when I recieved an order for two!   These are really fun to make!  I've never made a rolled cake, which was something completely different.  One of these was angel food cake with real whipping cream and the other is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling.  The customer didn't want them to be overly chocolatey.  The meringue mushrooms are so cute.  I thought they would be much more difficult to make, but not, only very time consuming.  Alyvia even helped make a few.  They have a different taste to them, not gross, just different.  Maybe it's because I haven't eaten much meringue desserts before.

The fat little fisherman :). I absolutely LOVE this cake!  I had a lot of fun with it.  It was only a 6" cake, but I got to incorporate a lot on there.  My marbellized water didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, well not at all...it wasn't marbellized at all! lol.  The customer was extremely happy with this cake for her husband on New Year's Eve.

Here are two pictures of my family and I at Christmas.  We had to take two pictures because neither of us know how to use the camera to take a timer picture.  My beautiful family!!

November Creations

WOW!! I'm on a roll today!! Maybe it's the cold weather keeping me from going outside and doing things. We were spoiled having really nice weather prior to the weekend. Now it's back to -10 celcius and I want the pluses back!! I guess I should be spring cleaning my house while it's colder outside. Blah...who wants to clean? Not me!! I do have one room down and lots to go, eventually it will be complete. Here are more creations mostly from November.

This was a wedding I did in August. It was in Cold Lake which is about 1 1/2 hours from here, so I wasn't able to take pics. I only have this particular one because the bride e-mailed it. She built the stand. The cupcakes have little chocolate heart garnishes on top.

This is from a wedding in October...I love fall weddings! The bride also e-mailed me this picture because I only have one without the flower topper and I think it really adds to the pic. Chocolate brown ribbon on the bottom of each tier really popped!

Royal Reserve!! What Canadian guy hasn't drank this stuff?! The birthday boy had no idea his wife ordered this cake for him...total surprise. She said he loved it and so did everyone else!

Every little boy loves Hot Wheels. I love how the fondant looked on this cake and I had extra batter so I made some matching mini cupcakes to go with it. Kids love cupcakes!

Another #3, this time the mom requested no fondant. I don't like this cake as much as the previous one...I think the fondant really made the cake stand out. I know the stop lights are out of order, I realized that later on after the picture was taken and after the cake was delivered. I'm sure the mom noticed, but she never mentioned anything.lol

Dora the Explorer! I am really enjoying making Dora cakes...keep them coming! Since Dora is filled with so many colors and there are so many different episodes, anything can be done with a Dora cake. The little girl's favorite colors were purple and green, so I worked around that. My first time using wires. I love the look!

November wedding. This couple ran away to a tropical island for there real wedding and this was the cake for the party they had when they returned. Nikki was a grade lower than me in school, but we've known eachother since we were in elementary. She was my neighbour for years until we moved to town and then we figure skated together until I was in grade 12. I was so happy Nikki asked me to make her cake. This cake was all cupcakes. She wanted something easy that guests could just grab. I have to say, the cake was a bit difficult to make. When I tried icing the top it kept sliding all over the board and I think could have looked better if I knew a better technique. I also wish I would have pushed for her to get some cupcake stands for the mini cupcakes as I think it would have made the display look a lot better. I learned from this that the way cupcakes are displayed really matters! Maybe only to me, but I will from now on push for couples to have stands! The cupcakes were chocolate, vanilla and carrot.

A 50th Anniversary Topper cake. I found it really hard with the gold, so this is what I came up with. Looking at it now, I think it would have looked better with a quilting technique on the sides of the cake. The things you learn as you go I guess. She provided her own cupcakes.

October Creations

October was busy for me with cake, here are my creations



Dora the Explorer is always fun! I wanted to recreate Dora's home as a birthday party, without using fondant only buttercream. I think it was a success!

My cousin Mike's 27th birthday. His wife called me and wanted something with a snowmobile since he is obsessed with it! I went on facebook and found a picture of him and his snowmobile and went to work. This was my first attempt at any sort of fondant figurine. I think he looks a little funny! :) I really love the cake though!

Dora AGAIN! This time a cake and mini cupcakes. This was a lot of work! I hand made all the little cupcake picks which took a while and I also made and decorated the stand. I made it about one day before pick-up which wasn't the best idea and had everything decorated about 20 minutes before pick-up. Nothing like last minute...the story of my life!

My sister, Whitney's 18th birthday. My family doesn't seem to be hugely into cake, so I thought this cute little toadstool cake would be perfect. It was small, but fed my large family wonderfully! I learned how small cakes are alot of work and are more of a pain than large ones!! She loved it! It was a new recipe I tried, lemon cake with lemon filling.

60th birthday cake for my other sister's father-in-law. Now I should just let you know I have a large family. 4 sisters and 3 brothers. This barn cake was a blast to make. My daughter, Alyvia helped make the little veggies and a chicken. She was really proud!

Andrew's 1st birthday!! I love making 1st birthday cakes, I feel they are really special and especially if the parent's are first time parents. They want everything to be perfect! This cake is not by any means my design. I don't remember where I saw it, but I fell in love with it! So different and each tier had a reason for being there. It took about 7 hours to decorate not including baking time or icing, just laying the fondant. That's more than some of the wedding cakes I did! The mom wanted matching cupcakes and by that time I was exhausted so my grass on the cupcakes didn't quite resemble grass, but it was all I could do at that point. The entire cake was done in red velvet as well as the cupcakes.

Here are some fun mini cupcakes the kids and I made for Halloween. Austin brought some to school, but ended up dropping the whole container before he got on the bus. He said they were still good, but just looked like a container of mess! Oh Well!