Pearl Cake - 30th Wedding Anniversary

I was asked by my in-laws if I would bake the cake for my sister-in-law's 30th wedding anniversary, and of course I said yes! I was very lucky that this is the pearl anniversary, so it made my decorating decisions easy. The cake itself was vanilla in three layers.

I thought I would get some photos of the cake before adding the "30 ans" ("ans" is "years" in French) on top. The pearls go all the way around the cake.

Swimming Pool Cakes!

A colleague ordered two cakes, one chocolate and one vanilla, for the pool closing party at her community pool.  We agreed that I would reproduce their logo, and during my planning I learned a great technique to produce a water effect on frosting (piping gel!).

Striped Cake

After seeing photos of a striped cake online a couple of months ago, I'd wanted to try one. I finally had a chance for a coworker's going-away party. The stripes didn't turn out perfectly but for a first try, it looked pretty nice!  The cake itself was a three-layer chocolate.

Fruit Tart 2

A coworker ordered a fruit tart with fresh strawberries and blueberries from Quebec, and this was the result!

Flower Basket Cake

I made this for the monthly birthday event at work and was happy to have the chance to use my basketweave piping tip! 

Happy Canada Day!

This is the cake I made for a coworker who spent Canada Day weekend with her sister and family. It's a Victoria sponge with cream cheese frosting and some maple leaf decorations.

Pink and Green Floral Cake

I had some leftover egg whites when I made some crème pâtissière for another dessert, so I decided to make a white cake and color it pink and green.  I thought I would keep the frosting design simple with a wreath of pink rosettes on top.

Summer Floral Cake

Now that the warm weather has arrived, it's time to make cakes for summer! For this chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream, I wanted some bright colors. I had some sugar pearls on hand for the finishing touch.

Blackberry Lemon Sponge Cake

I had wanted to make this blackberry lemon cake for two months ever since I saw it on website Natasha's Kitchen. It looked so beautiful and delicious that I knew it had to be my next cake for the monthly event at work. I wasn't able to perfect the sponge cake in her recipe so I substituted a Victoria sponge instead.  The final results looked and tasted wonderful! The layers of cake were brushed with a mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and water. The frosting is a cream cheese buttercream colored and flavored with blackberry puree.

Teal Ombré Cake

I am still looking for the best white cake recipe so I took my father-in-law's birthday as another opportunity to try a recipe in my collection.  I also wanted to attempt a ridged (for lack of a better word) ombré technique around the sides. I think it turned out fairly well!  Plus, when you cut into it, people are always impressed by the ombré layers inside, even though it is so simple.

Classic Fruit Tart

I was asked by a colleague, who is originally from Europe, if I could make a classic French tarte aux fruits for the monthly birthday celebration at work.  I'd never made one before but was happy to have a reason to finally try my hand at crème pâtissière (or creme pat, as they call it on the Great British Bake Off), which seems like a must for any dessert baker. It turned out the hardest part of this bake was the crust! My first attempt shrunk too much to be usable, and while my second try was a bit darker around the top than I would have liked, it held up well and tasted great.

Avengers - Endgame

I made this cake for a coworker who is leaving our organization. She loves the Avengers and her first name begins with "A," so it all works out nicely.  She loves chocolate and peanut butter so I made a three-layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream on the outside and peanut butter frosting for the filling. I hope it's a tasty combination!

Update: The cake tasted fantastic! The peanut butter frosting was light and fluffy and was a great compliment to the chocolate cake.

 

Easter cake

My husband asked me, at the last minute, if I could have an Easter cake ready for today for a friend and his family. Luckily, I had a chocolate cake in the freezer so just needed a simple decorating idea that I could put together after dinner last night. The piped grass didn't take very long and I "cheated" by using store-bought Hershey's wrapped chocolate eggs.

Shark cake!

A friend at work requested a 3-layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting with a diving/shark theme for her godson's 5th birthday. She found the LEGO City Diving Yacht set that had everything we needed for an exciting scene! I added some cardboard shark fins on toothpicks.

Semi-naked Black Forest Cake, Take 2

For her birthday, a coworker requested a smaller version of the Black Forest cake I'd made for our work function, so I made this cake with my 6-inch pans. The layers rose more than I'd intended so I torted them. I'm still practicing the ganache drip!

 

Ombré cake

For the party for the March birthdays at work, I thought I would try an ombré cake.

Batman!

I made this for a colleague's son's 4th birthday. The cake was chocolate and the frosting vanilla buttercream.

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na...Batman!

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, I made a Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.

In progress

Keeping it simple

Black Forest

I made this for a coworker's going-away party. The whipped cream frosting worked well, but the ganache should have been shinier!

Christmas Cakes

For the holidays, I made two cakes for the office party.  The first is one of my most popular cakes, a raspberry walnut torte with cream cheese frosting. The cream cheese makes the frosting thinner than regular buttercream so the poinsettias are softer.

Raspberry Walnut Torte with poinsettias

The second is a very moist chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I thought it didn't have quite enough chocolate so added the M&M design.

M&M Tree Christmas cake