Emily's Cakes

Lynn/Hegedus Wedding- June 27, 2008

 My friend Miranda (who also happened to be my mother in law's office assistant) married her fiancee Travis at the end of June this year.  I was really pleased and excited when she asked me to make her wedding cake for her, and even more excited when we sat down together to talk about her ideas for her cake.  The really funny thing is that when I first got into making wedding cakes, Miranda wasn't engaged to be married at the time, but she made lots of nice comments about the cake pictures I was posting on my Facebook page, and I said that one day when she got married, I would be more than happy to make her wedding cake for her when that day came around.  To my surprise (I don't know if it was to hers too or not!), that day came much sooner than I thought, as she and Travis got engaged just a few months after that comment was posted!  Miranda liked the idea of having square shaped cakes, and to make it a bit different, we offset them a bit.  She also liked the idea of having something a little different on each tier, but to maintain continuity, we kept the colour theme subtle and classic in shades of cream on white, with dusky rose accents in the gum-paste flowers that I made for her by hand.  Here's some pictures of the cake:   The cakes are covered in white fondant, and iced with a cream-coloured buttercream icing.  I placed individual hand-made icing pearls (about four hundred of them!) around the bases of the cakes.  The flowers and leaves on the top of the cake are made from gum-paste which I made a week or so before the wedding.  Here's a picture of the happy couple on their wedding day cutting their cake: Congratulations and best of luck to you both!

Burren/Simpson Wedding Cupcakes

It has been a tiring past twenty-four hours for me.  Not just due to the fact that in that time period I made/put together over a hundred and fifty cupcakes and a cake for this wedding which is tiring enough in itself, but to compound the problem, my mother in law's alarm went off shortly after six this morning, and she wasn't home to turn it off, so I had to haul my daughter out of bed to go upstairs and turn it off (we're living with my in-laws right now while our house is being built) and then try to go back to sleep, which I did eventually, but I am sooooo very tired right now I can hardly keep my eyes open.  It also didn't help that I was so nervous about these wedding cupcakes and cake, that I didn't fall asleep last night until nearly three, so I've only had a few hours of sleep so far.  Hazel's napping right now, and I'm tempted to go and crawl into bed with her, but I really want to post some pictures, so here goes.  

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, this is a picture of a pool table covered in icing flowers.  I made a hundred and eighty-eight of the daisies in shades of purple for this wedding, and about sixty of the daisies in yellow, orange, pink and aqua for a friend's bridal shower which is tomorrow, so I'll be posting some pictures of that later on.  Anyway, I just thought it would give you an idea of the scale I was working with to see all these flowers covering almost the entire pool table surface. 

So, back to the wedding cupcakes.  I got a little freaked out yesterday when I realized that Jim and Sharon (my in-laws) were leaving for the weekend, and Dan (husband) was going to be gone too.  Oh no-- that meant I had to try and do all my cupcakes and the cake, and keep Hazel busy and occupied for the hours it was going to take to get them done.  I wasn't sure how I was going to do it, but luckily, Daddy stayed home until the last minute, so I was able to get almost all of it done before he had to leave, and in the end, I was all done everything and all loaded up in the car by ten thirty pm.

I felt really badly for poor Melissa today though.  Her dream was to have her wedding down by the flats at the Red Deer river, but I'm not sure if she was able to do that today:  It hasn't exactly rained, but it's cold, windy and blustery with the occasional rain drop here and there.  I guess I'll find out after the fact if they had to go to the hall for the ceremony.  Since the weather looked so crappy this morning, I decided I had better get the cakes over to the hall sooner than later in case the wedding was there, so I farmed off Hazel to our kind neighbour Joan who looked after her for the hour it took me to do the set up (and then fed us both lunch afterwards!).  I got to the hall at about quarter to twelve, and it only took me about forty five minutes to get all the cupcakes on the stand and organized "just so".  Here's pictures of the finished product:

Pretty impressive!

Price/Czibere Wedding Reception

I'll try and make this introduction not too complicated;  My husband's brother's wife's sister Chelsea married Nick in a quiet, intimate ceremony in the Dominican Republic in December of 2007.  Okay, that was the hard part, and if you managed to figure out how everyone is related, then bravo for you (I won't hold it against you if you had to use pen and paper to figure it out).  So to make a long story short, I was honoured and privileged to make their cake for the reception they had for friends and family when they got back home again. 

I didn't have any problems coming up with the theme (choosing a beach/seashell theme was a no-brainer), but I did struggle a bit with what to do for a topper for the cake.  At first, I was going to make or buy little dollhouse sized beach chairs, and put them on the top of the cake (it's actually amazing what you can buy for dollhouses now-- I found teeny weeny accessories like Champagne bottles, wine glasses, books, food of all kinds etc.) but I didn't think of doing that soon enough, and my order wouldn't have made it in time for the reception, so I had to come up with something else instead. 

I found some ideas by looking up beach wedding cakes on the internet, and saw that someone had made some icing seashells and put two rings inside them and I thought that would be perfect, with a few minor adjustments.  I made my seashells out of white chocolate, and made enough smaller ones to decorate the whole cake with, in addition to the two much larger ones that I attached with royal icing and put rings in for the top (I'm still quite amazed that it held up so well).  Here are some pictures of the finished cake sitting at home on my counter: I made four different kinds of cake, and fillings (I can't remember which ones they were now, but that doesn't really matter anyway).  Since I had free rein to do pretty much whatever I wanted for this cake, I decided to try out my hexagonal pans, which I think really suited the theme of this wedding.  The cakes were also decorated with some silk calla lilies since I was told that the bride and/or bridesmaids had calla lilies in their bouquets, so I thought that would tie everything together really nicely.  I also thought that the yellow centres of the calla lilies would pick up the yellow marbling I did in the chocolate seashells and help pull everything together.  Some day I'll try making calla lilies out of gum paste, but I was pleased with how the silk ones looked on this cake.

It was a really great reception (very casual and laid back with lots of good food, which is the definition of a good party to me!), and we got to visit with lots of friends we hadn't seen in a long time.  It was so nice being able to celebrate Chelsea and Nick's marriage with their family and friends.  Here is a picture of the newlyweds getting ready to cut their wedding cake at the reception, and a couple of pictures of the wedding cake, again, courtesy of the mother of the bride (thanks Beth!):  

Stapley/Frederick Wedding

My husband's sister Rebecca married Jake in September of last year on the most perfectly gorgeous day of the entire year, I think. She asked me to make a cake for her, since she knew I'd made one for my friend Christy earlier that summer and I was so honoured to do that for them on their special day. I have to admit though, this was a tough cake for me to make, since my future relationship with my sister in law depended on it being a really great cake, so the pressure was on! I had free rein in terms of the overall design of the cake (thank you Rebecca-- that was the part that made it so much easier for me) but had to make sure it was in keeping with her autumn theme. So, I found a picture of a cake I really liked in a book I had at home and decided to try and replicate it, with a few modifications. 

The cake I made turned out to look nothing like the one in the book, so it's a really good thing that Rebecca didn't have her heart set on that one! Here's a picture of the cake that inspired me. Later in the post, I'll add a few pictures of the cake that I did end up making for them so that you can compare. I'm learning that it's definitely a lot easier to have a bride who is flexible with how her cake is going to turn out-- my cakes at least always turn out better that way, because I can then tweak them to make them look as good as possible! Anyway, I made a four-tiered cake for them, with each cake being a different flavour and having a different filling. I used a nifty stand that I borrowed from a friend (thank you so much Jenn!) which allowed me to fill the spaces between the cakes with flowers and greenery. Each cake was encircled by a shimmery gold-coloured ribbon with a swirly pattern on it. I tried a few different ribbons, but settled on that particular one because it looked so elegant. Back to the flowers and greenery though, because there's a story there, and a valuable lesson learned on my part, which is never to trust that a florist "gets" the image you have in your head with just a description. So here's what happened: I went in to speak with the florist Rebecca chose to do the rest of her flowers, and took in the picture, and asked her to set aside enough flowers and greenery for me to be able to replicate it on site (I do have quite a knack for flower arranging if I do say so myself, so I wasn't worried about that part of it at all). On the day of the wedding, I packed up the cakes individually, grabbed my "kit" and headed to the reception hall to set it all up. I gave myself two hours to do the cake, which I figured was plenty of time to get the cake put together and myself ready for the ceremony (which isn't normally something I have to factor in for most of my wedding cakes, since I'm not often also a guest). Unfortunately, the person who was designated to pick up all the flowers (including the ones set aside for me, for the cake) was running late and so by the time she arrived bearing about a dozen stems of greenery, and about a half dozen Gerbera daisies, I was already pacing the floors and getting pretty irritable and nervous. When I saw the piddly amount of flowers/greenery that had been brought for me to decorate my towering cake with, I just about broke down in tears. I hollered to my husband Dan as I hopped into the car that I would be back as soon as I could, and raced out of the parking lot.  I think I may even have squealed the tires, but I'm not sure. I found a florist in town who was open, and bought up as much greenery as I could and headed back to the reception site, alternately cursing under my breath, and praying that I would be able to pull this all together. To make a long story short, I ended up with a final product (and not a minute to spare!) that was far from what I'd envisioned, but at the same time, I was pleased with myself for having been able to create something really nice out of a potential disaster. And, more importantly, I think that Rebecca and Jake were pleased with their wedding cake, and won't ever know what lengths I had to go to make it happen for them (unless they read this blog of course!). I was glad to do it for them, and would do it all over again in a heartbeat, with only a few modifications of course!   Here's some pictures of the happy bride and groom, their cake, and one of the bride with my adorable daughter who was their flower girl, and one of Dan and I with the bride and groom.  What a great wedding.

Jenn's Cupcakes

It was my friend (and guitar instructor) Jenn's birthday on Wednesday.  I decided she needed some cupcakes to commemorate her special day, and not just any old cupcakes, but something really unique and yummy.  I had found a recipe for caramel cupcakes with a butterscotch frosting on Taunton's Fine Cooking website about a week ago, and was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to try them out.  I couldn't think of a better excuse to get baking!  The cupcakes themselves were not too hard to make, although the recipe called for making a caramel syrup which I found to be somewhat time-consuming, although it did give the cupcakes a really nice mellow caramel flavour that I suspect would be hard to replicate any other way.  The frosting was really easy to make, although I found it so super sweet that when I tasted it (like every good baker does before they let any creation leave their kitchen) it actually made my teeth hurt!  The cupcakes were soft and moist, although they didn't keep very well sitting on the counter-- I gave one to Dan to try the next day and they had dried out considerably, so I guess this is a cupcake to devour right away, if you needed an excuse!  Anyway, I did take some pictures of the wee cakes, which I'll post here.   I frosted the cupcakes with a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, and did just concentric circles on the tops at first, but had quite a bit of frosting left over that I didn't want to waste, so I added a few swirls to the top, which I immediately regretted as I found that said swirls were yuckily reminiscent of doggie turds coiled on the tops of the cupcakes.  My "oh s%#t" expletive when I realized what I'd done bordered on the ironic.  Oh well, they did taste really good when all is said and done, and I'd probably make them again sometime, but there's about a thousand other recipes I want to try before I go back to this one, so keep checking in to see what else is cooking in my kitchen.  And don't forget to let me know when your birthday is coming up and you might just luck out with some cupcakes of your own to celebrate with!

Christmas Cake

I made a Christmas themed cake for a LLL fundraiser this past winter.  The only thing is, I forgot to take pictures of said cake before I left home, and then also forgot to take my camera with me to take pictures on location.  Luckily, my friend Lisa had her camera with her, and took some really nice pictures of my cake for me.  I had totally forgotten all about it until recently, and was quite delighted to find out that Lisa still had the pictures saved on her hard drive.  She sent me a few of them yesterday, so now I can post them here for you to look at.  The cake itself was a lemon poppyseed cake, iced with a buttercream icing.  I considered making a traditional fruitcake, but so few people actually like fruitcake (I think my dad and I are the only two in our family that really like it a lot), that I decided against it. I made the holly leaves and berries from rolled fondant that I cut out and shaped and then covered with sparkling sugar in green and red for some extra glitz.  I also sprinkled white sparkling sugar over top of the cake to make it look snowy and wintery.  How festive!

Poppa Johns Birthday Cake

It was my dad's birthday last weekend, and I forgot.  In my defense, it's one of the few birthdays during the year that I don't usually forget about, but for some reason (I must have had too much going on or something) this year, I dropped the ball.  So, to try and make up for it, we had a little birthday party for him here at our house yesterday, a week overdue.  I made a dish called "Chicken in Wine" for supper (chicken breasts, with sauteed mushrooms and julienned carrots in an orangey wine sauce, served over buttered egg noodles with a nice salad on the side, which even the 8 year olds liked) and since he loves carrot cake, I made him a Ginger Carrot Layer Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting for dessert.  I got the recipe off the Martha Stewart website, and will post a picture of my cake here, along with a picture of hers just for comparison's sake.  I don't think I'll need to label which one is which.  Anyway, it was a yummy cake and I'd make it again.  As you can see in the third picture, four adults and two kids ate half the cake in one sitting!  Oh, I almost forgot to mention that (gilding the lily) were strips of thinly sliced carrot that I had candied, and placed on the cake to look like a big orange bow.  Not too difficult to do (but a little time consuming), and I was quite pleased with the results.  Candied carrot is actually very tasty, if you can get past the fact that you're eating sugary vegetables.  Okay, here's the pictures:

Ferguson/St.Dennis Wedding

Okay, so this is the cake that really started it all.  My friend Christy was getting married this past summer and mentioned to me that she was having a hard time finding both a caterer and someone to do her wedding cake.  I said I wouldn't be able to help with the catering, but I did offer to make her a cake, not really thinking she would accept (only because a wedding cake is a big deal, and I figured she wouldn't trust a non-professional to make one for her, but I was wrong-- she must have been really desperate! Lol!).  It was only after I got off the phone with her that I realized the gravity of the situation; I couldn't just make any old cake.  I had to make a spectacular cake that would live up to the special-ness of the day.  And I knew I probably shouldn't try and "wing it" again, after my first wedding cake-making experience produced a less than great result (see previous post).  So that's when I decided I needed some professional help, and signed up for some Wilton Cake Decorating Classes at the local Michael's Craft Store (which is how I met my friend Jen who has been very inspiring and supportive, and a fabulous cake designer/decorator herself).  I managed to finish two courses before the wedding, thank goodness.  For simplicity's sake, I made four separate cakes arranged on a graduated stand (that weren't hard and dry like my in-law's anniversary cake thank goodness), and I made some lillies in shades of purple out of royal icing which I learned how to do in class about a week before the wedding date... just barely enough time for the icing to harden completely!  So, I have to say, I was quite pleased with the resulting cakes, and I dare say, so was Christy (although she's such a good friend, that I'm sure she wouldn't have said otherwise). She kindly sent me some pictures from the wedding that I'm going to post of the happy couple cutting the cake.  I particularly love the picture of Christy holding the cake knife, ready to take on any challengers! It really was a wonderful day: perfect weather, a great crowd of people, and we all had a ton of fun.  Even I had fun, once the cakes were safely set up on the table and I could finally relax.  I guess it's all thanks to Christy and her wedding cake(s) that got this ball rolling, and me interested in pursuing cake making and decorating as a second career.  Thanks so much Christy! 

A bit of a disaster

I've always loved baking, and making gorgeous, decadent cakes, but I'd never tried my hand at making an actual wedding-type cake until my in-law's 30th wedding anniversary took place in January of 2005 (I think that's when we had the party, even though their actual anniversary date is in December), and I decided that we needed to have a big tiered cake to celebrate.  I won't go into too much detail; suffice it to say that it was far from perfect (chalk that one up to not having enough experience, and not doing enough research beforehand).  I've learned a lot since then, and now know that you don't need to have hard-as-a-rock cake layers to support the weight of the tiers above it if you know how to use dowels and other supports properly (I feel so sorry for all those poor guest who choked down dry, hard cake that night out of politeness and I promise never, ever to do that again to anyone!).  I did however, learn a lot about making royal icing drop flowers (I think I made about four hundred or more of them in various shades of blue.  The adage that "practice makes perfect" is true!).  Anyway, thankfully, I don't think there are any pictures of this first cake floating around anywhere to resurface and embarass me in the future when I'm a famous cake designer/decorator (and if there are, I really don't want to see them; the pictures I have in my mind's eye are enough, thank you!).  I had actually forgotten all about this very first cake of mine (probably pushed it to the far recesses of my mind to try and forget it ever existed is likely) until I went to do a different posting about my first "real" wedding cake, and realized that it actually wasn't my first cake ever.  But I'm going to treat it like it was and hope that no-one is the wiser.  And if you're one of the few who know any differently, please don't mention it.  I'll be eternally grateful for it!

Feedback

Some of the feedback I've received in the past couple of days included suggestions for adding some pricing to my page, so that's what I've attempted to do today.   I hope it's clear and understandable, and most of all, I hope my prices don't sound too expensive!  I'm trying to be really reasonable, but at the same time, I don't want it to cost me to make cakes... I'm doing that very well already!  I'll be happy if I can just break even for the first little while.  Then I'll probably get greedy and hike up my prices, just so you know (lol).

I also added some little sidebar lists with descriptions of cake flavours, fillings, icings and cake pan shapes to choose from.  My hope is that it will make your mouth water and that you'll order one of my delicious cakes!

More feedback on all this new stuff would be appreciated, again, please!  And thank you!