Cupcake of the Month

Dads and Bacon go together like cake and icing! Perfect Fathers Day treat! June cupcake of the month!

Every mother deserves flowers!

Mother’s Day always makes me think of flowers. I think about the cards children make their mothers in pre-school using finger paints to make flowers on the paper. I think about all the bouquets being sent around the world to Mothers who might live far away. I think about my Mother, whose mother’s day wish was her 3 children helping her garden.
Well I don’t garden. I refuse to. I do not enjoy it at all and you will never see a pretty flower bed at my house. Unless years from now I can convince my own children to garden for me…

 I bake though! I thought this year…why couldn’t I incorporate flowers into my baking? I found some recipes for lavender cupcakes and some dried lavender buds at my local health food store and got to baking.

These lavender-honey cupcakes are delicious! You get that beautiful, flowery smell from the lavender, but it definitely is not over powering. The cream cheese buttercream has a touch of honey which really adds sweetness to the overall cupcake.

I really enjoyed trying something new and unexpected and the results were fabulous and having the lavender colour in them just put these cupcakes over the top! These cupcakes would complement any summer celebration.  



Notice my new cake stands? They were a little side project. They are old pottery wheels that I took apart and sanded, repainted and put back together. They are heavy duty, made of metal and the tops spin. Good find!

All Smiles

I am not a big fan of ladybugs as a bug, but in cake form? Adorable! Another little lady was celebrating her first birthday and after seeing a picture of the first ladybug cake I did, her family wanted to order the same theme, but a smaller version. This cake was inspired by the very top layer of the original cake.  

The cake itself was funfetti flavour, a rich vanilla butter cake filled with sprinkles. It was iced with a layer of chocolate buttercream before the fondant layer went on. All decorations were fully edible except the antenna. Those were made out of pipe cleaners.

I sat the ladybug on a green cake board and added some grass and a few white flowers around it to create a more natural surrounding. She was topped off with a big smile and a little pink bow!

May cupcake of the month!

Just in time for Mothers Day! Lavender and Honey! A beautiful bouquet in the form of a cupcake!

Give a dog a bone

Let’s face it, my boy Bentley is probably one of the most handsome dogs you’ve seen...

 

...and he deserves lots of yummy treats (based purely on his good looks as he is not a good listener)! In reality he doesn’t get a lot of treats, usually it is only once a day at bedtime, but I still wanted to make sure I was giving him something healthy. I put thought and care into the food myself and my husband eats, why wouldn’t I do the same for my dog?

Just before Christmas I started experimenting with some homemade dog treats and had successfully made cheddar cheese biscuits and sweet potato biscuits. Now Bentley would never tell me something didn’t taste good but I do think he enjoyed the cheddar cheese ones best.  We are just about out of those biscuits so I figured I better make some more. I love making new things so I searched for a new recipe.  There is a lady from Australia whose entire YouTube channel is about dogs. How to properly care for them, how to make them food and of course treats. The recipe I settled on was from her. Here is the link to that video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oA40UoLicI

Peanut butter dog treats…and Bentley loves them!

The Easter Bunny was here!

The month of April is lucky enough to have Easter weekend and I don’t know about all of you, but our Easter weekend is always full of family…and food. This year we stuffed ourselves with roast beef, turkey, ham and all of the fixings. We also had dessert. Homemade lemon meringue pie, ‘Stained glass’ cake, and it wouldn’t be an Easter without carrot cake. After all that is the Easter Bunny’s favourite kind of cake!

This year I decided to make the traditional carrot cake into cupcakes. I left out the raisins (several people in my life refuse to eat them…strange, I know.) and added in some toasted walnuts. I put in some crushed pineapple and found that it really kept the cake moist. The cupcakes were topped off with a swirl of cinnamon cream cheese icing and a sprinkle of more toasted walnuts.

They were definitely a hit and would make a great treat any time of year!

Ladybug Theme

It looks like those cute little ladybugs I had made a while ago found their way onto a cake!

A little girly was celebrating her first birthday and needed a cake to match her adorable smile. Her Aunt ordered her birthday cake for her as gift and wanted it to match the ladybug theme of the party. She had sent me a picture of what they wanted the cake to look like, so I was able to use that as a reference and add my little twist of creativity to it.

I tried out some new recipes and techniques this time around. I baked a vanilla butter cake for the bottom layer as well as the large ladybug on the top. I looooooved this recipe. It was such a nice cake to torte and barely had any crumb. I think it would be a great cake to carve with. I also baked a chocolate butter cake for the middle layer. This layer was delicious but definitely more crumbs.  I made a simple syrup mixture and between each layer of cake I brushed on the simple syrup before spreading a layer of buttercream. This is a great trick to keeping the cake moist! I received rave reviews from the cake eaters at the party, they loved the new recipes! I will definitely keep them in my repertoire.

I covered all three layers in a simple vanilla buttercream before covering them in coloured fondant. The red and black fondants are store bought as those deep colours are so hard to make, but the rest of the colours are all homemade marshmallow fondant.

The parents also wanted a smash cake for the birthday girl so she could really get messy! They requested a sugar free cake, so I made a sugar free banana and apple sauce cake. Even without the sugar, it still tasted great! My hubby thoroughly enjoyed my test run cake!  I baked it in my giant cupcake cake pan and decorated it to look like a simple bouquet of flowers.  I tied it into the larger cake with both the colour theme as well as the little lady bug and leaf decoration.

Everything on the cakes is edible, minus the boards between the layers and the dowels used for structure. I think they turned out lovely and made a great addition to the party!