Three Years Old

Over the course of the last year, Lacey went from being a toddler, to a little girl. She lost her toddler chub, and has sprouted 10cm! Her vocabularly, speech and motor skills have flourished.

Our favorite part, by far, is watching her relationship with her little sister develop.

The changes happen so slowly, Tom and I don't notice them. But looking back on photos and videos from a year ago, the difference in glaringly obvious. These are the wonders of toddlerhood that parents speak of!

Lacey has developed a love of pink. I don't think we ever pushed pink on her. But one day she told us pink was her favourite colour, and after that, her clothes had to be pink, her stuffed animals had to be pink, and her favourite animal became a pink flamingo. At the zoo, she insists on riding the pink flamingo on the carousel. She has a variety of clothing with flamingos, she loves books with flamingos. So, it wasn't a hard sell when I suggested that I could make her some pink flamingo cupcakes for her third birthday.

I'm not going to lie. As I sat at our kitchen island for a second night in a row (three hours in total), piping flamingo heads with melted chocolate onto wax paper, I considered once that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and was a little worried about what these flamingos were going to look like. On their own, the flamingo heads looked a little demented.

But thankfully, everything came together beautifully, and I couldn't be happier.

And even more importantly, Lacey could not have been happier!

Happy 3rd Birthday, to our beautiful big girl!

Two Years Old

What a difference a year makes. Last year as a one year old, Lacey had no idea what was going on at her birthday party-- other than that everyone she loved was in one room with her, and she got to open some boxes and bags that had fun toys in the them. She was barely able to verbalize what she wanted or if she was having a good time. And she was still a bit unsteady on her feet. Not to mention, she barely had any hair!

This year she knew there was going to be a party, she knew there would be a cake, she knew there would be presents for her, and she knew she got to wear her fancy "princess" dress.

Lacey had a wonderful second birthday. This year she picked the Peppa Pig cupcakes that I made for her party, and she had a blast playing with her older cousins.

Peppa Pig Cupcakes!

Happy Birthday to my big girl! Thanks to all the family who made it so special for her!

Cat Cake and Turning 7

I have a vivid memory of baby-sitting my niece when she was eight or nine months old back in 2011. For whatever reason (most likely separation anxiety), she could not handle being near Tom. The very sight of him caused her to burst into hysterical tears, so it was a very long afternoon. Tom played with our nephew in one room, and I hung out with our niece in another. If he stuck his head into the room to see how we were doing, she would immediately start to cry.

So when I see the exuberant 7-year old in front of me, it's hard to imagine that all this time has passed by so very quickly. 

This year my niece requested a cat cake for her birthday party, and I am VERY pleased with the final product. I dug the design up from a post from the lovely ladies at CocoCakeLand.

From what I can tell, it was well received at her party!

Only scraps left.

Happy Birthday, sweet niece!  

Happy Wedding Day to You!

For my long-time friend Jeff, the May long weekend was a long time coming. Wedding day! While he and his bride-to-be were decorating their venue, organizing table arrangements and picking up flowers, I was at home, figuring out how to time the construction of their wedding cake with Lacey's naps. Luckily Lacey's naps are a bit more predictable now, so I baked the cake during her morning nap, and made the icing and decorated during her afternoon nap.

I've said before that usually I feel pretty stressed out about making cakes-- one mistake, and you ruin the whole thing! However, I was looking forward to making their cake because I knew it was more of a formality for them (for a photo or two), rather than the centerpiece of their wedding. At one point they weren't even sure if they wanted a cake. So, in other words, if I seriously messed it up, I knew they wouldn't be heartbroken.

Gwen and Jeff sent me several photos to give me some ideas of what they were thinking for cake designs. They knew what their cake toppers were going to look like (Lego people), so that was a no-brainer.

And the cake that stood out to me the most was this one:

It was simple and fun, and just a little bit quirky-- adjectives I would use to describe Gwen and Jeff. It seemed like a good fit.

Technically, I started the cake months in advance-- that is, if you count order the SPRINKLES!

Lavender, lemon yellow, mint green, coral and teal! All the colours of spring, wrapped up in to one cheerful little bundle!

I started by adding a tablespoon of each of the sprinkles into a dish, and giving them a good mix. Then I whipped up the ingredients for a white cake, and separated them into three six inch cake pans.

At this point, I searched on You Tube for, "How to make a naked cake", and was not disappointed by the plethora of instructive videos that came to my aid.

Initially I was a bit worried, because the video I watched said the best cake to use was dense and moist cake. "Don't use light and crumbly cake" it said.... Whoops... My cake was light and crumbly...

However, this turned out to not be an issue, because instead of regular butter cream, I made swiss meringue butter cream, which is lighter, fluffier, and MUCH easier to frost and smooth a cake with.

I stacked up the cake layers, frosting evenly in between, and then used an angled spatula to smooth out the frosting on top. You might ask, why can't I just use a knife to  smooth out the icing on the top? The answer is, you can. 

Next, I added small amounts of frosting to the sides of the cake, and used the angled spatula to scrape off any excess frosting. At this point, if I had been using regular butter cream frosting, I probably would have shaved off half of my crumbly cake. But the smoothness of the swiss meringue butter cream allowed me to smooth the edges of the cake down nicely.

The part that was the most fun was applying sprinkles. Basically, I held the cake platter at an angle over the sink, and threw sprinkles at it. They stuck to the frosting without any issue, and it allowed for me to get a more event coating of sprinkles. The only dicey part was when I held the cake at too high of an angle, and it started separating from the plate! But never fear, disaster was averted!

The important thing to note here, is that the Lego people LOOK like Gwen and Jeff. It's fantastic. And it makes me happy just looking at them!

Now came transportation. I held the cake in my lap for over an hour while we drove to the wedding.

  

When I arrived, I added the topper and banner, and BAM! Wedding cake complete. It fit in perfectly with the rest of Jeff and Gwen's decor.

Jeff, Gwen, I am more happy for you than words can express. I'm honoured that you asked me to make your wedding cake. You two are a wonderful couple, and I hope your future together is full of love, laughter and just a teensy bit of lunacy, to keep things interesting.

Congratulations!

The History of Dog Birthday Cake

Over the last few weeks, I have been asked repeatedly what kind of cake I would be making for Lacey. Initially I was a bit overwhelmed by the idea of making a cake for Lacey's first birthday. I've made a lot of cakes and cupcakes in the last few years-- how would I make one that was especially special for Lacey?

After flipping through an album of photos from my first year, I found my inspiration.

Dog cake, circa 1985

When I turned one back in 1985, my mom made me a dog cake. I always remember when I was younger how I would look at photos of that cake, and think how cool it was that she had made it into an animal. After that, the answer came very easily: I would make Lacey a dog cake too! Not the exact same cake, but something similar. I would use my mom's design, and tweak it to make it original for Lacey.

And here is how I did it:

Step 1: I baked a carrot cake in a 9" x 9" pan. I forgot to photo document this step, but it's not a very exciting step to document anyway!

Step 2: Cut the cake into a rectangle. 2/3 of the narrow rectangle became the dogs snout, and the other 1/3 was halved to become the dogs ears.

Step 3: Trim the cake to get a rounder shape. Eat cake scraps.

Step 4: Slather with cream cheese frosting.

Step 5: Make eyes, nose and mouth out of candy melts. Melt candy melts, and pipe warm chocolate into appropriate shapes. Let cool and harden in fridge.

Step 6: Tie a bow in some shoestring licorice.

And behold!

Dog cake, circa 2017

In a cake to cake comparison, there's not much resemblance, but there's enough for me!

It also seems like Lacey appreciated the cake a whole lot more than I did...

That girl really loved her cake!

Unicorns and Not-So-Little Nieces

Another year has gone by, and my little niece is SIX years old. She's not so little anymore! She's sprouting up up up, and becoming more and more of an imaginative chatterbox.

My niece has been really into unicorns for the last couple of years, so when Ashley sent me images of this unicorn cake tutorial, I filed it away in my mind as something to suggest for my niece's upcoming birthday.

Sure enough, my sister thought the cake was a great idea-- and it was a big hit at my niece's birthday party. Apparently little girls were fighting over who got an eyelash, and who got part of the rose mane.

It's always nice to know your work is appreciated!

Happy 6th Birthday, Madelynn!

First We Drink the Coffee, Then We Do the Baking - V7.0

There's something very comforting about tradition, isn't there? When Mallary, Jasmine, Jill, Paige and I got together in December 2010 to decorate Christmas cookies, I don't think any of us envisioned ourselves in 2016, baking up a storm on a blustery day. These baking days are something I look forward to every year. There's nothing better than catching up with old friends, and baking tasty treats!

This year we started our annual bake-athon with coffee, thanks to Mallary. We drank all the coffee, and immediately launched into action. After seven years, we have become a well oiled machine. We all bring our two cookie recipes and ingredients, as well as most of the utensils and equipment we need to bake them. We each have a separate little work station, and we get to work. The main problem is that we end up with a backlog of cookies waiting to go in the oven, but that just gives us more time to chat and catch up.

There were a few repeat favourites this year, including salted caramel and dark chocolate chip squares, and lemon ricotta cookies, but most recipes were new. There were:

Ginger snaps

Skor shortbread

Double chocolate peppermint

London Fog sugar cookies

Vanilla chai shortbread

Nutella cookies

Pecan dark chocolate cookies

Hot chocolate cookies

Double chocolate peppermint cookies.

Hot chocolate cookies.

Salted caramel and dark chocolate chip squares.

It's fun to think about how much has changed over the last seven years. Most notably, three of us are now moms! With four kids in the mix, the kids will soon be outnumbering the ladies! I'm looking forward to the day when Lacey is old enough to come with me and help out. But today I was happy to leave Lacey at home with dad, and spend some time on my own.

This year had sped by. It will be Christmas in no time!

Keep warm! I hear it's supposed to be a blustery week.

Eight

This past week, my nephew turned eight years old.  It's hard to imagine he's almost into the double digits... Grade 3!

Dylan is a consummate Lego fan, so I decided earn auntie points by making him Lego themed cupcakes.

This year we went with vanilla cake, and vanilla buttercream, as per the birthday boy's request.

And I topped the Dylan's cupcake with a Lego character from one of the mystery packages. We got a mariachi man!

I think they were a hit. He looks pretty pleased! I love his missing-tooth grin!

Happy birthday, to my favourite nephew!

Ladybug Toppers

My good friend, Paige, is expecting in early November, and her baby shower is this weekend. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity to make some sort of cupcakes for Paige's shower. She requested carrot cake (which is my favourite too). There may be an odd number of cupcakes arriving at her party... I don't know what could have happened to two of them!

At first I was having a bit of cupcake block. I don't know if that's a technical term, but I scoured my cupcake books and the internet, trying to come up with an idea of something to make for her blue and pink themed shower. I considered owls, bears, onesies, teddy bears and various other designs before I settled on blue and pink ladybugs! Although creating the ladybug toppers was a bit time consuming, the process was surprisingly simple.

Here's how they came together.

First, I needed candy melts. Three colours, black, pink and blue. I cut the pink and blue candy melts in half, and set them aside.

Then I drew out the design for the ladybug body on a piece of paper, and then I put some of the black candy melts into a ziploc bag. I microwaved them until they were melted and liquified. Next, I placed some wax paper over the paper template, clipped a corner off the ziploc bag, and piped the chocolate onto the wax paper to trace out the bug body.

Before the piped chocolate could cool, I stuck the halved candy melts into the chocolate to form the ladybug wings. As the chocolate solidified, the wings became attached. The main problem with this process is that the chocolate cools down every few minutes, so you have to put it back in the microwave repeatedly to get it back to piping temperature.

The most time consuming part was adding the ladybug dots onto the wings. This was again done with the black (chocolate) candy melts. Sometimes the chocolate would form stringers, and I would have to wait until the chocolate solidified before I could scrape off the little bits with a toothpick. Once the ladybugs were finished, I tucked them into a tupperware container, and stored them in the fridge for a couple of days (keep in mind, now that we have a baby, everything takes me about four days longer to accomplish than it used to!).

Today I made the cupcakes and frosting, and assembled all the cupcakes.

Voila!

I'm super pleased with how they turned out. Hopefully they will get gobbled up tomorrow!

Here Fishy, Fishy!

One of the things I worried about while pregnant was how I would find time to do things for myself. I knew it would be hard once we had Lacey, but I was determined that I would carve out some me-time every once in a while to do things that I like to do.

Last week a set some time aside so I could make some cupcakes for a BBQ that one of my co-workers was hosting. The time had to be carefully allotted, and I made the cupcakes in parts. My plan was to make fish cupcakes, I drew out the design below:

Then I made the cupcakes in parts. I made the fins out of melted chocolate during the week while my parents were around to watch Lacey. I made the cupcakes and frosting later in the week with the help of Jill. And I decorated the cupcakes the day of the BBQ. Here is what the finished product looked like:

Pretty awesome, right? I love it when a design comes together!

So Tom and I loaded ourselves in the car, along with Lacey and all the cupcakes, and headed to the BBQ. Our host popped them into his fridge, and we had a chance to visit with co-workers that I hadn't seen in nine weeks! It was awesome! And then I asked our host if he could pull the cupcakes out of the fridge. 

And he did...

But he dropped the container!

There was full cupcake destruction! You guys, this is my worst nightmare! Of all the cupcakes and cakes I have made before, I have always been afraid that I would drop them before they made it to their destination! There was not a single fish left intact. They were all smushed and unrecognizable. I should have taken a picture of the destruction.

The kids still ate them, but I don't think they had any idea of what they were. And when I say the kids "ate" them, I mean that they sucked the frosting off them, and left soggy cakes everywhere.

Our host felt awful, it was clearly an accident. But it still makes me a little sad when I think about them. Poor little fishies!

Dress Adventures with Elsa

My niece, Madlynn, turned five this week (HOW DID SHE GET SO OLD!?), and gone are the days when I would come up with a random idea for her birthday treats, like these sheep cupcakes, or butterfly cupcakes. This year, Madelynn requested a very specific Frozen themed cake. Basically, the cake is the dress on an Elsa doll.

This was a little outside my comfort zone, but I watched a few YouTube videos and felt fairly comfortable with the process. I have photo-documented my dress adventures with Elsa!

Elsa observes the cooling cakes.

First, I started with four eight inch cake rounds. I'm not going to lie... I have a dirty secret! I used a box mix to make these cakes, rather than making them from scratch! It's so shameful! But I'm 35 weeks pregnant, and I couldn't find the energy to stand and measure out the ingredients... And now that I've done it once, I may have to go back to box mix again! You won't tell anyone... Right?

Elsa takes a bubble bath.

Next, I gave Elsa a thorough bath. Considering I literally picked her up from my sister's doorstep, I figured this was a necessary step. I also gave her hair a brush, and braided it up.

Huge mess.

Next, I whipped up a batch of vanilla buttercream frosting. I've made this frosting recipe several times, and I'm honestly not sure what I was thinking. The recipe said to keep the stand mixer at medium while adding a 1/2 cup of icing sugar at a time. So... I did that, and icing sugar exploded everywhere. So, note to self, turn the stand mixer to low while adding icing sugar. I know that! I have always done that before. I will blame that mistake on baby brain.

Elsa's make-shift shower cap.

After thoroughly drying off Elsa, I wrapped her legs in saran wrap, and made a make-shift shower cap out of saran wrap and tape to keep her hair clean from frosting and cake. Then I stacked, balanced and frosted the four layers of cake.

The next step was to cut out a hole for Elsa. I probably could have used a fifth layer of cake to cover her hips, but thanks to my YouTube video watching, I was prepared for some re-jigging once I had trimmed the cake to the shape of a dress.

I used the cake trimmings to stack up the dress around her hips, and used more frosting to anchor everything in place.

Hombre buttercream.

I took the remaining buttercream frosting and whipped three different batches with blue food colouring to make a set of gradational frosting.

Elsa's dress crumb coat.

My least favourite part of frosting cakes is applying the crumb coat. This is a thin layer of frosting that is meant to seal in the crumbs from the cake so that you can apply decorations without crumbs sticking out. This crumb coat was not very fun, because trimming through the cake let loose a whole new level of crumbs. After I had sufficiently covered the cake, I put it in the fridge for half an hour so the crumb coat would solidify.

Elsa's unadorned dress.

As you can see, the next layer of frosting was a lot easier to apply, and a lot smoother when applied over the crumb coat. This left me with a blank canvas to decorate.

Elsa dress cake.

And... Here she is! Elsa in all her glory! I don't know about you, but I'd wear a dress like that, any day! 

Niece loved her-- it was totally worth it!