Earlier this week it was in the -30 to -40 range in Saskatoon. I’ve been spending a lot of time at home and I thought it might be fun to get together with some friends. I put it out there fully expecting to have it at our place, but kind of hoping our friend with some adorable kittens might offer up her home. And she did! So a bunch of us got together to have a “Sunshine and Hot Chocolate” party. I found out some of our friends hadn’t seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine which is one of my favorites, so we watched that and had hot chocolate to stay warm.

We had hot chocolate with a lot of yummy toppings, lemonade, popcorn, lemon squares, angel food cake, and since I had some time I decided to make some Little Miss Sunshine sugar cookies.

I got a photo from the web and printed it out. Since I didn’t have a cookie cutter in the shape I wanted, I cut out a white area around Little Miss Sunshine and used that as my template to cut out cookies with a knife. I also made some cute flowers in the style of Roger Hargreaves. I noticed all of the flowers in his books are white with yellow centers so that’s what I did. I used runny royal icing to fill in the white, yellow and red of the cookies and then piped black royal icing for the details. My hands were so sore! But I love the results!

The table looked lovely and sunny. It was lovely for a chilly winter day.

And hanging out with kittens was a bonus

My trip was fantastic! Christmas was great! I didn’t do the gingerbread house thing this year. But next year for sure!

Mom’s wedding was great. Really nice and mellow and sweet. I was happy to be able to make their wedding cake!

I used the colours of mom’s dress and the matching silk flowers we picked out as inspiration for the cake. I had attempted to make gum paste flowers to match the silk ones, but I couldn’t get them quite right so because of that and because the wedding was on Boxing Day I decided to just use the silk flowers. I think they worked out better.

I love mom’s dress! We shopped for it early in the summer. It’s a lovely silk and she added a gold mesh sweater over top of it.

The cake was alternating layers of lemon and blueberry filled with blueberry filling. The whole cake was iced with coconut Italian meringue buttercream to add to the Hawaiian theme. Then I covered the whole cake in white fondant and decorated it with the silk flowers.

Mom and her husband are now two weeks in to a month long honeymoon in Hawaii.

Congratulations mom and Don! I was so happy I was able to do your cake and be a part of your wedding.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,200 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

1. POSSIBLY making a gingerbread house for the Saskatoon Festival of Trees…I’ve never made a real gingerbread house from scratch and I’m going to have to test it out before I sign up! But if I do it, that will keep me busy in the beginning of November!

2. DEFINITELY going on a trip to Washington DC to see my friend Preston (who I made the fossil cake for this summer)! I’ll be gone for almost 2 weeks at the end of November/beginning of December! I’m very excited to see as much of DC as I can and I also get to go to Carnegie Hall in New York!

3. Christmas. Enough said.

4. My mom’s wedding! My mom is getting married on Boxing Day and along with helping her execute her wedding plans, I’m also making her wedding cake.

So all that being said, I will not be taking any more cake orders for 2011. I have way too much on the go, and as most of you probably know, Sugar Bites isn’t my “real job”. I work full time at PrimeWest Mortgage and the cake thing is just in my spare time…which I won’t really have for the rest of 2011!

I will post the gingerbread house if that actually works out and I will definitely post mom’s wedding cake!

For now I’ll leave you with some links to a couple of my very first cakes:

Super Six Cake – This was really one of my VERY FIRST decorated cakes. I’m still pretty proud of it. I was JUST learning how to work with fondant. In fact, the superhero logos may have been the first things I made outside of class out of fondant. It was also my first lesson in transporting cakes and building custom shapes and what NOT to do. It all turned out great in the end though!

Big Comfy Cake – This was my VERY FIRST funky shaped cake. I’m still very proud of it! It was also a lesson in fondant and cake stability and learning that it’s actually OKAY to throw away cake scraps. It was also my first attempt at gum paste figures. I think I’ve come a long way and learned NOT to use Wilton gum paste (it dries WAY too fast) and learned how much colour it actually takes to make red haha.

I hope you enjoy looking back to 2008 with me. And I hope you have a lovely Fall and Christmas! I’ll try and post again this year, but if I don’t…happy New Year!

Megan

Noah’s mom sent me a couple of pictures with a similar design. I liked the idea because Noah loves his cars! And this way he could kind of play with his cake!

The cake was deep dark chocolate cake filled with cream cheese icing. What can I say…I had some left over from the wedding cake! You can never have too much cream cheese icing!

It was iced with buttercream and covered in fondant. All decorations were fondant. The road was covered with black sprinkles to look like asphalt.

I think Noah liked it! Unfortunately I missed the party. I was pooped from making cake all week and going to the wedding yesterday. I’ll see you soon Noah! Happy birthday!

Brent and Jodi got a hold of me a couple months ago and sent me this picture of a cake they found online that they liked. I’m not sure where this photo originated or who actually made it, but it sure is a popular cake photo!

Since it was short notice and I wasn’t quite sure how I would construct a stand to put the cake upside down like that without some testing and working with someone, I suggested the same design but inverted. Jodi’s wedding dress was silver, her maid of honour’s dress was navy blue and her bridesmaids wore red, so I incorporated those colours in place of the browns. I think it turned out great!

The top tier of this cake was 3 layers of carrot cake, the middle tier was 4 layers of lemon cake and the bottom tier was 3 layers of red velvet cake. All tiers were filled with cream cheese icing, then carved to shape before being iced with buttercream icing and covered in white fondant.

I brushed silver pearl dust over all of the tiers to add a silvery shine. The dots and rings were made of fondant and some of gum paste. Silver dragees added another touch of sparkle.

The topper scared me a little bit. I should have made it MUCH sooner than I did and given it more time to dry. When it came time to put it together it was still pretty fragile. So I ended up making a support out of corrugated plastic and gluing all of the decorations onto the support with royal icing. I’m glad I did because without it I’m sure it would have fallen over! The topper was made of mostly gum paste, but some fondant.

The wedding was beautiful and Brent and Jodi looked so happy!

Congratulations Brent and Jodi! I’m so glad I was able to do your cake and take part in your special day!

But even though Noah LOVED Everett’s cake, this one was for Everett

I made a 3 layer 10″ deep dark chocolate cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercream and covered in fondant.

The decorations were all made out of fondant. The stars were star shaped sprinkles. I brushed a bit of silver pearl dust on the clouds so they were a little shiny. And I “airbrushed” the sky a little bit with some blue spray colour to give it a little more visual interest.

Noah loved his brother’s cake! Everett didn’t really know what was going on, but he ate some of the cake!

This was all the cake we ate at the party. The cake was a little bigger than I had thought hahah! But Grant and Tasha had lots of cake left over to share with daycare and to snack on themselves!

Now I have a brief break and then a CRAZY week of doing Noah’s cake AND a giant wedding cake. So I’m resting up!

This is the cake before I packed it all up and the mess I made of my dining room table hahah! And that’s AFTER sorting through everything for what I needed to take with me for the cake setup.

Just a note about the striped tier. YES it’s pretty bulgy. I left it out to settle for quite a while before icing it and covering it with fondant , but it settled even more after covered in heavy fondant. BUT a good cake decorator is one who can hide their mistakes hahah! We ALL make them!

The reception was at the Army Navy & Airforce Veterans Club downtown. I got there pretty early in the day and had the whole place to myself to set up.

The top tier was 3 layers of red velvet cake filled with cream cheese icing.
The middle tier was 3 layers of lemon cake filled with cream cheese icing mixed with fresh blueberries.
The bottom tier was 3 layers of chocolate butter cake willed with creamy ganache.
The whole cake was iced with buttercream icing and covered in fondant. All of the decorations were fondant with the exception of the bride and groom topper.

Congratulations Leanne & Travis!

Earlier this year one of my Facebook fans, Lorene emailed me and asked for a cake for her mom’s 75th birthday. She wanted a rather large cake with some horses on it. She liked my previous horse cake, so I modeled this one after it with a few changes.

The bottom tier was white butter cake filled with white chocolate whipped ganache.

The middle tier was chocolate butter cake filled with dark chocolate whipped ganache.

The top tier was lemon cake filled with white chocolate whipped ganache.

All tiers were iced with buttercream then covered with green fondant. I piped some grass patches on the tiers and added some cute flower sprinkles. The horses were made out of gum paste.

I had to pack the tiers up in boxes for Lorene to travel with for an hour and a half. I was a bit nervous but everything made it there unharmed! There were a few things I would have added had I been there to set it up, but it looked great the way it was and Lorene did a great job stacking everything!

Thanks for the ordere Lorene! It was a fun cake to do!

The cake was half white butter cake and half chocolate butter cake. The chocolate half was filled and iced with chocolate buttercream and the white half was filled and iced with white buttercream. The whole thing was covered in black and grey fondant and the decorations were fondant and gum paste with hand painted icons and text.

Dale and I met Jessica at Fudds and dropped off the cake for Kobe’s party.

Kobe loved his cake and Jessica said it was delicious! Happy birthday Kobe!