Spring flowers

Spring time means misting rain or cold sunlit afternoons, cherry trees, and the smell of green + mud. This early springtime cake is a six inch round vanilla cake  filled withwhipped chocolate ganache, covered with butter cream frosting. It marks my first foray into the world of gum paste and painting. The result is a cloudy spring day cake.  At first I stuck to cherry blossoms, but then the other flower shapes were too much fun to ignore.

Painting is still almost entirely mysterious to me, "Why does this colour + that colour = THAT color? How did I get that texture? It looks great on the plate, but it doesn't translate to the gum paste. WTFBBQ?"
 Something at the edge of this plate has gone terribly wrong. "Apparently those colours won't give me a darker purple. Noted."

Gum paste is slightly less intimidating now. Drying gum paste flowers, painted in a "I wonder what happens if..." fashion.

Favorites of the batch

Cake! Vanilla butter cream frosting, chocolate tree, and gum paste flowers with luster dust.

Sunlight plus cake equals...nomnomnom

First tiered cake

    With so many December and January Birthdays, the cake needed to be large. The birthday people had varying preferences in flavor, colour, and theme. In addition to the size requirement, everyone was living the sad reality of the holiday season ending and the associated candy being almost entirely gone. In short, we all suffered from a distinct absence of hyperglycemia.
    Then during rounds one shift came the final impetus for the cake. When discussing what determines the electrolyte abnormalities of a new diabetic, I answered a question using a song by University of Washington Professor Greg Crowther called "Glucose, Glucose". If you haven't heard any of his songs before, please go listen now. Your life will be so much better for it, and you'll be able to level-up in nerdiness. After proving it was possible to out-nerd even a specialist by signing along to an MP3 file, I went home and started on this cake. When physiology jokes meet dinosaurs, unicorns, sports team colours, and the search for hyperglycemic bliss, this is what you get.

The top tier involves T. rex trying to eat a unicorn, and really sets the tone for the entire three-day project

CLEARLY, as the dinosaur eats a unicorn she says "ROAR", and after eating a chocolate creature the size of your head (or a piece of the cake), your GLUT-4 receptors will be upregulated. Since we're already looking at a pink dinosaur eating a glittery unicorn, the dinosaur may as well be able to yell, "ROAR, UPREGULATE GLUT4!"
Note the bottom tier is sky blue, and involves yellow flowers and rainbows. It's about as mundane as it comes on a cake with dinosaurs telling dinner/unicorns about physiology behind the control system of glucose uptake.

This is what the type II diabetic dinosaur yells. Also known as the elusive Type II Diabetesarus.

 

Side view, with a smaller dinosaur rampaging along the frosting. Presumably a hypoglycemic dinosaur, in need of a spike in blood glucose to lead to insulin release and GLUT-4 upregulation. Alternatively the dinosaur could be hyperglycemic and in need to insulin to upregulate GLUT-4. If so, this is could totally be a Type II Diabetasarus, as discussed earlier!

Another side of the cake, with three unicorns of varying size and color. They're probably running from the rampaging dinosaur in the other picture. Probably. Remember friends, adrenaline plays a role in [glycogen]--break down leading to increased availability of--> [glucose] in tissues. Totally fit into the context of the cake. This whole thing is legitimate, if you ignore the bits about unicorns being chased by dinosaurs.

GUTS of the cake. Bottom tier is rainbow (vanilla), middle tier is blue and gold (for everyone's inner Buffalo Saber's fan), and the top tier is a buttery yellow cake.

There you have it. The edible intersection of of  glucose regulation/ pathophysiology, unicorns, dinosaurs, rainbows, and cake.

2014 Winter

2014 Winter and early Spring

2014 March: Flourless chocolate cake with chocolate glaze, white chocololate lettering, disco dust, and rainbow nonpareil

2014 March: Disco dust is edible glitter, in case you were wondering. It settled into the glaze perfectly, giving the appearance of a monolayer just below the surface.

2014 Lindsay's Starwars Birthday Cake: This was a bit of a last minute on-a-whim affair. The rapid baking and assembly left little time for making chocolate pieces, so I pulled out possibly the most pre-made/ store bought pieces I've used in a few years. The lightsabers are actually meant for cupcakes, but the anchoring plastic pieces are easily removed. Lots of fun, fairly quick, and it was well received.

2014 Lindsay's Starwars Birthday Cake

End of  2013: Sea Kayaking: Technically this is a 2013 cake, but it marked the start of my willingness to try MORE new things and trying to make the cake a picture rather than sticking random pieces with a vague theme onto a cake and calling it a day. Chocolate cake, dark chocolate filling and butter cream frosting. The seaweed, sea life, lettering, kayak and paddle are all made of chocolate. The sand is actually crushed up heath bar bits, squished into the butter cream. 

End of  2013:Sea Kayaking: Made as a holiday gift for a local kayaking school and shop, where I spent plenty of time during the summer. The instructors are skilled, patient, funny, and like cake.

2014 January Birthdays: For coworkers with January birthdays, as the cake itself suggests. Chocolate cake, butter cream filling and frosting, chocolate decorations, sugar penguins, and some matte disco dust to make it look frosty.

2014 January Birthdays: Cleaner edges, multi-step chocolate work, and overall cleaner look! It is satisfying to see my work improving over time in a real, tangible way. It's nothing close to what professional bakers create, but it's loads of fun and even the cake wrecks taste good.

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Past Cakes: 2013

From simply frosted birthday cakes to elaborate chocolate designs, I played around and learned some of the basics.

2013:  Simple and clean[er] designs

2013: Trisha's Birthday Cake: Vanilla cake, cookies and cream filling, and butter cream frosting

2013 Trisha's Cake: Cake guts

2013 Autumn: Chocolate cupcakes, raspberry butter cream frosting, and sugar decorations
(NB: I did NOT make the orange bird!)

2013 Father's Day: Strawberry butter cream frosting, lemon cupcakes, and rice paper butterflies (from Sugar Robot)

2013 "I Like Red and Nature" cake for Lynn's Birthday:
Butter cream frosting, noideawhatkindofcake, and white chocolate decorations

2013 "I Like Red and Nature" cake for Lynn's Birthday: Along the side

2013 "I Like Red and Nature" cake for Lynn's Birthday: Along the side again

2013 "I Like Red and Nature" cake for Lynn's Birthday: Along the side still

 2013:  Stop fighting with frosting and getting along with chocolate

2013 Cake for a Tea Party with Mary: chocolate cake, chocolate filling, butter cream frosting.
Decorations are either frosting or chocolate with the exception of two- The birds are sugar and store bought. The rocks are actually chocolate candy and also store bought.

2013 November Unicorn cake: BECAUSE I CAN. Chocolate cake, butter cream frosting, sugar rainbows and sprinkles (store), and chocolate unicorns.

2013 November Unicorn Cake: A frivolous cake to brighten a cloudy cold November.
Look! I'm learning to put stuff around the edges of  my cakes, and to play with the texture of the frosting.

2013 One-off: Learning to blend frosting colours in a controlled manner. Learned colour wheels are a thing. They exist! I had NO IDEA until very recently.

July 2013: Cake for kayaking instructors

July 2013: Cake for kayaking instructors

July 2013: Cake for kayaking instructors: As usual, all decorations are made of chocolate.
Today I learned how to work WITH the lines in my frosting, rather than fight them. It was a good day.

 
 

2013 June: Sugar Skulls for Lexie! ALL decorations and lettering are made with confectioners chocolate, by hand. I use templates (print a mirror image, stick it under a piece of parchment paper) for outlines and fill in/ complete the design myself. Zero fondant or gum paste involved with this cake.

2013 June: Sugar Skulls for Lexie: Still learning how to make a cake look finished. Edges are showing...

2013 June: Sugar Skulls for Lexie: Slow loris with an umbrella-- two of the birthday girl's favorite things.

2013:  Incidentally vegan, serendipitously flourless, and other adventures in food allergy friendly baking

2013 Thanksgiving: Chocolate Mousse Cake, with dark chocolate side decorations. It happens to also be vegan, and it tastes smooth, cream, and rich balanced by the fruity-but-bitter bite of very dark chocolate.
(DELICIOUS and suprisingly easy recipe from CakeCrumb's Blog, with only slight modifications.)

2013 Thanksgiving: Chocolate Mousse Cake, with dark chocolate sides

2013 Thanksgiving: Chocolate Mousse Cake, with dark chocolate sides 

 

 

2013 December: Flourless Chocolate Cake, dark chocolate ganache, chocolate decorations and luster dust

2013 December: Flourless Chocolate Cake, dark chocolate ganache, chocolate decorations and luster dust
When the recipe says "wait until cool to decorate", they mean it. Chocolate stars melted into the still warm ganache.

2013: Remains of a german chocolate cake: Unfortunately walnuts and pecans will kill me (and another coworker, too). When a friend and coworker requested a German Chocolate Cake, I modified the recipe to use toasted coconut and almonds. It came out mouth-wateringly well. So well in fact, this was all the remained after one hour. She did get a taste of the cake before it was demolished, but not much remained for her to take home!