My Mom never asks for much.  She always makes sure everyone else has everything they need or want, and very rarely asks for much for herself.  This year, she requested "something with white chocolate and raspberry".  So that's what I did.  I made many layers of vanilla cake with white chocolate gnash buttercream and raspberry buttercream.  I did a quick raspberry swipe along the side of the cake for a nice painted effect.

The cake ended up being so big, that I had trouble cutting it at the restaurant!  It was still yummy though.

Sometimes, you never know when you're going to meet your next client!  I was hanging out outside of a friend's apartment, probably on my way out, and one of her neighbours walked up and joined us.  Of course, I was introduced as "the cake lady" and Willie jumped all over it!  She said she needed a cake for a baby shower for her daughter.  Honestly, I hear this quite a bit and sometimes that's all that comes of it.  But, not in this case!  Willie was true to her word and ordered a cake for the shower.  She had seen another baby belly cake that I had done on my site and wanted the exact same cake.  No sweat!  It was a pleasure to make and I think this one came out better than the last one.

When I was dropping the cake off, the soon-to-be-Uncle give me a giggle.  "That's an awesome looking cake!" he said, "Except that its strange to be eating what's meant to be my sister's boobs..."

Yup, dig in!

This year, Tara decided to have a combined party for both of her girls, since their birthdays are so close together.  The theme this year was Princesses and both of the girls were dressed for the part!  In addition to the three tiered cake above, (yes, the pumpkin coach is 100% edible) I also made some strawberry shortcake cupcakes.  One of the other Princesses dove into those before I could get a picture, though.

Getting to help celebrate people's important life moments is the best part of this job.  Four years after their wedding, Gurveen asked me to surprise his wife with an anniversary cake.

His wife had also passed the bar exam that same week, so he requested a cake to celebrate.  He also wanted both cakes to be a surprise, so i had to lie to his wife when she asked for a cake to celebrate her becoming a lawyer.  It broke my heart to lie to her, but I think she understood in the end.

It's not often that I don't actually meet my clients, but this was one of those times.  My client works for a company that I left a number of years ago, but since I still maintain friendships with many of the people there, a lot of my stuff still shows up in the office, and my client got to enjoy some of my yummies.  When it came time for her first child's Baptism, she asked me to make the cake, cupcakes and cookies (not pictured, sorry).  Her Dad was kind enough to pick everything up, so I never got a chance to actually meet Deanne.  Not yet, anyway.

When a long time client asked me to make the cake for her sister's baby shower, I was thrilled!!  Her sister was blessed with twin boys, and the shower had a jungle theme.  My client sent me a bunch of pictures, including the invitation, but gave me specific instructions that this was not to be a tiered cake. 

Initially I wanted to do two cakes, one for each boy, but after seeing the invitation, I decided to use it for inspiration and make one tall tier.  The leopard dots turned out to be darker than I had expected (the Youtube tutorial said to make sure my colour was deep - lesson learned).  I had lots of amazing feedback on this cake - everyone loved it as much as I did!

Every wedding has its share of challenges and triumphs - this wedding of 300 mini cupcakes was no exception.   This job came to me after a guest at another mini cupcake wedding tried my minis and loved them.  Johanna decided she wanted minis for her wedding as well, and contacted me for a tasting.  Almost everything went well, but the vanilla mini cupcakes for the tasting ended up being a little overdone and dry.  While they tasted OK to me the night before, they were certainly not up to my standards on the day of the tasting.  Fortunately, Johanna was nice enough to let me do a do-over and impress her with what my vanillas are supposed to taste like.  She decided to go ahead an book me for her wedding.  We went with Vanilla & Vanilla, Chocolate & Chocolate, Red Velvet, Raspberry & Vanilla and my personal favourite, Chocolate & Mocha.

The next challenge (and triumph) was how to display all of these minis.  They were going on a table in front of the head table and the bride didn't want a high tower hiding the couple, so I had to figure out how best to display them on a lower profile.  I was quite happy with how it came out!

A few weeks ago, while attending a shower for a friend of ours, Tara handed me her cell phone and told me her husband wanted to talk to me.  This was a bit odd as Mike and I have never chatted on the phone before, but I politely took the phone and hoped Tara didn't think we were having an affair.  Knowing that I was making the cake and cupcakes for his daughter's upcoming birthday, and knowing that his lovely wife's birthday was the day before the party, Mike asked if I would please make a birthday cake for Tara.  I felt like a heel for not thinking of it myself, and gladly agreed!  Mike said he just wanted something simple to recognize Tara's special day, but I had other plans.  Mike had just given Tara a Michael Kors purse a few weeks prior and she LOVED it.  I took that as my cue and created this little piece of edible art for one of my best friends.  Inside is chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese icing.  YUM!

I think Mike was pretty happy wit the cake... He hugged me at least twice and thanked me a bunch of times and then left some darling comments on the pictures I posted.  I can't wait for next year!

This year, I get to watch one of my very best friends get married – to one of my other good friends!  We all met at work when we were kids in our 20’s, and I watch Josie’s and Roshan’s relationship develop and grow.  It started with a crush and before we knew it, Roshan was decorating Josie’s office with cute butterflies and hearts.  Now that they are set to tie the knot, I took the opportunity to jump in and make some cake!

Josie decided that, instead of a traditional bouquet, she would like to make a brooch bouquet for her wedding day (I had to google it to see what it was, and they are actually quite pretty!).  She decided on red and gold as her theme (being that the wedding is fairly close to Christmas) and she asked her guests to bring a red/gold brooch to the shower. 

I went searching and I found a lovely brooch at a second hand store.  I then went looking for brooch moulds so that I could make cookie favours for the shower, but I couldn’t find anything.  Never one to let life get in my way, I decided to take it upon myself to make a mould of the brooch I found.  With a little food-safe moulding compound, I was able to make 2 moulds very easily.  I then made sugar brooches out of gum paste and then hand painted all 40 of them, which in turn were attached to the short bread cookies.  They turned out amazing!
Of course I also made cake and cupcakes for the event.  The cake is a brown sugar spice cake, (which is Josie’s favourite) with cream cheese icing.  Yum!

About 6 months ago, I had to do one of the things I hate most – disappoint one of my customers.  I had made some amazing wedding shower cookies for her and she wanted to book me for another job, but I was already booked.  It breaks my heart to say no to people, but since there is only one of me, there is only so much I can do.  Luckily, a few months later, she called to see if I was free for a baby shower in September.  And since she was calling so far in advance, I was free!  She sent me a picture of a two tiered cake, covered in buttercream roses on the bottom and topped with baby shoes and roses on top.  Lisa’s Lemon Velvet was to be the flavour (lemon cake with cream cheese icing) of both tiers – so good!!

My client also requested hand made cookies as give-aways for her guests.  I made two dozen cookies, each with a slightly different variation on of the below themes.  These were so very much fun to make!  The decorating is when I get to go back to being a kid and get to enjoy being creative.