cupcakecamp hangover....

so cupcake camp (http://cupcakecamp.ca/) was a hit!! all the work was soooo worth it and it was great to exit my bubble and taste and share with others!!

the cuppies i made were banana chiffon cake (a la sunshine's cake), filled with peanut butter caramel and topped with chocolate peanut butter buttercream under a fondant face. i (as usual) got carried away when i started making the faces, as i was originally just going to make a monkey holding a banana (what to do with all the fondant bananas i dried & prepped?!)....and so they each ended up being a different face...didn't take as long as i thought it would!! it was good definitely times though (you had to be there.....me, a mirror and fondant...lotsa laughs - to myself...)






i've posted individual pics of the faces on my flickr page, if you'd like to see them up close...http://www.flickr.com/photos/prettysweet/

cakes for fam...

sooo... i mentioned how strongly my fam feels about birthdays...

my sister, sunshine, is one of the most vibrant people i've ever known (her nickname is quite fitting, no??), so there was really no question what her cake would look like!! last year we had a weekend long extravaganza to celebrate (as we do...)!








what i love most about fam cakes is that i basically have carte blanche over what to make. i like to give a choice of flavour and my maany (her given name is maanua) gave me a list of flavours she wanted: banana (sponge, not like the bread - i enjoy it when people are as specific as i am about deets on their cake!), chocolate and peanut butter.... so the sun itself and a few of the rays are banana cake with peanut butter buttercream or chocolate buttercream and the other few rays are chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream.

(she also fancies herself the queen of the universe, and her bday is the one day i humor her, hence the qotu candles...)

the next birthday that came up was my lp, becky's. it was another weekend long bonanza for hers (i hounded her for months about how big a deal it should be and she finally gave up and let me plan it!). so becky knew she wanted carrot cake.....and that's all she asked for. this is what she got...





probably one of the BEST reactions ever!!!

picture perfect cake!

this cake was made for my friend's hubby Jonathan (well, he's my friend too...). among many things, he's a very talented photographer (http://jonathangreenwald.com/) and so his wife Lesley suggested his birthday cake should be a camera!! she found pics for me of a camera he'd recently purchased that had a separate lens, so naturally the cake had to be in two pieces!



soooo much more to come!!

beginning at the beginning...

so...i figure i should finally get around to posting pics. it's probably best to begin at the beginning...well, the beginning of the pics i have, anyway...


i used to be horrible at remembering to take pics of cakes i've done. i think i've mentioned this before, but most of the excitement in it for me is about the reaction i get from someone. so in the past, as soon as the cake was done, i'd put it away and didn't think of getting a pic until the reaction was over! because of this, quite a few of my older pics are ones that have been graciously given to me by my friends and clients...


now that i'm doing this for a living though, i'm much better at taking pics of pieces before they go out the door.


so here goes...




this cake was done for ferrero canada. it was to celebrate tictac being number one in sales that year (2007). it was meant to be a fairly simple cake, then i got a bit carried away and started making a whole bunch of tictacs to scatter all over the sides of the cake. i luckily scaled back and just put them on the border at the base. i'm glad i toned it down, they were pretty happy with the result. the cake itself was mint chocolate and vanilla with mint white chocolate buttercream.






at a brazen hussy event a couple summers back, my sis nana and i ran into one of her old high school friends. we got to talking when and she said she was getting married soon, nana (like the wonderful sister she is) mentioned that i make cake, and the rest is really history...cheryl had sent me a pic very similar to this cake, but with different colour ribbon. she was really very easy going and basically wanted the same cake. the flowers were done in gum paste, as they dry stronger and are longer lasting than regular fondant.


one of the great things i remember about this cake was that the thought of the flowers on this cake reminded me about when i was pastry chef at a pastry shop on the danforth and the owner and i, one afternoon spent a couple hours cutting and shaping flowers for a martha stewart type cake (7+ hours of just decorating - i wish i had remembered to take a pic of that one!!) i made that summer. i was pressed for time and she had dropped in between classes (she taught at gbc full time) and helped me out...ohh the memories...and the cakes!! it was an interesting time there, that much is for sure! point being i went out and bought the cutter that saved me a whole lotta time on the ms cake and used it for this one.

more to come! off to get eggs....

it really is a prettysweet life...

happy new year!!

it's amazing how the end of an old year and the start of a new one makes everyone take a sec to take stock and reflect.....

i'm pretty fortunate to be able to do what i love. it makes people smile, which is also something i love, but more recently the smiles have turned to anticipation, excitement and looks of shock and amazement (in the good way) which is something i take great pride in and am sooo happy to have been a part of!

so how did this start....now, i'm firm believer in the celebration of birthdays (most anyone i know will attest to this, as i would like to celebrate my day of birth for the whole month - deep down i do - but settle for a weekend of merriment with friends and fam). it would follow that in this celebration, there should be cake!! so i started baking cakes for some of my friends on their bdays when we'd celebrate (and sometimes have bday cake & cupcake drop-offs when we didn't, or i couldn't be present).....so while i was being thanked, the gift was actually mine to know that i could put a smile on my friends' faces and make something for them that i knew they would love and enjoy!

but i'm getting a bit ahead here. i really should mention the reason i'm such a fan of birthdays and cake.....it's 'cause it's all about me...well, on my birthday it is, and it really should be about that person on anyone's!! we all get so busy with our lives and 'stuff' that i think it's more than fair to really take the day of your birth and celebrate it. in fact, have everyone around you and everyone you've loved, known, and experienced life with should celebrate it in some way shape or form!!

that's how we grew up in my fam. a birthday was a pretty big deal. it would start with a rather alarming amount of noise and commotion (to a non-duncan, anyway, not difficult to do in my fam) as a wake up call and then being reminded it was your birthday (how could you forget?! it would have either been that or a fire to have people who say they love you pouncing and screaming at you at that time of morning), followed by the inevitable 'so how does it feel to be _ years old??' and then likely we'd roll over and go back to sleep. as we got older, the commotion would be squeezed through the telephone line, also at some ungodly hour of the morning via conference call.....the duncans love birthdays.

right....where was i?? so yeah...it's all about that person....so for friends, once they knew they were getting cake, it only seemed right to make things a little more interesting.....hence the sculpted cakes....let me tell you this: the feeling of pure (and i mean pure) happiness i get is second to none when a friend sees their cake and then eventually bites into it (more later on how i feel about cutting into cake...) and tastes that it's their fave flavours also?! i cannot express....

and then there are the weddings....i'm of that age now where left right, centre and behind, people are getting hitched AND now having babies.....so it made a lot of sense for me to start making my friends' wedding cakes as well.....and the bonus for me was that i could do something for them to add to their special day (you see really, it all boils down to how good making cake for people makes ME feel...)!

so there it is in a nutshell....why i do what i do....it makes people smile, which makes me smile, which makes people smile, which makes me smile....and so on....we all know the importance of a smile and how far it can travel, so if that's what i can bring to this universe, then you see why i consider it a prettysweet life, no?