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Candyland Cake

May 24, 2014 by Jenn

Candyland was one of my favourite games to play as a kid!  We didn’t have it at home, but I remember playing it at lots of friends’ houses and at school.  I’ve made sure that each classroom I’ve taught in has had this game because of my fond memories of it!  The game itself is super simple- counting to two, limited reading required (basic image recognition), it requires mostly just colour recognition and learning to wait your turn.

There are quite a few versions of the Candyland game board, in fact, the first edition came out in 1949.  According to Wikipedia, there are 22 different versions!  I believe the version that I base the cake on is the 2010 version of the Candyland game board.  The fact that it has Gloppy the Chocolate Monster is what makes me think that.  Apparently, prior to 2010, Gloppy was the “Molasses Monster”.

I had to do a lot of candy ordering on Amazon to get all of the candy components to this cake.  If you are making it at home, you can make do with what you’ve got on hand, or you can order the candy like I ended up having to.  I wanted to make sure that each area was as perfect as it could be, so I went to the extra effort of ordering . . . I even sent my mom looking for peanut marshmallows when she was on vacation with my brother in Minnesota!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, candy land, candyland, candyland board cake, candyland cake, candyland cake board, candyland game, edible cake board, game board cake, kid's cake

How to Make a Wedding Cake: Decorating a Wedding Cake (Part 3)

May 9, 2014 by Jenn

In the previous two posts, I have discussed with you how to bake and frost a wedding cake in Part One, and in Part Two, I showed you how to stack a three tiered wedding cake.  In this post tutorial, I will show you how to decorate a wedding cake using ribbon and artificial flowers.

Creating a wedding cake that is specially matched to coordinate a bride’s special day is super easy with all of the options that are readily available now-a-days.  Did that sound like old school country?  Changing up icing colours is one way, but an easier way to do so is to coordinate ribbon and flower colours.

To decorate a wedding cake you can use a variety of different types of flowers:

Sugar flowers: Pros- Edible, Cons- very fragile, time consuming to make, one time use

Real Flowers: Pros- Beautiful, can match the bouquets exactly, Cons-smell, require flower spikes, droop quickly, one time use

Artificial/Silk: Pros- easy to work with and trim to exact sizing etc, long lasting, reusable, Cons: may be hard to find matching colours/type etc.

 

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Filed Under: Cakes, Videos, Weddings Tagged With: decorating wedding cakes, how to decorate cakes, how to decorate wedding cakes, how to make, how to make a wedding cake, Make a Wedding Cake, pink wedding, rose wedding, wedding, wedding cake

How to Make a Wedding Cake: Stacking a 3 Tier Wedding Cake (Part 2)

May 8, 2014 by Jenn
Stacking cakes sometimes requires a bit of engineering.  Imagine working for days on a beautiful wedding cake, only to have it collapse into itself due to a structural problem prior to delivery.  Or worse yet, have it collapse on the bride and groom when they are cutting into it!!!  These are the nightmares of cake decorators! 
 
Learning to stack a three tiered wedding cake is actually quite simple, and learning how to do it is integral to cake decorating.  In my video you will see me use a total of 7 wooden support rods.  You can use more if you are worried about your cake collapsing, but being that I’ve stacked enough cakes with this exact type of cake, I wasn’t worried and knew that I didn’t need more support.  BUT, that being said, if this is new to you or you are using a light, fluffy cake (or a box mix) you may want to have 3-5 support rods in the bottom tier.  Three in the middle layer should remain to be suffice.
 
The rod that goes through the top tier, all the way to the bottom tier anchors the three layers of the cake together.  This helps prevent slippage of any of the tiers, keeps the cake upright in it’s stacked position and will help with stability when transporting. 
 
This way of stacking can also be applied to any cake that is tiered, be it two, four or more layers.  You will just require longer rods, and many more of them!  The more tiers the cake, the more support you will want the base to have as it will be bearing more weight at the bottom.  
 

 
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Filed Under: Cakes, Weddings Tagged With: cake, how to make, how to stack a cake, how to tier a cake, making cakes, stacking a wedding cake, three tiered cake, tiered cakes, wedding, wedding cake, wedding cakes

How to Make a Wedding Cake-Baking and Frosting Part One

May 7, 2014 by Jenn

I have almost 70 wedding cakes under my belt.  That’s not a lot of wedding cakes if you are a professional cake wedding decorator, but it was a lot to pump out in a three year span as a rookie!  Year one was a learning experience, year two putting practice into action, and year three was fine tuning the practice.  

Baking wedding cakes were some of the most reward-able cakes that I got to be a part of.  I LOVED making them, loved getting to the venue and seeing the beautiful decorations, but I HATED the delivery!!  Nothing ever went wrong, but I was always nervous throughout the drive.  The longer drives (hour to an hour and a half) in the hot beating sun were often scary,  as was travelling on the highway and worrying about the other drivers on the road.  If you are partaking on long deliveries, make sure that your vehicle has air conditioning, and that you put blinders up on your windows to block the sun (as much as it can be).  I also always transported my cakes in a large cake delivery box, that my partner made for me.  Delivering in the box kept wayward dust and dirt off of the cake and ensured that a clean cake arrived at the destination.  

In this first tutorial (of three), I show you how to bake the cakes for the wedding cake.  I highly recommend using cakes from scratch as they are sturdier than box mixes, and will hold up better under movement and the weight of decorations.   

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos, Weddings Tagged With: bake cake, baking time, cake baking, cake pan, how to bake a cake, how to make, how to make a wedding cake, make a cake, making cakes, three tiered cake, wedding, wedding cake

Inside Out Rainbow Cake

April 23, 2014 by Jenn

Do you have a bunch of leftover jelly beans from an Easter egg hunt?  Well, I have the perfect way to use them up!  I would love to be able to tell you that I was “using mine up” but, no, I went to the Bulk Barn (I should have frequent flier miles there) and bought all brand new jelly beans for this project.

 I absolutely adore this cake.  I think that it is beautiful, and the shock value of the inside is second to nothing I have seen.  I contemplated using vanilla cake, but I felt the darkness of the chocolate cake really accentuated the bright vibrancy of the buttercreams.  

Now, I am a buttercream LOVER, but if you aren’t (what is wrong with you?!) you can make the layers of the buttercream thinner but only making one stripe for each ring.  But, if you do that, keep in mind that your cake will not be as shocking when you cut into it.  The point of a cake like this is to make it look amazing when it is sliced into . . . and for it to taste amazing!! 

I went with an outer colour of white buttercream for the cake to mimic a cloud like appearance . . . did I achieve that!?!  Haha.  I also think that the white makes a clean slate for the jelly beans to sit on nice and brightly!

I hope you enjoy this cake, I know I loved making it!

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Filed Under: Cakes, Tutorials, Videos Tagged With: cake, chocolate cake, how to make a rainbow cake, rainbow, rainbow buttercream, Rainbow cake, rainbow cake recipe

Marbled Easter Cake with Rabbit Peeps and Easter M&M’s

April 17, 2014 by Jenn

Even though we’ve already made a bunch of Easter treats this year, I decided that this cake could NOT wait until next year.  It is too cute to risk forgetting about in the file of “ideas” that I keep carefully organized . . . in my head . . . which is like a black hole- ideas are swallowed up, never to be seen again.  Perhaps I should work on that. 

When I first was practicing this cake, I could only find pink bunnies locally, so the side of the was cute, but it wasn’t as fun as it turned out to be with the multi-coloured bunny Peeps.  With that said, if you can only find one colour of bunnies, just go with it.  Brightly coloured marshmallows are happy no matter what colour they are!

Marbling a cake creates a beautiful effect inside the cake.  In this case, the effect inside is bright, cheery and perfect for an Easter celebration, or a spring party!  The neat thing about marbling is that if you change up the colours, you can customize the theme of the cake for any holiday celebration or party that you might be having. 

I think this cake would be a fabulous thing to make with kids if you have any . . . borrow some if you don’t!  That’s what I like to do.  They could be involved in the marbling process and of course the decorating with M&M’s and Peeps!

Happy Easter!

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Giant Peeps Cake with Surprise Inside

April 5, 2014 by Jenn

 Has the lead up to this cake been dramatic enough?  I’m so excited to finally be able to share it with you!  I don’t know what it is about Peeps, but they are the cutest things ever!  I don’t like eating them AT ALL, but they are so fun to create with.  I caught myself on a couple of occasions playing with them . . . “Um, what am I doing?”  You can check those photos out on my Instagram account!  Or don’t, it’s kind of embarrassing.

This is my first official “surprise inside” cake.  I’ve done a couple of cupcakes that have hidden gems inside, but I’ve never done a cake.  What I love about a surprise inside is that from the outside, you have no idea that there is something hiding underneath all the cake and icing.  You can also choose to make this cake without the surprise and have it all be cake, but then you wouldn’t find all those cute Peeps faces gazing out at you on that first slice! 

If you choose not to hollow out the cakes, it will definitely feed more people, so if you are looking to serve a crowd, make sure that you take into account that a lot of the cake is removed after baking.  You might want to have some back up cupcakes or another small cake on hand if you have a hungry crowd.

The marshmallow buttercream that we use is absolutely delicious!  It has a ton of butter in it, which makes it taste amazing, and also makes it super easy to spread.  I’ve found that the higher the butter level, the easier the spread-ability of the icing!  I’m also a scientist on the side, can you tell?

If you’re going to be making this cake and prefer to use box mixes, I have to tell you that I’m not sure if the box mixes will hold up in the bowl after the carving.  Box mixes tend to be lighter, and weaker than cakes from scratch.  I would worry that when you’re carving out the centre of the bowl cake, that you might have some problems with the sides collapsing.  But, hopefully you don’t!  If you try it with a box mix, and it works out, make sure you leave a comment about what you did to help it be successful!

 

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Filed Under: Cakes, Holiday Baking Tagged With: Easter Cake, easter peeps, Giant Peeps cake, Peeps, Peeps cake, surprise cake, surprise inside, surprise inside cake, surprise inside peeps cake, yellow cake

How to Make Marshmallow Buttercream

April 2, 2014 by Jenn

Marshmallows and buttercream together?  So yum! 

This recipe comes about as a lead up to a fabulous cake . . . this recipe, plus the one for marshmallow fluff together equal a fabulous SURPRISE inside cake.  We will have the great, fabulous, so adorable, wonderful cake ready to be released on Saturday morning.  Here’s a hint: there are marshmallows involved. 

I think that this icing would be delicious on a S’mores cupcake (which I’m definitely going to make now that I’ve thought of it!)  You could scorch the top of and make it TOASTED marshmallow buttercream!  Oh my god, I’m dying!

There is definitely a lot of butter in this recipe, which obviously means it’s going to taste great and be horrible for your waistline, but it makes a smooth and creamy buttercream. 

I must know . . . how would YOU use this buttercream? 

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Filed Under: Cakes Tagged With: buttercream, frosting, Icing, marshmallow, marshmallow buttercream, marshmallow creme, marshmallow fluff, marshmallow frosting, marshmallow icing
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