Gum Paste Poinsettia (December 2012)

 Gum paste poinsettia dusted with green and pink pearl dust.

Christmas Cupcakes (December 2012)

Red and green vanilla cupcakes iced with white chocolate buttercream and topped with 50/50 gum paste/fondant Christmas themed decorations, all dusted with white pearl dust.

Snowflake Cookies (December 2012)

Sugar cookies topped with vanilla fondant.

Halloween Cake Pops (October 2012)

Chocolate cake pops covered with melted chocolate and rolled in sprinkles. White, orange and black for Halloween!

Orchid Cake (October 2012)

Sponge cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercream, decorated with pecan praline pieces and a gum paste orchid.

Gum paste orchids dusted with yellow, pink and green pearl dust.

Royal Rumble Birthday Cake (September 2012)

Yellow cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercream decorated with edible wafer paper (WWE logo and birthday message). The rest of the decorations are not edible.

Fall Flowers Cake (September 2012)

Chocolate cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercream, decorated with 50/50 gum paste/fondant roses, daisies, mums and leaves.

Apple Basket Cake (September 2012)

Raisin spice cake filled with pumpkin preserves and decorated with buttercream basketweave, modelling chocolate apples and fondant leaves.

Tinker Bell Cake (July 2012)

Yellow vanilla cake filled with vanilla buttercream, iced & decorated with vanilla buttercream. Tinker Bell was created using the pinprick method and sprinkled with pink cake sparkles. Butterflies are fondant dusted with pearl dust.

Happy Canada Day! (July 2012)

Sugar cookies topped with strawberry vanilla fondant.

Mini Birthday Cake (June 2012)

Chocolate cake filled with chocolate buttercream and cherries, decorated with chocolate buttercream and cherries.

Wilton Course 2: Flowers and Cake Design (May 2012)

 Class  1: 50/50 gum paste/fondant button flowers and pansy

Class 2: Royal icing apple blossom, rose and primrose

Class 3: Royal icing lily, daffodil and violet

 Class 4: Chocolate cake filled and iced with chocolate buttercream, decorated with buttercream basketweave and royal icing lilies

Basket of Pansies (May 2012)

Yellow cake filled and iced with lemon buttercream, decorated with Chocolate Hazelnut Wafers and 50/50 gum paste/fondant pansies, leaves, ribbon and bow.

Braaaainsss!!! (May 2012)

Yellow cake and chocolate cake mini cupcakes iced with peppermint buttercream and red piping gel.

Kangaroo Cookies (April 2012)

Sugar cookies topped with chocolate orange fondant.

 

Lesson learned:

• I mixed some orange LorAnn oil into Wilton's chocolate fondant and it actually gave it a very nice taste. So Wilton's fondant is edible ... if it has extra flavours added to it!

Flower Cupcakes (April 2012)

Yellow cake mini cupcakes iced with lemon buttercream and chocolate cake mini cupcakes iced with peppermint buttercream, all decorated with buttercream drop flowers and leaves.

Lesson learned:

• Buttercream drop flowers are very easy to make and look so pretty! They're definitely my flower of choice for quick decorating.

Daffodil Savarins (April 2012)

Savarins filled with whipped cream and topped with 50/50 gum paste/fondant daffodils.

 Daffodil veined with the Wilton Impression Mat and dusted with yellow pearl dust.

Lessons learned:

• I didn't have a daffodil cutter so I had to cut each petal individually with a small leaf cutter. It took forever to vein and glue each petal! I'm not doing daffodils again unless I get a multi-petal cutter.
• Everything is edible except the stamens. I should try and make royal icing stamens next time.

Easter Cupcakes (March 2012)

 

Flourless honey almond cupcakes iced with poured buttercream and topped with 50/50 gum paste/fondant calla lilies.

Calla lily dusted with yellow pearl dust for added realism.

Lesson learned:

• The Wilton Impression Mat adds beautiful details to the flowers and leaves, making them look even more real. I love making gum paste and fondant flowers!

Cake Pops Galore! (March 2012)

 

Chocolate cake pops covered with poured buttercream and decorated with coloured sugar and sprinkles.

Chocolate cake pops covered with poured buttercream and decorated with sprinkles. Green & white for St. Patrick's Day.

Lessons learned:

• Poured buttercream works so much better than melted chocolate for covering the cake pops. I still need to try the chocolate with Crisco method though. And when doing chocolate cake pops covered in white icing, two coats of icing are better than one (notice the difference between the two pictures).
• If the buttercream is too runny, it just pools up at the bottom of the cake pop. Still need to find that sweet spot between too runny and not runny enough ...
• The coloured sugar seems to be absorbed by the icing and you can't really tell it's there. Maybe I need to wait for the icing to cool down a bit before rolling the pops in sugar. Sprinkles work great though!

Daisy Cake Pops (January 2012)

Chocolate cake pops covered with white chocolate ganache and topped with gum paste daisies.

Lesson learned:

• Covering the pops in chocolate did not work for me at all. The chocolate was not runny enough so it wouldn't cover the pops properly. I tried melting it in the microwave more, but it ended up just seizing on me. I found out later I should have added some Crisco to it. I'll try that next time.

Wilton Course 3: Gum Paste and Fondant (January 2012)

 Class 1: 50/50 gum paste/fondant bow

 Class 2: Gum paste carnation, rose, calla lily and leaves

 Class 3: Gum paste mum and daisy

Class 4: Chocolate cake filled with raspberry jam, iced with chocolate buttercream and covered with Wilton's chocolate fondant. The cake board is covered with marshmallow fondant. The bow is the one we made in the first class. The rest of the decorations are all made out of Wilton's ready-to-use rolled fondant (white and chocolate).

Lessons learned:

• The Wilton Gum Paste and Fondant course was a lot of fun! I loved working with gum paste and fondant. It was like playing with edible Play-Doh :)
• Gum paste flowers look so much better than the buttercream icing ones I've made so far! However, they are a lot more work, and really don't taste as good.
• Wilton's chocolate fondant is very dry and rips very easily! Apparently other brands are better but I haven't tried them yet. 
• I made my own marshmallow fondant to cover the cake board since I wanted to see if I could do it. It didn't work! It was good enough for covering the board, but I never would have been able to cover the cake with it. First I underestimated how much sugar I needed so it was too "soupy". Then I went overboard with the sugar so it dried up too much and wouldn't roll properly. And I probably used too much Crisco since it came out very greasy. I'll try it again and will have to follow the recipe more carefully.
• Wilton's fondant tastes quite bad. We ended up peeling it off the cake before eating the cake. Apparently other brands are better so maybe I'll try those next time, or I'll attempt to make my own marshmallow fondant again.

Christmas Tree Cake (December 2011)

Carrot cake filled and iced with buttercream, decorated with sugar pearls, mini M&Ms, coconut flakes and a shortbread cookie.Cake was baked in Wilton's Christmas Tree Pan.

Lessons learned:

• Using a shaped pan was easier than carving the tree out of a 9x13 pan like I did last year. It also gave it a nice, wavy shape unlike last year's cake, which was very flat.
• Individually placing each sugar pearl is still very time consuming. Maybe I should have used fondant instead. There's always next Christmas ...

Toronto Maple Leafs Pucks (October 2011)

Chocolate chip cookies baked in muffin tins to make them look like pucks. The maple leaves were done using the Frozen Buttercream Transfer method.

Lesson learned:

• I should have outlined the leaves with a different colour, it would have given them more definition.

Birthday/Thanksgiving Cupcakes (October 2011)

Yellow cake cupcakes filled with pumpkin jam and iced with pumpkin buttercream icing. The letters were done using my new favourite: Frozen Buttercream Transfer.

Lesson learned:

• Don't overfill the cupcakes, or they will explode! However, the cupcake papers kept everything together anyway :)

My Little Pony Cake (July 2011)

Yellow cake filled with lemon curd, iced & decorated with buttercream. The red cardinal was created using the Frozen Buttercream Transfer (FBCT) method and My Little Pony was done using the Piping Gel Pattern Transfer technique learned in Wilton's Decorating Basics course.

Lesson learned:

• The Piping Gel Pattern Transfer technique doesn't work very well for small cursive writing, it just leaves an unreadable mess behind. However, the Frozen Buttercream Transfer method seems to work pretty well with writing! My handwriting is not the best and writing on cakes is hard, so I'm happy I can "cheat" and just use FBCT whenever I need to.