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.

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 ...

Christmas Cupcakes (December 2010)

Chocolate cake cupcakes filled and iced with buttercream, with multi-coloured sprinkles on top.

Lesson learned:

• If you overestimate the amount of icing you need, icing freezes very well!

Christmas Tree Cake (December 2010)

Yellow cake filled and iced with buttercream, with sugar pearls and mini M&Ms. The cake was carved out of a 9x13 cake, and the leftover pieces were used for the Christmas gifts.

Lesson learned:

• Placing each sugar pearl individually is very time consuming. There has to be a better way ...