Stephanie's Twilight

This weekend one of my best friends was celebrating her thirty.......well....thirty ??? something birthday :) and her wonderful boyfriend asked me to create a Twilight cake for her. We belong to a small group of ADORING Twilight fans (grown women with huge supernatural crushes!). In our defense - Edward really isn't 18...he's over 100 years old, which makes him waaaay older than us...so there's no robbing the cradle. At least on our end :)

Stephanie is such an amazingly wonderful person and friend. I really wanted to make a cake for her that had aspects of all the Twilight books. Each cover was incorporated into the cake: Twilight = the apple, New Moon = the tulip leaves, Eclipse = the red ribbon and Breaking Dawn = the chess board and pieces. Everything on the cake is handmade and edible - only the best for Steph!!

I'm hoping I'll have time to make it to the party - but still have loads of work to accomplish.....that's the life of a cake designer!

Happy 3? Birthday Stephanie! I love you lots xo

The Church

Every once in awhile, a request comes along that puts you to the test. I've had quite a few of those over the past year - but none as emotionally involved as this one.

This past Christmas my Great Aunt (now 92) approached me about creating a cake for The Renfrew Presbyterian Church's 85th Anniversary. She wanted to have something special there for this occasion - something that she could give the church to help celebrate.

At first I was a little worried. How many people did this need to feed? Sorry??? Did you say 175??? A 3D church?? To scale??? .....Mini panic!!! Ok - not mini.....MAJOR!! Apparently my family has alot of faith in me :)

This was a very important event for my aunt. She's been a member of this church since before it was erected in 1925. I believe they performed services out of a barn prior to it being built. My Grandmother, my Aunt Dot, my Aunt Ollie, my Aunt Jane and my mother were all members of the choir. My Grandfather was an elder. Our family has attended countless weddings, funerals and occasions there. There's alot of history involved for us so it was only appropriate that I did something.

As time drew closer to the big date - I came to terms with challenge of this 3D church. I sent my parents on a pilgrimage an hour away to take countless photos of various angles of the church. If I was going to do this - I was going to do it right! Every detail needed to be included. After all, a whole congregation was going to be looking at, and eating this cake. It had to be as perfect as I could get it.

Armed with a can of Red Bull, I set to work on the Friday...assembling piece by piece. I think I slept 4 hours on Friday night only to pick up where I left off on Saturday and work straight through for another 14 hours. A few more hours of touch up on Sunday and......WHEW!!!

Needless to say there were some very happy Presbyterians that Sunday. One of those was my Aunt Ollie, who is at this time the oldest living member of the church.

This has been my greatest acheivement to date. According to the Reverand -the cake brought a tremendous amount of joy to his congregation. Apparently it turned out to be a very important symbol of hope and strength. I never dreamed that I'd be able to provide those kinds of feelings from my work. This will stay with me for a long time :)

Ivy's Street

I love kids....I guess I should....I have two :)

No really - I do...and I love creating cakes that make them smile. That's why when a child is crazy about a certain character such as Elmo or Dora, I do my best to make them as exact as possible. My goal is to make them so perfect, that little Bobby or Suzie just doesn't want to eat it. To me, that's success.

The problem with creating characters that look so close to the originals, is that sometimes it's hard to let them go. I fell so in love with Elmo, Big Bird and Cookie Monster that I almost shed a tear as they were boxed up and ready to go. The only consolation being that Ivy was going to enjoy looking at them (and potentially eating them) as much as I enjoyed creating them for her.

Feedback from her mom was very good!!! In fact, I think she became just as possessive over Elmo as I had been :)

Happy Birthday Ivy!!

Anna's Big 50

Whew! What a whirlwind of activity around here lately!! Some serious cakes on the go!

One of those serious cakes was for a 50th Birthday being held at the Chateau Laurier. Providing a cake for the Chateau is a big deal. Well, at least for me :)

The birthday girl was going all out....Pink, flirty, fun....She handed me a copy of her invite and VOILA...inspiration. On the outside of the 'pink' invitation lay a giant leopard print stiletto.....Obviously that had to be included on the cake. I felt up to the challenge and am SO happy that my confidence paid off....so is my husband (wink) who usually has to listen to me whine and complain about every mistake I make :)

I was very lucky to be able to attend this function. It was an absolutely amazing evening in honour of an absolutely amazing woman!!

Happy Birthday Anna!