Smash Cake Photo Session

It is so hard to pick pictures to get printed out of the photo session that our son had.

Our photographer Leah did an excellent job, and has a lot of really great shots of Lucas. I wanted to post a picture of him and the cake, and we couldn't even decide on just one for this either.

She is having a special on now, so if you've been thinking of having pictures done you should check out her site and contact her soon. Great job Leah!!

As for the cake, if you plan on using this same idea of having a smash cake at your own child's photo session or birthday party, I would be more than happy to help you create a cake suited to your needs. The one in the picture happens to be a 6 inch double layer confetti cake with buttercream icing.

Smash Cake

Smash Cake
Originally uploaded by sarahenrycakes

My son turned one and we decided to get photos taken. My friend Leah, a photographer, booked us a time with her and came up with what I think is a great idea.
Enter the Smash Cake. A lot of people are getting little cakes for their little ones to demolish on their 1st birthday while everyone else gets a cut of the main cake. We decided that this smash cake would be a great prop for our pictures.
Rest assured we saved those photo frames til the end of the session. Once I have seen some of the results I will see if Leah doesn't mind if I post her work in my blog.

Rubber Ducky cupcakes

Rubber Ducky cupcakes
Originally uploaded by sarahenrycakes

I've heard you either love cupcakes or you don't. Personally, I'm on the fence with this one. I've had good experiences and bad ones with Cupcake cakes, sometimes referred to as CCC's.

Regardless, I get orders for cupcakes occationally, and if the customer wants it, I will make it.

So my latest CCC was for a baby shower made with 24 cupcakes into the shape of a rubber ducky floating on bubbles. I had found via Google a picture of a cake done with that idea so I recreated my way in cupcakes.

Madagascar's Gloria

I've seen the 1st Madagascar movie and liked it, but I haven't seen the second one yet. Maybe one day I will rent it for the kids; OK, for me too.
My neighbor's oldest daughter was having a birthday party and she chose to have a "Gloria" birthday cake.

This week I had two cakes to make for the same day, both for pick up in the same hour, so I was a busy girl last night. I'll post the second cake next.

Testing My Drawing Skills

I was asked if I could do a cake with a "jungle theme" or possibly something with a monkey, so I did some searching. I have to admit that I quite often will look at cakes made by another company here in Calgary called Cakeworks. They do beautiful work, and quite frankly it would be my dream job if it weren't so far away from my house, and I am guessing the hours may not exactly fit into my life. (I don't know for sure, as I have never applied for a job there)
I really hope that they believe in the saying "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" because, I came across a cute cake that had both the jungle theme and a monkey. So my challenge was to use that picture and recreate it as best I could as well as adding a couple other details to make the picture more suited to my clients son. I made sure that the pictured baby had hair; definitely important to a proud mom, and I am speaking from experience.

Backyardigans

I have 2 boys at home, one who loves to watch cartoons, especially the Treehouse channel. I really try hard not to pay too much attention to the actual shows there. I feel like watching makes me regress, like I am losing brain cells.

But once I was asked to make a "Pablo" cake, any time my son was watching his shows I was waiting and actually hoping that I could see the Backyardigans show. The things they come up with are creative, and nothing I would ever think of. It encourages kids to dream up things and use their imaginations.

I really think that the writers of these shows must spend their days with children waiting for them to act out their imaginations so they can use it in their shows. I really wish I knew why it is that as we grow older we have less and less imagination. Kids think of the strangest things to say and do, and my kids are continuously surprising me. Almost makes me wish I could go back and be that carefree again....

Anyhow, back to real life. Here's Pablo:

L'Arche Calgary Cake Walk

Humbled. That is my word of the day today. I have just come home from viewing the competition cakes at the L'Arche Calgary Cake Walk.
16 Professional bakers in Calgary show off their talents to raise funds for the charity.
There are three awards given in the competition, and we stayed long enough to vote for the People's Choice Award and hear the winners of the Judges' Choice award. The categories were Tiered Cakes and Sugar Sculpture.
I was torn between two cakes in the tiered Cakes category, and so I voted for the cake whose friendly (and cute) co-creator from Decadent Desserts was standing there willing to answers my multitude of questions.
So, the Judges Choice award went to The Calgary Sugarcraft Guild, which, by the way, was the other cake that I was temped to choose.
I hope that I will be able to find out later somehow, who took top score in the People's Choice award. They were to announce that winner at 3:30

Here are some pictures of one winning cake:
So you can see why this cake won, and why I was tempted to choose it as well. Can we say attention to detail. Everything is edible on the cakes.

The one I did choose had so much detail put into making the flowers and that is one of the reasons it was my favorite. I would really love to make flowers as detailed and pretty as the ones on this cake. All of this beautiful work is certainly something to strive for. Maybe it's time for me to go back to school. Cake school.

Chocolate Experiment

There are some great cakes, and there are some not so great cakes. I have to say that I was not entirely happy with the finished look of this next cake.
A friend asked me if I could do a carrot cake with cream cheese icing for her friend's birthday. There was no plan as to how this cake should be decorated, I was told I could do it however I wished. I've done cream cheese icing in the past and didn't like the way that it held, or as the case may be, didn't hold it's shape. So I had an idea in my head as to what I wanted to do, but the only thing that resembled this imaginary picture turned out to be the layout. Hmm.
I decided to decorate with chocolate instead of icing. My experiment was to try to make chocolate leaves, based on actual leaves on a house plant of mine. Please be assured that I made sure to wash the leaves well before using them.

I melted chocolate, poured it over the leaves, let it harden, and then removed the real leaf from the chocolate. What was left was individual leaf shaped chocolates. Not too bad.
It was the assembly that started throwing me off. I was now working with melted runny chocolate. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to get my lines right on the first try. The flow didn't want to stop where I wanted it to, but I tried anyways. My least favorite part was getting the writing to work. This was the only request that was made. "Please write Happy Birthday Hali" I had to try. I did manage to get all the spelling correct, but unfortunately it wasn't entirely level. I am hoping I get points for spelling and maybe that will keep the cake from being Cake Wrecks worthy.
You can be the judge.