CO's 5th b-day cake

I was inspired by this cake this year for CO's cake, unfortunately I can not find the source of the photo.

 

CO loves the story 'the gingerbread man', he likes playing 'candyland', so I added a little bit of construction theme to it and ta da....

CO's birthday cake!

 

this photo is before I wrote 'happy 5th birthday' in it

Chocolate Cake

covered in
marshmellow fondant

click to see this videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7y2KsU_dhwI

CO's 4th birthday...

I made his cake using the same design I put on his birthday shirt. I drew the forklift freehand (vs using my copycake projector)

engagement cake

I was asked to do an engagement cake for a family at church

I used marshmellow fondant for the cake (WHICH WAS SO EASY to work with) and I drew the peacock feather freehand copying the colours and feathers from the wedding invitations

Rural Life Mission

I was asked to do an anniversary cake for Rural Life Mission a few weeks ago...here is the finished project

CO's birthday cake

anniversary cake for the church

let me just say...3-D building aren't easy...but it turned out well

Katrina's birthday cake

she is on a ford tractor kick these days

cake for VBS

Our church did VBS and at the end they do a BBQ, I made up a cake for them using thier logo from the week. I forgot to put the bird's tail on :)

canada day cookies

cake

So I finally created something in the kitchen worth taking a photo of :) I signed up to make a cake for the Girl Guides end of year party. It turned out nicely considering I just got off of working a LONG 40 hour weekend. I see all the flaws but itsn't that always the case when you make something? you are your biggest critic. I got the pics from the Girl Guide website. I would probably use royal icing next time for the outlining...it might have been easier and my lines would have been less wobbly. I started with the girl in the top left corner with a #2 tip and then realised that I needed to go smaller if I wanted any chance of getting the details clearer (notice how you can't tell what the heck she is doing with her hands...she is recycling) I also took out a word after writing it all to make it make sense...so there is a flaw where the missing word was.

Now it is 2am and I should be sleeping...atleast for 3 or more hours by now...

how long do you suppose cookie dough can last in the fridge before baking it?

more of my easter baking...

these are some of the chick ginger cookies I decorated earlier this week (rather than having a nap and catching up on some much needed sleep) I used a new icing that calls for liquid egg whites (pasturized) which I very much enjoyed using. It was easy to pipe and it smoothed out very nicely. I divided the recipe up so I only made 1/5 of it...which worked out perfectly. I tinted it yellow for the bodies, then added orange for the legs and mouths and finally I tinted it black for the small details.

this evening I decorated a batch of coffee sugar cookies with chocolate (I have yet to photograph them) and made a bunch of rabbit pops for C to take tomorrow to playgroup.

easter cookies...

seems I fell asleep while posting last night...that is what happens I guess when you have wireless internet and the laptop in bed :)
these are my easter cookies so far...I am really happy with the ones with the drawings (though I always see where I can improve it in the future) I found some retro easter photos online and since my drawing skills aren't the greatest I used a projector to help guide me. There are ones that I LOVE more than others. I really like the purple polkadot one.
Next week I am going to do some more butterfly ones for my co-worker's daughter. She is having a birthday so I thought I'd give her some as a gift.

is it??

Is it possible to bake and blog without a camera?? Currently I am baking egg shaped cookies so I can practice some easter egg designs. The first batch is in the oven, the kitchen aid is mixing the icing...and my camera sits on my kitchen table doing nothing.... :)
I will for sure take photos of the final project.
I was talking to my MIL today and she loves the butterfly cookies that I decorated. She wants to try some herself so I sent her the link for a tutorial that I was inspired by. It is from Sweetopia

easter...and cookie mode

Easter is coming and I am in easter creation mode...what is that??? well I am in the mode to make Easter treats of course! I found a website (I online shop a fair amount...when you live in the country and drive a pick up truck...postage is cheaper than gasoline)
ANYWAY...I found a site here in Ontario that I consider to be reasonable in price...and have recently made two orders from them (for mostly cookie making supplies which are not very heavy)...they have a good selection of cookie cutters.
I also have purchased a few Easter themed baking things (cookie cutters, chocolate molds,etc.)
Right now I have chocolate peanutbutter easter eggs hardening in the fridge and chocolate rabbit pops too. I have sugar cookie dough in the fridge too as I want to bake easter egg sugar cookies this evening and decorate them...very exciting...atleast for me...probably not really for you. This morning I searched the internet for some retro Easter photos...which I am going to attempt to create onto cookies this evening.
Weather wise things are lovely...Spring may be in the air...

butterflies

I saw some butterfly sugar cookies that were quite impressive so I thought I would try my hand at decorating some. I learned that I need to wipe my toothpick when dealing with black icing (as you can notice on the pink butterfly), but other than that....I was very impressed on how they turned out. I gave them to a co-worker's daughter (who is 6) and she loved them!

Valentines Cookies for K

I made a bunch of Valentines cookies for my sister to take to school for her party. This whole sugar cookie decorating is becoming such fun! I even got a compliment from my father to do with how impressed he was on how they turned out.

Valentines Cookies

Last night I went over to help my neighbour decorate cookies for he son's JK class valentine's party. She made the cookies, and I am not sure what recipe she followed. Here are some of the fruits of our labour...

They were large cookies so they took quite a bit of work. I find working with a smaller tip (#2 or #3) work nicely, it takes more time but I find it works out fairly neatly. and I used a #1 for the writing. She was working with #3 & #4 tips and I think she found her flooding tended to run down the side. When making the edging for the flooding, I think that more space needs to be left along the edge to hold the icing in rather than right along the edge (as then gravity works against you) I really enjoyed the squiggle design of the blue heart (in the middle)

stainglass window cookie pops

I tried my hand at making suckers yesterday. They turned out great...they were watermelon flavour.

I forgot to take a photo of the final product and I gave them all away that night.

Also last night was the Valentine's party with my Girl Guides. We made chocolates using some heart molds & some using valentine cookie molds and then we also made stain glass window cookie pops. (candy used was jolly ranchers) They turned out GREAT! and then we finished off the evening with some Love Potion (which was a float using rasperry sherbet, pink lemonade and some 7up)

sugar cookies

Yesterday my neighbour came over and while our 2 year olds played together, we tried our hand at flooding sugar cookies (I need to work at adding less colour to the icing as the pink and green turned out much brighter than needed). We also experimented with a couple of different icing recipes. One we LOVED. The second we DIDN'T! the second one had meringue powder in it.