Union Jack Cake

Worked on a fun little project for last years certificate winner from Stirling's Christmas concert. I think it turned out well. I don't use piping gel to do my designs typically, but thought this would be the best way to ensure the intense colour I was looking for on a small 8" cake.

Can anyone tell me why it keeps rotating my pictures as of late?? And doesn't seem to center it as I tell it to :o( Anyhow; this was one of my delicious white cakes with a simple whipped cream filling at my client's request. Still a very light and airy cake and any filling would compliment it well. I went for a very tiny shell-like border with a 3 tip. Looks off in the picture at an angle but looked great over-all and the client loved it!

CVF 25th Anniversary Cake

Well; River City Treats is becoming more of a catering business with my main focus being on cakes. I've been coming up with a lot of good recipes lately and pulled a Bettany Frankel. I just wish it came with endorsements from Jim Bean :oP I've come up with a very tasty lemonade and am in the process of working on a proposal to supply it on a regular basis to at least one bar! It's a start and tastes great with an ounce of Tequila too (completely optional) - please Jose Cuervo please send your endorsements this way :o) It's even hand squeezed! Good workout for a refreshing result. The last few days I have been working on an anniversary cake for another one of my mom's walking club associations. My third order of the year; I've just been too busy to do much in the line of promos. I think its my best 12X18 cake yet! I even managed to incorporate two recipes to come up with a marble cake. I'm back to using flour and butter to prep my pan and you know what it works; I didn't have enough of the Cake Release I always tout about, but it really worked well, so well I might switch back. Certainly costs pennies versus the container from the store. I made the cake in two batches so the process pretty much took up a good portion of yesterday. I did all the icing and decorating today and only did a buttercream transfer on the Maple Leaf and used gold sparkle gel for the IVV portion. I did, however, try to do something a little different with the 25TH portion that didn't go so well, but I didn't think the sparkle gel alone would show up on the red and thought it would have stood out and wanted something more three-dimensional. Note to self is to not do that again. If it had been hideable I think I would have scraped it off and done somthing completely different with the number. Gold was a key factor in the IVV - I just couldn't get my colours to look gold enough and the other alternative would have been way too much gold edible sparkles - that were the size of raw sugar crystals at the least; I didn't want to cause toothaches and send anyone to have to get dental work after. I know my teeth hurt just looking at them. So yes as I said it was a marble cake and I made fresh chocolate pudding from scratch for the filling. Just a simple buttercream icing with shell border. I had to fix some holes in the transfer and mucked it up when I tried to smooth it out, wasn't such an easy fix afterall it stuck to the gel like mad! I also should have outlined the IVV with some like-colour so it didn't run into a few nooks and crannies where it didn't belong.

All in all I think it turned out well and my mom was quite pleased I would say. I can't wait to hear feedback on the cake. I used my white cake recipe instead of the yellow. The yellow can be very dense and dry sometimes. The white has 8 egg whites so if it isn't moist and fluffy I'll kick myself. I haven't had a dry one yet.

Valentine's and Grammy's 70th Cake

So far I've done a few baking projects for us, but I've been lax in documenting them and I'm sure you're getting board with seeing the same projects repeated every year. Here are some of the baking I've done as well as my latest paying project.

My annual Valentine cookies just get simpler to do every year. Here is a pic of the way I sent them to school.


This is the cake I made for us for Valentine's Day. I almost thought I had another baking item go missing, then I remembered I lent my heart pan to a friend a few years ago, glad I didn't totally lose it. Mmmm; chocolate, cherries and cream cheese; my cake version of a cherry cheese cake, it was delicious.

This is the cake I made for the family for Easter. I made a white cake with lemon curd, a nice way to make Easter a little less cold and pretend Spring is really here. :oP

The cake that began as a large slab cake with a crossword puzzle theme for a huge bash that was booked in January ended up as an 8" square for a much smaller swuaree by April. I just did this one this past weekend for a fellow board member at my daughter's playschool. She was able to get a sample of my baking when I did all the catering goodies for their annual Christmas Concert. I had great visions for the original cake, but I think the end product turned out alright. The cake was a french vanilla (which was a new recipe) with fresh strawberries and whipped cream filling on two layers; making it a three layer cake. I wasn't thrilled by the smoothness of my buttercream icing when I tried to smooth it out with waxed paper and my fondant smoother, maybe it was too cold. I was really trying to stretch the icing to cover the cake so I only had to make extra for the decor.

Christmas Projects

The past few months have been a blur for me. I've been so busy with trying to find a job outside of teaching and have had some luck finally this month. I've only done one paid project so far this year (just this past weekend) and I haven't been doing as many "demos" either. I've had no luck trying to move my teaching onto the community side of things and am still trying to pull together students for a first course, so I can carry them through the four. I have only one student who seems serious for Course 4, the newest from Wilton, but with a store no longer paying me an hourly wage, whatever I make from my students is what I make minus 10% for the community league, which is alright. I get a free listing in the community league newspaper, but it's not driving marketing like I though it would.
Now that I've taken on contracts with some merchandising companies my schedule will be all over the place. I'm also waiting to hear back on a third interview for a full time tech rep position, which would entail a lot more commitment from many.
Here are some pics to get things up to date:

Stirling's Birthday - just a simple chocolate slab; we were starting to have problems with our camera then; so by the time we got one on hubby's work camera I had already cut into it and removed the candles.

These two are pics from our Christmas Open House; things you can use your cookie cutters for - cucumber "gingerbread" men, made great garnishes for many of my platters.


This was the Christmas cookie venture I did for the kids for school this year, I made these a couple years ago, went much smoother this time.

I made my gingerbread for the house from scratch this year, my Joy of Cooking cookbook has templates for it and everything. I had many Wilton bits put away from last Christmas (2010) that never got used, the kids got to decorate it with a little help from me, but not too much.
Stay tuned for 2012 baking...