quilts and brushes

This chocolate and vanilla buttercream cake was made for a bridal shower.

The bride-to-be's favourite flower is the tulip, so I crafted a small bouquet out of gumpaste and painted them with orange, magenta and yellow petal dusts. 

I absolutely adore tulips and can't believe I never thought to try to make them out of sugar before. Here, they are attached to painted gumpaste stems tied together with black satin ribbon and resting atop the quilted cake.

Lastly, I made a dragee-bordered gumpaste decal to rest on the corner of the cake with the BTB's first initial. Congratulations to the bride on her upcoming nuptials!


I also had a request to replicate this cake for a sweet 16 birthday. Wanting to change it up a little bit, I modified the colours and added a gumpaste cutout of Van Gogh's Starry Night:

 The birthday girl's favourite colour is blue, so I played that up and added several tubes of blue paint and lots of blue buttercream on the palette. 

I added a few more tubes of paint and included the birthday girl's age in the paint tubes ("1" and "6" in the background).


Another busy day of baking!


-Danielle

the big one

Wedding season is now upon us and to ring it in this weekend I prepared the largest cake I've made yet:

This cake is made of 160 servings, with a 14" bottom, 10" middle and 6" top for the bride and groom. I made this cake a little bit taller than usual (5.5") to make sure the servings, while slim, would still be generous. Each tier was made of lemon cake with different buttercream fillings - strawberry and vanilla in the 14", chocolate and blueberry in the 10", and strawberry and chocolate in the 6".

The bride and groom requested a swiss meringue buttercream finish in gray (to match the chrome theme of the reception) with brightly coloured gerbera daisies as accents. Because swiss meringue buttercream doesn't form a crust, it's nearly impossible to achieve a fondant-like finish - but this was close!

It was a tremendous undertaking but I'm very pleased with the final result. Hopefully you agree!

-Danielle

carberry soap co.

The Carberry Soap Co. had their official grand opening this weekend and asked me to provide them with treats for their customers. So, I prepared 100 cupcakes and 100 cookies for their big event!

Vanilla sugar cookies were topped with an edible logo and packaged individually in cello baggies. 

...and this is what 100 of them look like.

Vanilla and chocolate mini cupcakes were topped with pastel coloured vanilla buttercream to match the soaps, and finished with a fondant topper with Carberry's logo.

With a little help from some gorgeous flower arrangements, the set up turned out very well. Congratulations to Carberry Soap Co. owners Margo and Martha on your beautiful (and aromatic) new store!

And thanks for the soap :)

-Danielle

bai mudan

More popularly known as the white peony, this gumpaste flower was made to dress up a cream cheese buttercream-filled chocolate cupcake.

Another sweet and splendid way to spend an overcast Saturday afternoon :)

-Danielle

from paris with love

While I've had many travels and seen much of Europe, I've never visited Paris. I know that my next trip over the pond will have to include it, because there's absolutely so much I would love to see and do: I dream of climbing the Eiffel tower; of walking under the Arc de Triomphe; of seeing the Mona Lisa; of savouring LaDuree macarons (clearly); and mostly... of trying on every shoe in the Christian Louboutin flagship store.

It's too bad you can't slide your toes into this peep-toe pump.

While these roses don't quite have the fragrance you'd find along the banks of the river Seine, they do have a hint of vanilla and a heck of a lot of sugar. Yum.

Until I take a trip to the epicentre of fashion and the birthplace of almond meringue cookies, I will just have to relish the replicas and homemade substitutes.

 

-Danielle