New Years Eve Sweet Table

2010 was a wonderful, fun and successful year at SweetThings.  So many celebration cakes, fabulous clients, challenging cake designs, wonderful people I have met over Twitter and the blog world...  I am so thankful.

My last cake for 2010 was this New Years Eve Sweet Table.  The photos are a little fuzzy, but there was a flashing disco ball in the room and I have no idea how to shoot that type of photo.  :-)

The Dessert Table included rice krispie squares dipped in milk chocolate, cranberry white chocolate biscotti, mini strawberry vanilla cupcakes, triple chocolate brownies with swiss meringue buttercream, chocolate cream cheese sandwiches and a small candy station of treats.

The disco ball and its stand was vanilla butter cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.  I was inspired by the disco ball cake made by Baker's Cakes in NC - I loved her idea to color each little fondant square and add each one to the ball.  A very realistic look, worth the effort!

Green and White Wedding

As many of you know, I got married last month.  And yes, I did make my own wedding cake(s) and sweet table.

The wedding inspiration was different shades of green, white and paper lanterns.  Decor, signs and invitations were designed by my talented sister Yvonne.

It was a beautiful, warm September day for our afternoon outdoor ceremony.  It was held at Cedar Ridge Creative Center and Botanical Gardens in Scarborough.

We had a cocktail reception in the historic house catered by Daniel et Daniel.  Following a champagne toast, our guests enjoyed the sweet table which I absolutely loved putting together.

The sweet table treats included: S'mores, chocolate covered strawberries, gluten-free chocolate cake, mini strawberry vanilla cupcakes, sugar cookies, zesty lemon sphere cakes, chocolate dipped pretzels, white chocolate truffles, chocolate covered almonds and orange cake bites.  The croquembouche were made by the caterers. 

It was such a perfect day for Steve and I.  We had so much fun and would like to thank our family and friends who were able to join us.

Photography by You+Me Weddings
Make-up by Janine Falcon and Hair by Alexis Jardin
Wedding Officiant Daniel Brereton
Green Wedding Shoes by John Fluevog
Sweet Table by me, SweetThings Toronto

Sphere Mini-Cakes: A Holiday Wedding Reception

I had the pleasure of designing this magnificent cake tower filled with sphere cakes.  My client and I have been talking and dreaming about this cake for many months now.  Her son was married in late summer in London, England.  Their wedding cake was based off a wonderful design by the talented cake artist Makiko Searle of Maki's Cakes.  I have been a fan of hers for quite some time!

The Toronto reception was planned for a few days before Christmas with all the family and friends flying in - that is how the colorful ornament theme came about.

The event was took place last night at the Market Kitchen which is a wonderful space at St. Lawrence Market.  It is in the Upper Level and overlooks the market area.

Here is another angle of the cake and you can see that they have a open kitchen.  They use this space for all sorts of events and also cooking classes.

I have made sphere cakes before, but not this many in so many sizes.  There was enough to feed 100 people.  There were 3 different sizes and the 2 different flavors:  Zesty Lemon and Chocolate Sour Cream with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream.  There were also 2 special soccer ball cakes for the big fans - the groom and the bride's father.

I think sphere mini cakes will be a very popular trend for 2010!  Let's see if I am right!

Baby Block Cakes

Isn't this such a lovely vision of cake layers? It's the "before" picture of my latest baby block cake.This cake was Neopolitan: Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry Cake Layers with some Raspberry filling between the Vanilla and Strawberry. And the rest is Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream - yum! This flavor combination idea came from Martha Stewart's Wedding Cakes book.

The ball was 4 layers of lemon butter cake. And all other decorations were made out of sugarpaste.

I also pulled up some of my old baby block cakes. This one is from a couple years ago - it was for my sister's baby shower. It was also a Neopolitan Cake.
Ah Memories... this is one of my very early cakes from a few years ago - I must've spent about 10 hours on it and I think I only charged $40 for it. I think it was vanilla cake and marshmallow fondant.

ha ha - for some reason I used buttercream for some of the decorations over the fondant and I really should have ironed my tablecloth. Well, you gotta start somewhere! :-)

Sphere Cakes: For All Occasions

I guess I could have thought of a better blog title, but it is exactly what I'm writing about this morning.

When looking for simple, elegant, yet "different" cake - many clients love to top their cake with a very round cake. Or you can call it a sphere or an ornament cake topper.

I once created an elegant wedding cake with a baseball on top which I talked about in this blog post.  Here is a wedding cake I did last year.  It was a 5 tier cake with a round cake topper.  I remember it was alternating tiers of Lemon Sour Cream Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream and Chocolate Velvet Cake filled with Dark Chocolate Ganache.   And the cake topper was Lemon Pound Cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream.


And for their 1st year anniversary the other week, I created this perfectly round ornament.  This was a lemon cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. So fun to make - the design possibilities are endless!

This cake was a re-creation of a company's logo in a 3D sphere cake.  It was lemon cake with swiss meringue buttercream.

Cake Decorator's Tip: These cake was made using the Wilton Sports Ball cake pan. I also have the Wilton mini-ball pan set and other sphere cake pans.   I also use a tougher cake like pound cake or a nice butter cake. You will have to test your batter to the pan to make sure it rises to meet the top. If it doesn't rise right to the top, then it will not make a nice sphere when you put the halves together.

Another July Wedding

It was a beautiful Saturday wedding at a golf and country club. Everything was elegantly done up with a hint of baseball theme - including the cake. The bride and groom are avid baseball players, so they wanted that to be encorporated, but not overpower the cake.

So, I designed the 3-tier wedding cake using their blue wedding colour and shined it up with pearl dust wherever I could. The topper was a round baseball cake with a handmade sugarpaste cap with their initials on it.

Each tier of the cake was 4 layers each, alternating chocolate and vanilla butter cake with swiss meringue buttercream.