spring/easter cakes!

here are some easter egg cupcakes, i had lots of fun using my new grass piping tip :) and my new mini cake pan! there will be more baking fun all week, i can't wait! these are chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with vanilla swiss meringue butter cream.
here's another great pic by lionel :
http://greenteaandicecream.blogspot.com/2010/03/meag-brought-over-more-delicious.html

and the winners are...

the first two rounds of voting have finished and the most popular flavors are chocolate with white chocolate frosting and the chocolate cheesecake cupcakes! round three is now up so please vote away :)

this weekend is going to be all about the mini cupcakes with my new mini pan and some fun spring/easter decorations xo

last but not least from the weekend...

i had to do something with the left over chocolate butter cream from the mini cake filling :) xo

practice makes perfect

in preparation for lindsay's arrival on sunday i made two mini cakes for us to fondant, using the techniques i learned in my course yesterday. this picture is one of them following the 'crumb coat' step, before the final mask. this time i made two-layer vanilla mini cakes with chocolate swiss meringue butter cream filling and vanilla frosting.

once she arrived we started playing with fondant! see below...

it turns out that covering such small round cakes with fondant is more difficult than i thought it would be :) good thing i had a patient instructor! eventually the cakes looked like this...

and then i was let loose on her butterfly shape cutters!!! it was a bit messy...but so fun! thanks for all the tips and tricks bevi :) xo

baking & butter cream class

i am finally posting about my amazing weekend :) 

i had an amazing time at my baking and butter cream class at bonnie gordon. it is really nice to be supervised by a le cordon bleu trained pâtissier and told what you do wrong. i learned a lot about ingredient combination techniques that i was unaware of and my cake masking skills have definitely improved. the first picture is the final product of my whole day's work on saturday, a vanilla cake with a layer of mango swiss meringue butter cream and frosted in vanilla swiss meringue butter cream.

now that i had such a great time at bonnie gordon i can hardly wait to take another class but i know i need to pace myself. which class should i take next: preserves and fillings for cakes or cupcake bouquets??? decisions decisions!

this second picture is of my cake in action on saturday night alongside a fabulous tarte tatin, yum! xo

big baking weekend!

this weekend i have a couple fantastic baking events happening! the first, tomorrow, is my class at bonnie gordon on baking and buttercream http://www.bonniegordoncakes.com/ which i am super excited for! i plan on taking pictures all day, so hopefully they will let me, and then posting all about it afterwards. on sunday one of my best ladies is coming over to teach me fondant techniques :) this will also probably result in many pictures and hopefully some little works of art. watch this space...
xo

Lá Fhéile Pádraig!

i hope that says what i think it does :) happy st. patrick's day everyone!

to celebrate i made some seriously drunken cupcakes. they are chocolate stout (guiness) cupcakes with bailey's chocolate ganache filling and bailey's butter cream frosting and you can taste the alcohol! haha

when you make filled cupcakes the centre of the cake must be removed before you can pipe in the filling and then you replace just enough to cover the top above the filling. once you have repeated this 24 times there is a bit of cake left over from the middle of each cupcake. in the spirit of not wasting anything that has been soaked in spirit ;) i made a few cake pops out of the left over cake. this is easy and delicious, just take some crumbled cake and mix it with frosting or in this case the extra ganache, and then roll into even sized pops. melt some chocolate or melting discs and dip the pops in and top with any sprinkles or decorations and put in the freezer for a few minutes just to solidify. and then you have delicious bite sized cake pops!

shamrock cakes being enjoyed :)

glad you liked them guys!

http://greenteaandicecream.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-deliciousness-from-our-friends.html

xo

shamrock cakes

happy st. patrick's day week! i went all out this weekend with these green (red) velvet cupcakes. different recipe for the cake as it didn't contain any butter, same cream cheese frosting though with a bit of green for good measure, and the shamrock sprinkles! the real st. patrick's day recipe is coming up this week, i can hardly wait! xo

happy birthday kk!

happy birthday kk! these are banana cupcakes with cream cheese butter cream frosting for tomorrow's post birthday lunch dessert :) i hope you had a fab birthday day off, see you back at work tomorrow! xo

doug's ice cream sandwich

my brother is in his 3rd year of the hospitality program at guelph and this semester he, along with some classmates, gets to run the campus restaurant. this is the dessert item they have chosen to serve, home made ice cream sandwiches. looks soooo good! good luck doug, wish i could be there! xo

sunday scones

this post is only a couple of days late, but still delicious! we made these raspberry scones for breakfast on sunday as well as for tea that afternoon. they turned out really well! too bad we made them so large, otherwise we may have been able to enjoy them for a bit longer...

noix de coco

spring is in the air :) and tonight we had some friends over for dinner, so for dessert i baked these coconut cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting. they were really good! definitely a contender and will be making it into the next voting round. i toasted the coconut myself for the topping and swirled on the frosting instead of piping it. deciding to use vanilla frosting rather than coconut frosting is key in this combination, the cake was lovely and light so adding more coconut may have over done that flavor. i am hoping to do a bit more baking this weekend as well as enjoy the weather!