Happy Birthday "Pat-Man"!!

It was my boyfriend's birthday this past week, and I wasn't going to let my special someone's day go by without honouring him with some form of cake. This design goes way back to even before we were dating. We both took part in a cupcake bake-off competing against each other, being judged by our two good friends (no bias at all!). Although the score was close, my boyfriend did win (by 3 points) however I have to admit his concept was pretty cool: His cupcakes, when all put together made up the Pac Man maze. It seemed more than appropriate that for his birthday I try and follow this threat and give him my version of the Pac Man maze.

 

 With a bit of construction paper and my trusty glue gun, I tried to best recreate the Pac Man maze, and thus the "Pat Man" (his name is Patrick, it was only natural) maze is born! The look on his face was quite wonderful, and he looked truly surprised! Happy Birthday my Handsome Man, what shall we do for next year?? 

Hippity Hoppity Easter!

Chocolate and Easter have become pretty much synonymous with one another. You hear "Easter" and you think Easter Bunny, egg hunt, chocolate O.D., etc. And although I also have more in-depth associations with Easter I can't ignore the seasonal opportunities that come with this Holy day. I make sweet treats designed to reflect the "new life" half of Easter time; new beginnings, Spring-time, new life. And besides, bunnies always seem to look so cute made out of chocolate!

 I used the designs from Bakerella's Cake Pop book, I just altered it ever so slightly. Plus I wanted to avoid what happened with the bunnies last year.

 I didn't think anything needed changing with the adorable little chicks! So I kept them pretty much the same.

 My Mum's favourite design, of course, the sheep! The only thing I changed really was the licorice logs for the legs. I didn't just use black I shook things up and threw in a white one here and there.

 These are the bunnies! A far cry from the "Alien Pig Bunnies" that came out last year

 I love these cute little chicks! So simple, and would be perfect even for Spring-time birthday parties.

 Sheep!!! Once I figured out the best way to put the sugar pearls on the chocolate without them all slipping to the underside, they were really quite straight forward.

HAPPY EASTER!!! 

Spring into a new beginning!

Have a Chocolatey Birthday Vicki!

Almost a month ago a friend of mine asked if I could make him a chocolate cake for his wife's birthday. The specifications were simple: dark chocolate, boozy, no cream filling, and in the style of Première Moisson. Seemed simple enough except I had never attempted anything like this before so was glad I had the time to do my homework. Naturally this started with the testing out of several different chocolate cake recipes! I wanted to find one that was dark enough but tasted more grown-up, and so with the help of some crème de cacao I eventually found a super recipe! Now to get around the cream filling I wanted to try to use something I had learned about at a chocolate making course I went to at one of my local suppliers l'Univers du Vrac. I made an "icing" filling using hazelnut butter, which resulted in a glorious praline type filling. To top off this praline filled, rich chocolate cake I poured over melted dark chocolate ganache.....oh my. And for the crown I created my version of a microscopic view of a cell using different colours of chocolate. I loved the look of the poured ganache, so shiny and decadent looking but I for sure want to practice my technique; This calls for more cake!

 When the cakes were cooling, I poured a bit of crème de cacao over them to soak in.

 This is the image of the cell I used to inspire the chocolate design. And even if your eye doesn't see a cell, it still looks like a cool design.

 The cake just after I finished the ganache layer.

The cake all put together! Lovely richness topped off with a chocolate crown.











I have been informed that the cake is definitely "rich and chocolatey". Firm confirmation that it turned out just right. 

Happy to be Served!

My niece suffers from a fructose intolerance, which means in short that anything containing corn syrup or fruit juice, etc is what's known  in my sister's household as a "fructose nightmare" and is deemed un-Paige friendly. When ever Paige has come to Montreal with my sister to visit with us I've never been able to make my cake pops for her because some of the ingredients are un-Paige-friendly and therefore major fructose nightmares....except these ones. This week's special project was to make Paige-friendly cake pops so I used a different cake and made a different icing for the centres, then  I checked ingredients on anything I wanted to add to these cake pops to make doubly sure that they would be safe on my little nieces' tummy.

My Mum and I and a friend of ours (our honourary Auntie Julie) went to Ontario to visit the family this weekend so I took the opportunity to try these Paige-friendly cake pops. My sister was so pleased when I told her I'd made some alterations to make sure these wouldn't end up being a fructose nightmare. Hence the smiley faces, because for one they're meant to make people smile back at them, but also because they would make Paige's tummy happy, not sad!

 If I had had more time (as always) I would liked to have done a different face for every single cake pop, but I compromised by making a few of each different kind.

The end result sort of reminded me of Pacmen.

For something so simple, they really spoke for themselves: they look happy, therefore if you eat one, you'll feel happy!

 The whole gang!

 When I showed Patrick, my boyfriend, what I was doing his first question was "are they mint?" and second "why does this one have arrow eyes?". After I explained all the different facial expressions; IE: winking, laughing out loud, smirking, ":D", etc., he sat next to me at the table while I finished up the last few faces. After a couple minutes, I looked up and noticed that he was picking up the cake pops and mimicking the facial expression on the cake pop!! This was the one I captured on film, but it really was quite hilarious!

The whole lot of them, all packed up and ready to go entertain my family!

They still make me smile!












:)               :)                :)              :)              :)                :)                 :)                 :)              :)

Happy Birthday Raissa!!

When my Mum and I went to have our nails done at the Spa on Tuesday, a few little birdies told me that it was going to be one of their employees special day on Thursday! Despite the fact that it's a little less time than I usually like to work on a project, I wanted to do a little something special to celebrate her day! Added to the fact that I had just received some new sprinkles I wanted to try something out. These sprinkles were yellow, pink, and blue so I used vanilla cake and coloured it blue, then dipped that in pink and yellow chocolate. Before the chocolate dried, I covered the pops in the coloured sprinkles.

So Raissa, these are for you!! Happy Birthday Chickie, hope you like them!

Paddy Cake Pops

I can't help but be excited by a holiday where everyone wears green (as it is my favourite colour) so how best can I pay homage to this day? The answer becomes clear when I spot my green food colour paste beaming at me from my Wilton caddy. I had wanted to do a nice Celtic design on these truffle cakes, but alas I found myself rather restricted by time. Perhaps some other day... Instead I joined in with the masses and dug out the green chocolates from my stash and together with my green food colour paste depicted St. Patrick's Day in cake pop form. 

I made two particular designs: the first was just vanilla cake with a healthy dose of green food colouring paste, in a single dip of medium tone green and adorned with a shamrock (of course). Second I made a plain chocolate cake and dipped it in my mint chocolate then made a lattice of different shades of green on top. The mint really doesn't have anything to do with St. Patrick's Day but as these truffle cakes were destined for my boyfriend's house, and the mint chocolate ones are some of his favourites I always try to make them for him. My head tells me I should have used a flavoured oil like "Irish coffee", "Whiskey", or "Bailey's" to flavour the chocolate to really make it authentic but seeing as I don't have any of those flavours at the moment, I'll try those another day. 

 Far left are the mint chocolate with their chocolate lattice work. In the middle are the totally green vanilla truffles, and just to show you the green-ness on the inside I cut one in half which you can see on the far right.

 Showcasing the very obviously St. Patrick's Day themed truffles. 

I love how the centres of these turned out! It definitely opens up a whole new world of possibility in terms of customizing your cake pops (providing they're not chocolate flavoured...)

Spring Has Sprung!

Although today you wouldn't feel so spring-like because of the grey sky and the puddles and the rain and the brown, semi-melted snow everywhere, but Spring is apparently just around the corner. The temperatures are beginning to creep up the thermostat, soon we can park back out on the streets overnight, and best of all... the Dairy Queen down the street is open again! Along with the start of Spring, at this time of year people suddenly feel the need to start something new or begin something new and exciting. These cake pops are one of my representations of this feeling.

Earlier in the week, Mum asked me to make these for her Bible study to be for the start of Spring and to celebrate one of the members, Lori "turning over a new leaf" and starting her new job. I wanted to do pretty flowers because I felt that they would look much better on a cake pop than trying to replicate that certain shade of brown the snow turns at this time of year...

Mum suggested I make them covered in triffids... but let's see how many flowers you can identify. (I'll give you a little help however, the pink flowers were red on the original design but when I asked my Mum to name me a red flower her reply was very informative: "there aren't any red flowers in the Spring-time, really. It should be dark pink... just make one up!" So I did. But other than that one I tried to base them all on flowers I actually knew, and these one probably will taste much better!

I wanted to make a video to show you all the different sides of the cake pop. Unlike some of my other designs that have a face or a main side, these were equally decorated on all sides. (Sorry I can't make it any bigger...)

Highlighting some of the flowers that were on all the pops.

The flowers even "grew" up on top of the pop, so I needed a top-shot to show that.

More of a close-up of the flowers and leaves.

My little bouquets of flowers, wrapped up and set up as little bouquets of flowers!