Baked Bake Along Blog

As I haven't been making any cakes lately, or baking that much for that matter, I've been a little sad that I've lost touch with the baking world. Thank goodness, some of my favourite authors have a hardcore fan, and she has started a bake along blog for Baked Explorations, the new recipe book from the owners of Baked in new york!!! GUESS who will be blogging along with Baked Sunday Mornings! THAT"S RIGHT! me. And, I encourage all you bakers out there to join as well, simply because I've truly never tasted such delicious food as these guys have come up with!




On a side note, I am so sad that I missed them in Toronto this past week ... I really wanted my sticky chocolate covered book signed! Anyway, pick up the books, they're excellent! Happy baking!

Leopard Print Purse Cake

HEY WORLD! I've missed you! I've been doing so many different and new things, not related to cake lately! I now work at a hotel at the front desk, and it's wicked. Lucky for me, cake orders are still coming in and I'm more than willing to do them! Here's one that I finished today, and I LOVE how it turned out! The zipper is my favourite part.

In other news, here is an adorable unicron:

As well as a femenine birthday cake suitable for many ages:

I do love birds and flowers!

Coming in the next few weeks, is a traditional white wedding cake with a kajillion red roses.

Catch ya later!

Mini Cakes at Robyn's Cookies

Instead of a cupcake, try a mini cake for your next celebration! These cakes are 2 layers and can have any inscription added to them. They are the same size as a cupcake and come placed on a delicious sugar cookie, it's all edible! Choose a design in the shop, or call ahead to have a different design from the previous post.

Robyn's Cookies

3215 Yonge St. Toronto ON.
Back Building (Off Ranleigh through the driveway, behind Melonhead)
416 489 8497
www.robynscookies.com

New Celebration Cakes!

For any celebration or occassion, these designs are perfect!

6": $30, 8": $40, 10": $50

Any cake can have an inscription, and you can mix and match flavours and colours!

These are available at Robyn's Cookies, (3215 Yonge St. back building Toronto) in mini form, and the larger sizes are available with one day's notice. 416 489 8497 or 905 995 1187.

YUM!

Voluptuous Vanilla

Omnipotent Orange

Raunchy Red Velvet

Witty White Chocolate (and Lavender)

Charming Chocolate

Ravishing Rosewater

Bonnie Gordon Class

Here is my cake! I used equal parts of fondant and gumpaste to create the fabric effect on the bottom and middle tiers. This technique, I was absolutely thrilled with! The cake is meant to resemble a wedding dress, flowing, and flattering. I incorporated different elements of dresses that I love into this cake, the end result turned out to be lovely!

Project at BGS

I've been working tirelessly to present to you, the readers of Iris and Olive's Cakes BLOG with a stunning, beautiful, wedding dress inspired cake!

Today I'm proud to announce that.... I'm 2 days away from being done!

A little teaser though, I've been learning so many new techniques at Bonnie Gordon's school, that I'm BRIMMING FULL of new ideas! One of the techniques I learned, was how to drape fabric. ooOOOoo could that be what you will see in my next post?

STAY TUNED to find out more!

Classes: Bonnie Gordon AND Ron Ben Israel!!!!

HA! I am so excited, so unbelievably excited! Tomorow I begin a master class of cake design with the one and only BONNIE GORDON! And today, I signed up for a master gumpaste flower class with RON BEN ISRAEL! YEAH I DID! Stay tuned to see what amazing things these instructors have to offer, I'm so excited!

Star Wars Cookies

Just a little something I whipped up at work!

Martini Glass Cake

This cake was for three lovely ladies all celebrating their birthday this evening. Just something simple, with a martini glass for each of them! Martini glasses made from gumpaste. Also, a smack of EDIBLE GLITTER! Wicked awesome yes? Yes!

Book Club Cupcakes

These cupcakes were for my step sister's grandma's book club. My step sister suggested having little sugar books to go on top of the cupcakes, depicting titles that the group had previously read. She gave me a little list of the books, where she also wrote out directions to get to a coffee shop near her grandma's house, and as a result, 3 of the book titles are merely directions!!! Ah, the silly things that happen! Luckily, they all looked like they could have been book titles, and there were exactly 12 items on the list for the dozen cupcakes. You can see my reasoning!!! 

White chocolate cake with passion fruit buttercream. MMM! After the last post, I'm wary to make anything OTHER than this delicious combination!!

This week: Sassy Birthday Cake for three lovely ladies!

Orchid Wedding Cake

This cake was for a beautiful wedding in Toronto today! White chocolate cake with Passion Fruit buttercream. WOWZERS does it ever taste good!!!

Storefront

I am on the hunt!

I'm searching for a storefront in the Toronto area, as business is doing well, and I'm ready to expand! Of course opening a shop is a challenge, but one that I'm prepared to accept!

Since I was in about grade 6, I've long dreamed of owning my own shop. A cafe, a bakery, a sandwich shop, but now I've landed on the delicious idea of CAKE!

But how to get started?

-Business plan
-Class at Bonnie Gordon's School of Cake Design
-Financing
-Equipment
-Set up my shop!

So, in the coming months I'll be saving like crazy, searchig out equipment, and aiming to find the absolute perfect location to set up shop!
I've set up a fund to save for a mixer first. So far, I have $115.00! I'm about...$1100.00 away from my mixer! HOORAY! With each order, the fund grows, and my dreams come closer to fruition!

I've also set a deadline for myself, to open in March of 2011. So watch it grow! Soon enough, you can come down to the shop and check out all of the delicious cakes I'll be creating from scratch using premium ingredients.

Till then, stay tuned!!

What do you like the best?

Website is LIVE!

Check out the website now at www.iris-and-olives.com

YEAAHAA!

New Website!

OK! So after lots of labouring and figuring and whatnot, I have a new website! No more blogger website, alas, but this new one is pretty darn fancy! Click here to see it!

The address will be changed later to www.iris-and-oilves.com for future reference. The website can also be accessed through the "website" section of this blog, by clicking the picture of the Moroccan Themed Wedding cake.

Of course I'll still blog here, because hey, blogging is the bomb diggety. Yes, bomb... diggety.

Hope you like the new site!

Cupcakes, for Cupcake's Sake.

Rosewater cupcake with Grenadine Icing, wildflowers on top.

Red Velvet cupcake with Cream Cheese Icing, cinnamon hearts on top.

 

 

 

 

 

Coco Chanel Purse

Here's an order I had for this week, pretty snazzy stuff! If only I could afford the real thing.... WELL with about a gazillion more orders, owning my own Chanel bag might actually be realistic! KEEP THE ORDERS COMING! Ha, I kid I kid! (But seriously, who wouldnt want this bag?)

I had another order in the "Erotic" theme this week for a bachelorette party. If interested, please contact me for details and pictures of that order. :D Very fun order anyway, thanks Lisa!

AHhhhhh, time for a long weekend sleep. A very long...long...sleep. WHAT A WEEK!

Next week: NO CLUE!!!! Yeah! Check back later for more snazzy stuff!

Under Water Birthday Cake

Just a little birthday cake for a young man named Ewan! He loves creatures and whales, so I thought HEY! Under water creatures! This was an exceptionally fun cake to make, because I haven't actually made a kid's cake before. I tried to make the eyes all googly, because as far as I can remember, googly eyes were probably my most favourite thing EVER when I was two. Lots of bright colours, neat shapes, kids cakes are the bomb!

Something a Little Crazy

A pal of mine, Sarah, asked me many months ago if I could do a Christopher Walken face cake for her. So I thought, why not involve her in the process? SOOOO today, Sarah and I made a Christopher Walken cake! She did all the sculpting, and I helped her out with the fondant and finishing touches. Pretty snazzy for my first face cake I do think, and Sarah did an excellent job!

Pretty terrifying, I know!

(Note: I should point out, that I was an extra in Hairspray a few years ago, and I got to stand RIGHT BEHIND HIM as he danced some crazy dance. AAAAAAAAAAAND I got to wear the wig he wore in another scene. CAN YOU BELIEVE MY GREAT FORTUNE?? GREAT!)

We also made our friend Will a cake. He's just graduated from Chef School at George Brown (same as me! yay!) (except I was in pastry.) So we attempted one of those floppy chef's hats with a slew of delicious veggies and grilled chicken, all modeled out of modeling chocolate! The had of course, was the cake part. The floppyness is a little bit lost, because there's no head in it, alas! BUT there's a lot of delicious cake inside!

 What's next? WHO KNOWS!

Order a cake to be featured on my blog!

Tommy's Hypothetical Moroccan Wedding Cake

 SO! Here it is, Tommy's Hypothetical Moroccan Wedding Cake! Using colours that Tommy chose, and influence from Moroccan Tajines, I painted the design on the cake using food colouring. The cake wouldn't be complete without a lovely flower, so I created one using gumpaste, modelling it after a flower that I Googled. Good ole' Google, so easy to travel around the world to see nature!

Teaser

You'll never guess who's face I must attempt to sculpt out of cake tomorrow...... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We shall see how well it turns out. Until then, feel free to guess at it! Muahahaha!

I nearly finished a Moroccan themed wedding cake today, inspired by tagine cookware. I've always loved the intricate designes on tagines, and the beautiful colours! Since there were so many colours, I had to ask my pal Tommy to choose a few colours he'd like to have at his hypothetical June 2010 wedding. Tommy's hypothetical cake will be posted tomorrow!

Birthday Roses

I had a request this week for a birthday cake for a girl named Rose. Her mom LOVED the idea of having roses all over the cake in pink and purple. Rose also loves cats, SO it was only fitting to have a kitty sitting at the top of the cake.

Lemon with Lemon Curd and Coconut Buttercream

At work, as usual, I created some different cupcakes for the week. I went along with the rose theme, just cause! Roses are a heck of a lot of fun to pipe! I also taught my boss's daughter to pipe roses, it was overall a pretty fun day FULL TO THE BRIM of roses.

Next week: Painted Cakes

Yummy Chocolate Cake

I was asked to create a delicious dark chocolate cake for a retirement party. Of course, I went straight for my Barry Callebaut supply which is sorely depleated... alas! Must find more!

I created a scrumptious dark chocolate cake, with a dark chocolate ganache for the filling. It was masked with a lightly flavoured cocoa buttercream, and then topped once again with the dark chocolate ganache. I decorated it with a simple design using white chocolate. Frankly, I'm a little jealous of my client for ordering such a delicious cake!

Cakes I Made with Me In Mind

Originally, I wanted to create 3 signature cakes that I could sell to local grocery stores. After slaving away on my design (as I have perfected the recipies over the years) I decided that they were really not going to fit into a Pusateri's or local market since they had "me" in mind.

In the future, they'd sell well in my own boutique, but for now, here are some pictures of my White Chocolate Cake with Lavender Buttercream, Dark Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream and Classic Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Buttercream.

They were decorated with chocolate birds, and buttercream iris flowers.

Pink and Green Cupcakes

Long day of rain and blah at work today, luckily I had some bright and cheery cupcakes to keep me company!

Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with a delicious italian meringue buttercream. Classic and a favourite of mine.

Daisy Cupcakes and Pink Shortbread

Just a couple different things from work today, vanilla daisy cupcakes and shortbread hearts dipped in rose tinted white chocolate with a little milk chocolate design on them! Deelish!

Soon, I'd like to invest in a new camera. If there is anyone that's looking to sell a professional grade camera or would like to trade a camera for some delicious food, drop me a line!

Lion King Cake

Here is a Lion King cake that I made for my boss. She was an absolute STAR in a production of the Lion King which ran this past week in Toronto. I sculpted the trees, animals and sun out of modelling chocolate, and then painted on the colour dry. I've discovered a new love of modelling chocolate to sculpt with! It really turns out so much nicer than fondant and gumpaste, and it tastes SOOOOO much better!


This week I'll be focusing on Mother's Day, as well as an event downtown toronto that I'll be making mini cupcakes for. Should be a fun week, new recipies to try and new techniques to test!

Daffodil Cupcakes

Just to try something new today, I made Daffodil cupcakes. Horray for spring! If you've been fortunate enough to be trapped going north on the DVP lately, I'm sure you've seen all of the lovely Daffodils that were planted by some really cool dude. These cupcakes are a bit of an homage to the cool dude that just wanted commuters to have something nice to look at, instead of the lame bumper sticker of the guy up ahead!

Corporate Cake

Here's a cake I did for a campaign to eliminate phantom power, which is essentially power that is drawn from electronics (t.v.s, computers etc.) when they are turned off. DID you know that all of your electronics, if not pluged into a power bar, will continue to suck energy and in the long run cost more money? The campaign is simply to say, that if you "Unplug Your Stuff" you can "Win Sweet Prizes". Check out the facebook group here for more information.

Jewlery Box Cake COMPLETE!

After many a laborious hour, here it is folks! My Silpada Jewlery Box Cake!

Come to the open house on Sunday from 1-5 to win this cake! Email me at emily.milling@hotmail.com for more information about the party, or to order your own Jewlery Box Cake!

WOOO!