Cake detail

I made a large slab for a combined mother/one year old son's birthday. As a decoration for the mother I made a small bouquet of roses and for the little boy I made a blanket and teddy bear from gumpaste and used some sugar cubes for blocks. Looked cute and filled a big space on the cake.

First Etsy Sale!

I finally made a sale on Etsy! I had some ribbon embroidery greeting cards listed for months with no action, then yesterday afternoon I added a paintbrush organizer and a cake decorating tool organizer to my listings, and not two hours later the paintbrush organizer had sold! Paintbrush organizer Cake decorating tool organizer open and closed.

East End Cake Decorating Club

EECD's final meeting of the 2007/8 year was held today at St. Margaret's in the Pines Church in Scarborough. The annual Cake Decorating Contest took place, having been postponed a couple of times due to bad weather and a confliction of dates with the CSSA (Canadian Society of Sugar Arts). Even though it was Father's Day, we had eight cakes entered, 6 in the Advanced category and two in the Intermediate. They were all beautiful with quite a variety of shapes, designs, and colours. ...........................Cakes on Display.............................

Advanced 1st Place

Advanced 2nd Place

Advanced 3rd Place

Intermediate 1st Place

................................Intermediate 2nd Place....................................

Winners are:

Intermediate Division (2 entries), 1st place Savina Burdo, 2nd place Shirley Peters

Advanced Division: 1st place Glenys Davies, 2nd place Jean Skinner, 3rd place Diane Matheson.

Congratulations to everyone.

We all enjoyed a good selection of pot luck goodies with a nice cup of tea or coffee while we discussed elections for the new Executive to take over in September.

...................................Some of our members .................................

It was suggested that the monthly meetings, beginning in September should be workshop style. Most members would prefer a hands-on meeting compared to a demonstration. Each month a member or a couple of members would run a demonstration. Members would bring their own supplies and share cutters if they did not have what was needed. All members would have input into the content of workshops.

It was also decided that there would be one charge for membership. The first meeting a new person attended would be free, and membership fee would be required at the next meeting that person attended.

Elections for the new Executive are normally held at this last meeting of the season, but due to the low turnout elections per se were not held. However, several positions were filled by volunteers:

Diane Kingston & Cynthia - Treasurers

Verdie Jackson: Membership - keep records of members and fees

Shirley Peters: Raffle Table - organize prizes and sell/manage tickets

Tea & Coffee - provide refreshments

Diane Matheson: Communication - e-mail members with information

The first meeting after the summer break will be Sunday 21st September, from 2pm to 4pm at St. Margaret's in the Pines. Annual membership fees will be due at that time, and the Executive will be finalized at that meeting.

The demonstration in September will be QUILLING. More information will be e-mailed early in September.

Hydrangeas - continued!

Here they are, assembled, dusted and steamed. I'll leave them overnight to totally dry and then they go on the cake. Now......back to CQ'ing!!!

This is the finished cake.

Hydrangeas

Today I'm working frantically to finish a cake for a competition on Sunday at the East End Cake Decorators Club. It's going to have five or six hydrangea blooms on the top, pink, dark pink, lilac, violet. Each bloom is made up of about 20 small flowers, all wired separately, so it's a lot of work! Of course the cake is styrofoam. I've covered it already and decorated the sides with lots of ivy leaves. When the flowers are dry I'll tape the 20 flowers together, then dust with the appropriate colour, then steam to blend the colour and give a sheen. That needs to be finished today so that the flowers can dry properly. I given this post a label "hydrangea tutorial". It's not a complete tutorial, and if you do want more information on how to make these blossoms, leave me a message please.

Setting up

Tonight we set up our tables for the business expo tomorrow and Sunday. The table looked very nice.

Cakes on show this weekend

My cake partner Verdie and I will have a table of our cake decorating this Saturday and Sunday at her Church in Scarborough. This will be our 3rd year at this business expo there, and we have created some new display cakes and spruced up a few that were in a recent competition. The pictures show six 4 1/2" mini cakes and decorated sugar cookies. Last year's Sunday attendance was more than one thousand people and we made some good contacts which resulted in a few orders and some students for our gumpaste flowers course.

Sugar day

Wednesday afternoons are my time to play with sugar with my friend Verdie. We're working on an order for May 11 for a combined Christening and Confirmation. There will be an 8" Jamaican fruitcake with a baby cradle, a 10" lemon cake with a cross and rosary beads, twenty 4" lemon cakes each with a sugar calla lily, a standing card, and several dozen cookies, half of which will be baby-themed cutouts. It's a pretty big order with not a lot that can be made ahead of time. Today we worked on the calla lilies, the baby cradle, the rosary and lettering for the cakes & card.

Cake's progress

It's 1:23am and the cake is in the oven. It's big, 12" x 18" and it took 3 cake mixes. My kids like box cakes (I doctor them up with a bit of this and that). It's so late because I had to pop around to our 24-hour Sobeys grocery store for supplies. In the meantime I've been working on the apartment building and the firemen. I'm not much good at modelling, so for these little guys I used the Wilton people cutouts as a base. I added flames to the building and glued the walls together with royal icing. It should be dry by morning, and safe to move upright.

Five on Saturday

My oldest grandson, Jack, will be 5 on Saturday and, true to form, he requested a fireman cake. Last year he asked for the same and I made him a great cake, trouble is I don't think this year's will be a patch on last years! (It wasn't my design and I would like to give that person credit but I haven't been able to track them down.) Photos below are from last year. Saturday's cake will be a big slab with an apartment building. I'll put some candles inside so it looks like the building's on fire! Sounds good in principal. Here it is under construction.

Sugar Flowers

Along with all the sewing, I love cake decorating and actually have a little corner of my living room set aside for this. There is a special sugar paste called "gumpaste" that can be transformed into beautiful sugar flowers. I have a good friend, Verdie, who is my partner in crime, and we spend half a day a week filling orders or just playing around with our gumpaste! This is a sugar moth orchid. Looks almost real!