Office Birthdays

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while guys.  Time has gotten away from me lately because of a crazy busy week at work, and because I got to bake cupcakes and a groom's cake for a wedding on the weekend.  I'll be posting on that as soon as I can!  For now, back to the regular scheduled posts...

Remember my good friend Jill? And how I made a Harley Davidson cake for her dad in this post here? Well Jill's parents work for the same company, and they're both pretty high up in the ranks so they pretty much get to run the show at office.  When I say run the show though, I'm sure they do it in a nice way, because they're pretty much two of the coolest adults around.  I've attempted numerous times to get officially adopted by them into their family, and though they've always welcomed me with open arms, I haven't seen any paperwork signed yet.

But I digress.  Jill's mom came to me a couple of times last summer to make some cakes to help celebrate some birthdays in the office.  The first one was a 9 inch round, and it was Vanilla Chocolate Chip with chocolate buttercream.

Jill's mom asked for something light and girly, without being too over the top.  Decorated in a purple fondant (a bit darker than it shows in the photo, curse my lack of cake photography skills), I simply topped it off with some white flowers.  They were cut out with Wilton flower cutters in a couple of different sizes, and then sat out to dry.  Since I didn't have any fancy flower formers back then, I just used an empty egg carton covered in tinfoil.  By laying the flowers in this overnight, the petals get some shape to them.  I hand piped 'Happy Birthday Lydia' on top, which was pretty much first the time I'd ever piped out any letters on a cake.

A couple of weeks later, Jill's mom asked for another cake for an office birthday, except this time we needed to go bigger.  Apparently the guys at the office were typical guys, and absolutely devoured the little 9 inch cake.  We went with Vanilla Chocolate Chip and chocolate buttercream again, but a 9 inch by 12 inch quarter sheet cake just to get more portions for everyone.

Being a rectangular cake, I did have a trickier time covering it in fondant because of the corners, but I was able to patch up any major nicks.  I made the skinny fondant stripes using a fondant extruder, which is exactly like a clay extruder and just needs a whole lots of hand strength and shortening.  The 'happy birthday' was done this time using a stamp set and food colour gel.  I absolutely adore the font!

That's it for cakes for today, but I'll take this post as a lovely opportunity to show off Jill's new blog: adishbestserved.wordpress.com  She's going to be blogging about great places to eat here in Edmonton, and she's already got a couple of great posts to start you off.  Check it out!