Triathlon Baby Shower Giraffe Cake

A month or two ago, two local triathlete ladies contacted me and inquired about the possibility of a “Triathlon themed Baby Shower cake” for their friend. How could I resist?

The expecting couple had declined the knowledge of the baby’s gender, so obviously I didn’t know if I should go pink or blue, and that is where the idea of a plush toy came in. I did know from the beginning that the two parents are triathletes and that would be a critical idea to tie into the cake. I really wanted to pull in a lot of detail about what “gear” triathletes tend to race with, along with keeping the fun and playful aspects of a child’s plush toy.

The Gear:

(race bib with Baby’s due date)

(Baby “booties”? These are racing Baby Flats!)

(Baby hydration bottles attached via race belt)

Plush details:

(Tail is held on by a button)

(Baby giraffe’s have Mohawks!)

 

  And your 360º view:

 

I have to say, whether this Baby is a boy or girl it’s going to be well prepared for it’s first race day! Good luck to parents to be!

 

 

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A Moose Have Cookie!

I’ve taken a little flack lately. “What have you been doing?”, “Why haven’t you posted in a while?”, and a few others related questions. Well I’ve been busy on a few projects, cookie projects to be exact!

Recently I traveled to Kananaskis, Alberta where every single store I entered sold some sort of Moose paraphernalia. It wasn’t enough to sell a simple T-shirt with a cute moose on it, but they had to add a all sorts of moose captions as well; for example:

And thus you see how I came up with my very clever title!  All that mooseing around got me to thinking. “I need to make a moose cookie for my Dad!”. The Boss and I were heading to my home to celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to bring something home to my family that was both relevant to my family and that highlighted some of the fun new things I’ve been experimenting with for the bakery! Here’s what they got!

In return, some members of the family thought it would be fun to “animate” my Moose! Thus what follows is the story of the moose, as told in pictures by my family!

We had a great time at home for Thanksgiving, and the moose helped himself to the pie!  If only he had cleaned up after himself too..

Thanks for reading.

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A Vintage Anniversary Cake

Well it has been a seriously busy summer, and unfortunately I haven’t been able to make as many cakes as I had hoped. As busy as I may have been, there was however, one cake that has been on my calendar all summer; a cake I was not going to miss out on!

Adding to the craziness of the summer, The Boss and I will have attended 5 weddings! This past weekend was no exception. We had a wedding on The Boss’s side, and we knew we’d be attending this one since the spring. What was nice about the date of this wedding weekend was that it also coordinated with The Boss’s parents anniversary! I knew I would have to take the opportunity to surprise my new “In-Laws” (wow, weird to say that) with a special anniversary cake.

A few weeks ago, through a very sly e-mail, The Boss casually reminisced with his mom over the weddings so far this year and poked the question “What were your wedding colors anyways?”. I knew I wanted to make a very ivory/ antique like cake for his parents, but I also wanted a little pop of color- ideally their wedding colors. When the answer came back “there was blue involved”, I knew I had a winner and I was going to incorporate a lot of faded blue and silver colors in with the ivory. In the end I was really pleased with how the different shades played off against each other, I think I achieved a really vintage style with this cake.

All of the buttons were hand painted, and the center tier had an impression rolled into it that accented and coordinated with the detailing that was in the boarder that encircled each tier of the cake.

The above picture shows the impression of the middle tier and the impression detail on the boarder. What you will also notice is that the bottom tier was an octagon, and in an attempt to showcase the symmetrical design of the cake, there was one cameo button placed on each “flat” of the octagon all the way around the bottom tier of the cake.

The cake stood 10’’ tall and was a perfect fit as my carry on luggage (in a cake box of course!). It fit snuggly under the seat in front of me. Other than a few raised eyebrows while going through the security scanner/ x-ray monitor at Regan National Airport, the cake traveled really well! The Boss’s parents were really surprised and everyone seemed to think it was cool!

Hopefully you like the cake too! If you have any cake themes, ideas, or challenges that you would like to throw my way I’d love to hear from you. Hope everyone had a great long weekend… is it Friday yet?

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Wedding Candy Buffet

You might be wondering why I took a break from posting wedding details, and why all of a sudden I’m back to posting some of the details. Well there can only be ONE reason for this! I finally received all of the professional wedding pictures!! And, I also figured you might have been “over” the whole wedding thing, so I was giving you an excitement break as well!

So for one of my FAVORTIE wedding details! I present The Candy Buffet!

This wedding detail did and did not take a lot of time to create. What do I mean? Well it took me forever to decide what to make the candy buffet out of! I have seen really really beautiful candy buffets made out of glass vases, and different antique ceramic bowls, BUT remember my buffet had to travel via airplane, and lets be honest, baggage handlers are NOT the friendliest people with our stuff. I couldn’t afford to have one or all of the vessels break, and as well the glass and ceramic is very heavy! Being a beach wedding I wanted the buffet to be fun, but I didn’t want to use plastic, my options were looking slim. But what do you know, as my poor ol’ mom and I are picking our brains and stumbling around our 3rd Michael's Craft store of the weekend we found these great looking vintage buckets!

Of course with my luck, there would not be enough of these buckets for our entire candy buffet at the one Michael's store, so off we went around town to scavenge up 7 buckets and one odd bucket for the center!

To make these buckets food safe I bought cling wrap and covered the inside liner that came with the pail. Then to fancy them up I used the same specialty paper that I pulled from another wedding detail (yet to be reviewed), to create a candy plaque. Also I used the same ribbon on the buckets that was used on my garter!

Each bucket had a “plaque” on the front that highlighted a candy that had something to do with our relationship or something from our past. There were 8 buckets in total and here’s what they said:

“Because some people get lost on a bike ride”- One of the first times The Boss and I hung out, we were supposed to go for a 5 mile ride, we got lost and rode over 50! With only a few dollars between us we could only afford to buy one Gatorade and a small package of gummy peach rings!

“Gone Fishing”- Growing up when ever my soccer schedule became overwhelming my Dad would whisk me away for a fishing trip! Gummy worms only seemed right.

“A Ski Trip Tradition”- The Boss’s family was a big ski racing family and Twizzlers licorice was their go to!

“A cool Sara Sota treat”- Growing up my family spent a lot of our summers on the beach in Florida. Mini York Peppermint Patties were a staple on the beach!

“A movie theater must”- The Boss and I love heading to the movies, and one of our favorite treats is peanut M&M’s.

“A late night Thesis snack”- When I would spend hours upon hours in the library working on my thesis paper, gummy bears were my weakness!

“An Italian Tradition” – Ray’s family has a lot of Italian roots; 7 Jordan Almonds were combined in lace bags to represent good luck.

“Can’t have a wedding without a tear Jerker”- Sour patch watermelon slices were the obvious choice!

“A New Family’s Tradition”- The Boss and I pretty much never travel on an airplane without a package of Swedish Fish on hand!

I also wanted to have a little “note” from the bride and groom for our guests to read while they are filling their bellies with sweets! So with a little imagination and a little “borrowing” of words from other candy buffet poems I came up with this…

Unfortunately, with all of the craziness and busyness of the day though little poem didn’t quite make it to the table. But no matter how the buffet was set up, the candy was demolished by the guests… there were no left overs! However I was bummed because when the table was set out it didn’t facilitate the picturesque set up that I had envisioned. None the less our photographers managed to get a few good shots!

And that’s really all for the Candy Buffet! I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe gave you an idea to play with a candy buffet for your next coming event!

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Holy Cannoli

This weekend was actually the first weekend home for both the Boss and I where by we were BOTH actually home! It was really nice to finally have a weekend with the both of us around and back to the good ol’ days! What do I mean by the good ol’ days? Well for the first 2 years of our relationship we pretty much showed off our skillz to each other in the kitchen, and most weekends resulted in enormous culinary displays on the dinner table. So this weekend we were up to our old tricks!

It was an Italian themed night, so I figured cannoli's were the way to go! The delicious display that you see above is a citrus and vanilla cookie shell with a lemon crème filling. The cookie shell is not as crunchy as your traditional shell, but me thinks was still lip smacking worthy!

So I started with making the shell. Nothing too scientific there (Yes, the recipe is at the bottom). 

Once all of the ingredients are mixed until smooth, you have to spoon 1Tbsp of batter onto parchment paper and spread into approximately 4 inch circles (remember the bigger the circle the more filling! So don’t skimp on your 1tbsp!)

Depending on your choice of parchment paper (ahem, I was all out and had to use “dry wax paper”… so a little Pam made my life much easier! Go ahead, use a little, little spray). Next time I’m going to try out my silicone mats… haven’t found anything that sticks to them yet!)

Set the oven to 375, and ONLY cook one sheet of cookies at a time. You will not have enough time to roll the cookies into cannoli tubes if there are more than 4; once they start to cool you’re cooked! The cookies will crack and will not allow you to roll them. This would also be a good time to mention to have 4 1-inch round dowels or tubes to roll the cookies onto BEFORE you even put the cookies into the oven. You do not have time to waste looking for something to roll the cookies on once the wheels are in motion!

Cookies should bake for 7-8 minutes. Remove once golden around edges.

I may or may not have decided that cannoli was what I wanted to make without thinking about what to roll the cookie shell onto. Thus why you see above mini bottles of Jameson Whiskey and sprinkles! Hey, they both worked out! What would you use in a pinch?

Once the shells are cooled, remove the whiskey bottles and let set on a wire rack.

Unfortunately, I somehow missed getting pictures of both me filling the shells with the cream filling and us demolishing them post dinner! Sorry, but I’ll give you the recipe now so you can make your own!

 

Shell 4 Tbsp butter- room temp 1/3C Sugar 2lrg Egg Whites- room temp 1/2C Flour 1/2tsp orange zest 1/4tsp Vanilla 1/4tsp salt 1) Cream the butter and sugar 2) Add the egg whites until mixed 3) Add remaining ingredients until batter is smooth 4) Spread 4 1-tbsp measurements of batter onto parchment paper lined cooking sheets. Spread evenly to cover 4 inch circles. 5) This recipe makes 12 cookie shells. The Filling only makes enough for 8. This is a safe guard incase you have “issues” with your first batch of shells!

Filling 1C Mascarpone (8oz) room temp 1C Heavy Cream 1/3C sugar 1/2tsp vanilla 1/4tsp Lemon Extract   Using standing mixer and wisk attachment to beat until stiff peaks form. ***Cookie shells and filling can be stored in air tight container (filling needs to be refrigerated) for up to 2 days.

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Bertie’s Bakery Photo Gallery

The other evening I was poking around my blog’s “statistics” in attempt to discover what my readers seemed to be the most interested in. Unfortunately, from a statistical standpoint, the photo gallery was not one of them! I was surprised, I figured that that would be like a one-stop-shop for people who might be interested in what I’ve been up to without having to pick through all of the triathlon, travel, and wedding stuff. Maybe, I thought, people don’t know that the photo gallery existed. Maybe I don’t have it as obvious to my reader, or possible future customers, that there is such a spread of all of my latest works.

So today’s post is my attempt to highlight the Photo Gallery, short and to the point, just like the pictures! So either click on the previous link or the photo above and it will take you to directly to all of the silly things I have created so far. I would love to know what ones are your favorite and/or if you like seeing the cakes vs. the cupcakes.

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