First Time Carving

My little sister turned 21 at the end of December.  She has a raw eye and exceptional talent in photography.  We played with the idea of making either some sort of fancy drink cake (think martini) or a camera cake.  I tried to persuade her to go with the drink cake – as I could jazz that up with skills that I am comfortable with.  But her heart was set on a camera cake.

Carving a cake was a territory I had not ventured into yet, and through my research, found out it is a territory that a lot of cake decorators flat out avoid.  I figured that since it was my sister – she would be very forgiving if the cake was a total flop.

Man, that lens gave me trouble.  From the cutting of the cake, to the stacking and dirty icing, to the actual lens (which is made from poured sugar colored black – yay!) I struggled with that thing.  I made 2 cake lenses and 3 of the glass lenses until I was satisfied…

The camera itself came out a lot sloppier than I had hoped – but then again, I am my own biggest critic.  However, I was pleased with the color scheme, the bottom tier of the cake and the little balls I decided to add as a finishing touch.  

This cake seemed to have earned me more recognition than any of my previous cakes.  This makes me eager to give carving another try – I’m hoping my skills can only improve from here…

Happy Milestone Birthday to my Little Sister Tasha!  I’m glad you enjoyed your cake.

Watch out for my next cake – which will also be carved...

Cheers,

Tam a Lam

Cakeaholiccakery.com

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More of those Deliciously Cute Cake Pops :)

Working 45-50 hours a week, I probably spend more time at the office with my co-workers than even my own family... And of all my co-workers, I spend most of that time with Mel.  We sit right next to each other, and for a long time, were the only females on our half of the office.  You can probably imagine the conversations we've shared :)  I know at times we drove each other crazy, but for the most part - we keep each other sane.  

Mel's been keeping up on my cake progress from the very beginning (albeit I am still in that phase), and celebrated with me as orders began rolling in.  She has been itching to place her own order or recommend me to anyone who may need some cake product of sorts but thus far, nothing has come up.  My birthday is only a couple of weeks before hers and when we went out for lunch and drinks to celebrate - she got excited as she realized her birthday was coming up and was a perfect excuse to get some cake pops.

She only requested a dozen, and wanted a purple/silver combination.  I do not yet have an edible airbrush machine, and was not able to get my hands on any silver icing in time, so I found silver sprinkles to accent the pops per her request.

These were a lot of fun to do, and a good warm up for me before my up coming holiday orders.  A very pretty request for a pretty birthday girl - Happy Birthday Mel!

At this point, there is no stopping me... If I am not working, taking care of the baby, eating or sleeping, I am either baking, decorating or blogging about it :)  Just kidding... sort of...  Needless to say, you all are keeping me busy - and I love that.  

Hope to share some of this deliciousness with you soon!

Tam a Lam

Happy Birthday to You and You and You and You... and me... Gobble Gobble

On my mother’s side of the family alone, we have 9 November birthdays – 5 of which are in the same week as Thanksgiving.  

• Aunty Theresa
• Uncle Dave
• Uncle Chris
• Nephew Logan
• Aunty Ellen
• Cousin Crystal
• Cousin Lawrence
• Myself
• Nephew Aidan

My family asked me to make a November Birthday cake to bring to Thanksgiving so we could celebrate the birthdays as well as the day of giving thanks.  Since I’ve been busy filling cake orders for other people’s celebrations, I was psyched to make my own design this time around.  At the same time I needed to keep in mind that this cake was for kids, adults, males and females so I kept it fairly generic.  If I didn’t work full time, I would have loved to make individual components that captured each birthday person’s personality – but I just didn’t have the time to make it “that special” with a full time job, a new baby at home and opposite working hours of my husband

I made both cake pops and cake and I love the way it turned out in the end.  The cake pops were a hit – easy to grab as someone walked by, and super delicious.  Another bonus is that I was really able to get to know my new toy/birthday gift as well and used it for the entire cut outs on the cake.

Needless to say, after our Thanksgiving feast, pie, appetizers and cake pops no one had any room for cake so we cut it up and sent some home with every family.  I made ganache to cover the cake with (under the fondant), and made sure to put a thick layer of the ganache on the cake as most people are not fond of fondant (no pun intended).  YUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!  I am a true chocolate lover and have a huge craving for dark, semi-sweet uber rich chocolate.   Let me tell you – this ganache was just that – heavenly!  I’m happy to have some left over in my freezer for either future cakes or ganache truffles or something.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it…

I’ve been really busy between cake orders, holidays, birthdays, full time job, baby and husband and I am really looking forward to a short “cake break” this week/weekend.  Although, I’m not entirely sure I will take the whole week off from caking…

Thanks for reading,

Tam a Lam