Sweet Table

Hello All!

I'm so excited to share with you my new business that I have started with my friend Izabela. She is a designer and together we are designing sweet tables for any occasions. Our website will be up soon. Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and of course the website.

Thanks for your support!

Sweet Table

I'm so excited to share this with you guys. This is my first sweet table and man was it time consuming! I made everything on this table. From the butter tarts, to the sugar cookies and made my first cake which I blogged about here. I made this sweet table for my Dad's 60th birthday surprise party. I based the party on a 1950's diner theme using teal, tiffany blue, light blue and cream as the colour template.

I created sugar cookies in a six and a zero (60), butter tars (for you who don't know what they are it's a Canadian thing!), chocolate covered chips (which made some people go crazy), chocolate milkshake cupcakes, coconut and cherry marshmallows (these were purchased) and a teal ombre cake.

I made the tissue garland out of a lot of tissue paper, it's super easy to make. I also made the cupcake crowns and cupcake toppers with my cricut. All of the signage, invites and photographs were taken my Marc at mkphotographics. He did such a wonderful job!

We held the party at a country club just north of Toronto and about fifty people showed up. It was a total surprise for my Dad which made all the hard work worth it.

Hope you like the pictures and all of the hard work on my first sweet table. I can't wait for the next one I create.

Chocolate milkshake cupcakes

Sweet Table

Marshmallows

Ombre cake

Buttertarts  

Enjoy!

Mini Pies on a Stick

About a month ago I got Jessie Olsen's "Cakespy Presents: Sweet Treats for a Sugar-filled Life" book and it's amazing. Over the years I've made things from her blog but hadn't tried the mini pie recipe. I made these for my Dad's birthday with cherry pie filling (his favourite). One thing you have to make sure is that you push the stick really well into the crust or they will fall off once baked. A nice light dessert, especially if you don't want a whole slice of pie.

Cut dough circles with a biscuit cutter 

three cherries fit perfectly no the dough

Can't help but squish all of the filling out 

Enjoy!

Teal Ombre Birthday Cake

I recently hosted a big surprise party for my Dad's 60th birthday. One of the many desserts I made was a teal ombre cake. I had seen some many pictures of pink ombre cakes on the net and really wanted to make one my self, as I am obsessed with ombre right now. The theme for the party was 1950's. The main colours we used were teal, tiffany blue, light blue and cream.

It's super easy to make an ombre cake. All you have to do is choose your favourite white or vanilla cake base (recipe or boxed mix) and tint the batter to your liking. The hardest part is making sure that the layers have a different amount of dye. Also the colour lightens when baked so you need to make sure there is a gradual difference, which can be quite hard.

To make a four layer cake you need a double batch of batter and two 8" round cake pans. Make sure to grease the pans and put a layer of parchment paper on the bottom for easy release. Each batch makes two layers. Let them cool then stack them with vanilla buttercream between the layers. I did a crumb coat on the outside and a final dot (not really sure what it is called) technique on the final outer layer. I also made some star decorations with my cricut cake machine and put them on floral wire.

Crumb coat

Dots

Dots, smeared 

It turned out to be a great cake, especially it being the first cake I have made. I'm a cupcake girl!

This is the only picture of inside the cake that was taken. The knife we had just shredded the cake but you still get what it looks like.

Enjoy!

Candy Corn Shortbread

These Halloween shortbread are one of my favourite things to make. I came across the recipe three years ago and have made it every year since. They are light, crisp and buttery. They are perfect to take to work, school or have with tea.

The simple recipe and photo sequence follows

1 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
Yellow and orange gel food colouring

In a bowl with a mixer beat butter until fluffy (almost white). Add icing sugar and beat until combined. Stir in flour until smooth, flip out onto a clean surface and kneed with hands until all of the dough sticks together. Cut dough in half. Divide one half into one thirds and two thirds.

Set aside the smallest part of the dough. Tint the largest portion yellow and the other orange. Divide each piece into half. Create a 8.5 inch log with each piece. Place each colour on top of each other to form the candy corn. Wrap each log with plastic wrap and press all of the logs together making a triangle or candy corn shape. Repeat with remaining logs. Put into fridge for 2 - 48 hours. Slice logs into 1/4 inch individual cookies. Bake at 325 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes or until the cookies slightly brown. Makes around 50 cookies.

beating the butter

dough before it's kneaded

splitting dough into proportions

food colours

Coloured dough

stacking logs

wrapping and forming into shape

sliced cookies

baked cookies aka candy corn

Enjoy!

Halloween Favourites

Fall is my favourite time of the year. Cooler weather, leaves changing colour and seasonal flavours like apple, pumpkin and candy. Yes I said candy, this is the one time of year (Halloween and the weeks leading up to it) when I have no guilt eating lots and lots of candy.

Here is a little round-up of past Halloween and Fall cupcakes that Cupcakes and Sundry has made over the years.

When I first started decorating...not too good

Loved these, spider cupcakes

Pumpkin cupcakes with a candy corn
shortbread cookie

More cupcakes to come this season. Last season I was lazy and didn't bake anything. This year I'm going to use my cricut cake and make some Thanksgiving and Halloween cakes and cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Custom Chocolate Bars

Ingredients

A couple of weeks ago was National S'more Day, as I was surfing the internet looking for s'more related goodies I stumbled across Not So Humble Pie's posting on S'more Chocolate Bars. They looked so good that I had to try them.

Fast forward three weeks and I finally had some time to try them out, but first I needed a chocolate bar mold. Boy, that was hard to find. I went to the wholesale baking place where I pick up all of my supplies from and they didn't have any thick plain old chocolate bar molds, they were either super skinny or had sudoku on them. I settled on a large chocolate bar mold that I would have to cut into smaller pieces.

First off I followed the recipe and made a s'more chocolate bar, I made sure I tempered the chocolate correctly to get the nice glossy finish. Luckily, the chocolate turned out great! The next bar I tried was a neapolitan bar that I came up with while at the grocery store getting ingredients. I already had some strawberry fluff that my Mom brought me back from Florida so I got some Nilla biscuits to go with it for the vanilla part of the neapolitan equation. Of course you can make any combination of chocolate bars, I can't wait to see what I dream up next...potato chips anyone?!

Here is a little photo journal process (recipe steps) I did to make my delicious custom chocolate bars. 

Chocolate to temper

Lindt Chocolate

Chocolate starting to melt

Chocolate tempering

Top part of the bar, chocolate in the mold

S'more Bar

Toasted Marshmallow (you should have
seen the size of the torch)

Marshmallow in the chocolate

Graham Crackers

Finished S'more Bar

Neapolitan Bar

Ingredients

Toasted Strawberry Marshmallow

Biscuits on top of the chocolate and marshmallow

Finished Neapolitan bar

If I could change anything for next time I'd make sure my chocolate was a little more set before I started putting the layers not the bar. As you can see from the picture above the marshmallow came through in the shallow areas because the chocolate wasn't set long enough.

At the end, they turned out delicious. 

Enjoy!