FoodieMeet Bakeoff!

I received an email around two months ago about being a part of a bake-off. It was set up by a fun group in Toronto called FoodieMeet. I thought it sounded really fun. I love the chance to create something completely of my own design - especially when the results will help raise money for a helpful organization. This bake-off was held to raise money for The Stop, a community food centre.

The only two rules for the bake-off were: 1. The items must be baked by the contestant. 2. The entries must follow the theme: Escape from Toronto.

The theme sent my mind racing! What flavour would I choose? What design could I create to embody the theme? As images of an "Escape from LA"-ish apocalyptic Toronto flashed through my head, I quickly put them aside. After weeks of thought, it finally came to me... where is the one place in the city that houses every kind of food imaginable? And if you wanted to escape, in the culinary sense, where might you go? The answer: St. Lawrence Market!

So, for my FoodieMeet Bake Off entry, I created the St. Lawrence Market building in cake. White Velvet Cake with cream cheese pecan filling with buttercream and ganache, to be exact!





The cake was huge! It measure approximately 12" x 22" and weighed around 30lbs. I had some great help getting up the huge staircase at Samovar!

The entire event was a blast! It was wonderful meeting the other bakers as well as so many people I had known only through Twitter. A big thanks to the FoodieMeet team who created the event and everyone who came out to enjoy delicious treats and support The Stop!

The whole cake and nothing but the cake

I love creating stories - little moments in time that viewers can step into and enjoy. This particular story is about a young woman on the brink of her new career in international and immigration law. For her 21st birthday, her parents wanted to celebrate her and her achievements with a special cake experience.

I created a courtroom scene based on the supreme court of Canada. A striking image of nine little chairs and a daunting room is offset by the young woman sitting atop it all. She's ready to take her place in the legal world. I hope that enjoying a delicious piece of her special moment in time was a fitting celebration for her life and career to come!





This particular edible story is a French chocolate buttercream cake with raspberry buttercream filling. Delicious!

A Cake Artist Who Can't Eat Cake

I recently posted a picture of my youngest son's first birthday cake. The arrival of this beautiful boy to our family has been wonderful, challenging, and world-changing. In addition to the expected aspects, he has also changed things for me in a very personal and sometimes difficult way.

A few weeks after he was born, my son started to have some difficulties. He had stomach aches, a seemingly constant stuffy nose, and, um, unusually yucky stuff in his diaper. My dear friend and doula, Sam Leeson, suggested that my son might be intolerant to the dairy (i.e. products made from cow’s milk) in my diet. The protein from dairy is transferred via breastmilk to a baby. The only way to test the hypothesis was to remove dairy completely from my diet for two weeks – as it takes two weeks for all traces of dairy to leave the body.

I freaked out. I love dairy. Cheese, milk, ice cream, cream (especially in Starbucks beverages!) you name it, it was a favorite of mine. But this was my child who was in distress. My poor child could only sleep restfully if I held him in a semi-upright position against my chest so that he could breathe and get relief from tummy aches. So, I took dairy out of my diet. Within one week my son was a different child. All of his symptoms disappeared. I was convinced. No dairy for me.

Less than a month later, however, some new and unsettling symptoms arose. My son became covered in rashes and he had new and painful stomachaches. I thought “What now? I’ve already gotten rid of dairy! I haven’t cheated or anything!”. Again, my friend Sam had a hunch. This time, it looked as if Gluten could be the culprit. So, we headed to the grocery store for a tour of “What you CAN eat on a gluten and dairy-free diet”.

Again, within days, the gluten was gone and so were the symptoms. Every so often I would try something small to see if the sensitivity was still there and his symptoms would appear within hours. So, I made the decision to maintain a strictly gluten, dairy, and soy-free diet for my son.

But there was one tiny issue. I make cake. Yummy, delectable cake made with flour and butter and chocolate and cream and other sweet ingredients. I do make gluten and dairy free cakes upon request, but those requests are rare. How in the world was I going to be able to stop myself from eating dairy and gluten while working with cake all day? And how would I ensure that my cakes were perfect and delicious if I couldn’t taste them?

The first challenge, and the one that most people find amazing, really wasn’t a challenge at all. I was doing this for my son. My beautiful baby boy’s body relied solely on mine to produce sustenance that would keep him healthy and help him grow. I just couldn’t bring myself to eat something that would harm him. Did I miss it? Absolutely! I craved pizza and Starbucks pastries daily. But I thought of dairy and gluten as poisons to my son, so they were poisons to me as well.

The second challenge? Not so easy. It is so important to me that my cakes taste as good as they look. I use delicious ingredients and time-tested recipes. It’s a waste to spend days decorating a cake only to have it taste less than perfect. So? My husband, friends, neighbors, and my eldest son (lucky kid!) became my taste testers. If I tried a new recipe I sent out samples, if it was a standard recipe my husband and son tried every cake (um, the trimmings, not the actual cake.)

What I thought would be impossible, a year later, is now just habit. What I thought would be punishment became a badge of honor to me for what I had done for my son. What I thought would be deprivation became the loss of four dress sizes and over 30 lbs. Not bad just for learning to eat in a new way. Although my son is beginning to outgrow his food sensitivities I have decided to stick with it.

The arrival of my youngest son did present me with a whole set of new challenges and beautiful discoveries, but the loss of dairy and gluten doesn’t even top the list.

Haven't you ever seen a talking snowman before?

I can't think of a better way of getting in the Christmas spirit than building a gingerbread house and the best way to pass along some of that spirit is to help raise money for a worthy cause.

I was contacted by Habitat for Humanity and asked to take part in their annual gingerbread house auction. I jumped at the chance! I wanted to create something that would remind people of their childhood, but also capture Habitat's vision: A world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live.

I combined characters from my favorite holiday movie, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and a Habitat for Humanity build site to create a festive gingerbread scene.

The Cake or Death gingerbread house, as well as others created by local celebrities and chefs, is up for auction through December 10, 2009. All proceeds go to help build homes for local families in need. Please bid and help Habitat for Humanity make families Christmas wishes come true.

Performance Anxiety

Three years ago I had a son. He was beautiful and precious. Our first born. Everything was new and amazing and overwhelming. My husband and I watched every little milestone, every new smile. My son wore the cleanest clothes, played with the most educational toys, and ate the healthiest foods. As his first birthday approached I dreamed about the cake I would make for him. I struggled with the perfect design and how I could encapsulate absolutely every aspect of his personality and my love for him within the confines of pastry. Yeah, no small feat.

After weeks of thought and hours of painstaking work, this is what I created:



Each tier was made to represent favorite bedtime stories that I read to him. Then the whole cake was tilting as he climbed to the top to reach his "smash cake". I was pretty proud of this one.

Then I became pregnant with my second child. Someone jokingly said, at some point during my pregnancy, "How are you going to top that first 1st birthday cake?" And that's when the terror set in.

My second son was born on November 5th, 2008. Another beautiful boy who showed me his dimples the second he was in my arms. If you haven't heard, adding a second child is more like multiplication than addition. Suddenly there are two to feed and change, two to rock to sleep and cuddle. And the first year just flew by. Suddenly I was faced with the big date on the calendar and the terror was there again. How was I going to create a beautiful and sentimental token of my undying love for my child in cake form?

Then one day, not too long before the cake was due, I started looking at pictures. And this is what I created:



A collage of my son's first year, some of the things he loves (music, beach balls, blankets) and bright colours. This would be the cake's stage.

Aside from his bubbly personality and stunning dimply smile, my son loves to be upside down. He crawls and climbs in an effort to flip himself over. So, I thought nothing would be more appropriate than a cake that would do the same.



Happy birthday, sweet boy. I hope that you like your special cake. I hope you know that just because you came second, there's no second place in my heart.

Digital Graffiti

After creating the 300 mini cakes for Jessica Biffi's LG Fashion Week runway show, I had the pleasure of creating a fun, "out of the box" cake for her after-party. Jessica is a lover of artistic and over-the-top cakes, so I really wanted to blow her away.

Using the same cube idea to represent "digital", I created the design based on her collection, sketches, and inspiration.

Because of the time crunch and exhaustion after 300 mini cakes, I enlisted the help of my friend, Lori Hutchinson (The Caketress) to help me bring my design to life. She worked on the base tier while I created the top tier. In the wee hours of morning, we finished the middle tier together. It was challenging and incredibly fun.





Hand-painted illustrations based on Jessica Biffi's designs and Fafi's graffiti artwork:







Jessica and I at the afterparty:


I had such a blast working with Jessica to help support her wonderful collection. I loved the idea of being able to merge cake and fashion. I hope to do so again in the future!

300 is a Very Big Number

I love fashion. I love the fact that you can put art on your body and walk around in it. Because of this love I watch fashion television shows, read fashion magazines, and spend a little too long deciding on what to wear when I get dressed in the morning.

While watching one tv show about fashion, "Project Runway Canada", I watched a fashion designer create dresses with charm, humor, and skill. I was so impressed with Jessica Biffi. Several of her creations inspired me to bring them to life through cake. We live in a pretty amazing world in which I had to but ask someone I knew on Twitter for an introduction and I was set to meet Jessica!

Through a common love of art, fashion, and cake we discussed the fusion of cake and fashion for her Spring/Summer 2010 collection presentation at LG Fashion Week in Toronto. I jumped at the chance to offer sponsorship, through cake, for her show!

And the rest was history!

Jessica was wonderful in allowing me full artistic control of the cakes. I created 300 mini cakes based on her collection titled "Digital Graffiti". I chose the shape of a cube to convey the feeling of a digital universe. I then airbrushed each cake with graffiti in the colours of Jessica's collection. She has explained that some of her inspiration for the line came from a graffiti artist called Fafi so I wanted to really showcase the graffiti element.

I had never done 300 mini cakes before. 300 is a very big number. Very big. I had a lot of help to get them all done and even with the help I felt like I could hardly move or think by the time they were all done. But man, they were a thing of beauty.

This is what 300 mini cake toppers looks like:



This is what 300 squares of fondant looks like:



This is what 300 mini cakes in a refrigerator looks like:



But this makes all that work worthwhile:



Thank you, Jessica, for inviting me to be a part of Fashion Week and congratulations on your wonderful SS10 collection!

Thanks, also, to The Caketress, Lori Hutchinson, for coming by and helping to cover many minis and to my dear friend and assistant, Sam Leeson, for more help than I can list here! Also a big thanks to Bonnie Junyk, owner of The Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Square One, Mississauga, for all her help and the donation of 300 white chocolate pieces for the mini toppers!