Baking and Dogs: Fun Cakes

So, life kind of took over for the month of May and I didn't get a chance to blog anything. Holy crap, sorry for that.

I've been working hard and have had a lot of cake requests that have taken up a lot of time, but it's been really fun too.

Our dog, Tessa, has been taking up a lot of our energy too and I'll write about that separately, soon, when I have a bit more strength to deal with it.

Anywhooo, this past week was just an avalanche of work and I had a few 7:30am to 2am days, so didn't have much time for anything other than working, eating and sleeping. There are some very exciting things happening in The Sweet Kitchen that are going to keep me chained to the ovens very soon, but it's going to be fantastic. Again, I will blog about that soon too, but I may start a different blog just for the business side of things. I just need to find the right blog designer and find the time to blog on it...

A good friend had a birthday this week and her husband requested a birthday cake with their dog's face on it. It turned out really well, but didn't get a pic as they showed up to pick it up just as I was icing it and I didn't feel I could ask them to wait some more while I set up a photo shoot. They promised to take pics and will bring them over when they can. I can't wait.

But THE BEST cake request came for a retiring biology prof at Trent U. The prof that ordered the cake asked if it would be possible to include some of the animals from the invitation to be included on the cake. Absolutely, no problem, I said and waited for the emailed images to arrive. I'm thinking a maybe something cool like wolves, bears etc. and was getting quite ahead of myself in what it was going to look like, when the email arrived. Umm, are you sure this is what you want on the cake?????? Let's just think a little smaller in terms of animals. How about a cod? How about a frog? Maybe a crayfish? And lastly, wait for it, a SEA CUCUMBER! I swear to God, I'm not going to do anymore cakes for men. It's all sports and slimy animals. How am I going to make this look good? So I put it off and I put it off and the day got closer and closer and I panicked more and more...and then inspiration hit and I started to think this was going to be really fun. And it was.

I decided to put a bit of a marsh scene with the frog, bull rushes, lily pad and water lily.

I had watched a few videos on sea cucumbers and they're not a nice looking creature, so I decided mine would be a burrowing sea cucumber and that took care of about 80% of it. He was going to be in the process of burrowing into the cake, which is kind of gross, but I figured the biologists could handle it.