Monday, May 30, 2011

Batter Chatter with Aneesa from A Slice Above

Beach themed wedding


I have a friend from high school that has been decorating cakes for the past three years.  She started off making cakes for herself because of a severe allergy, which turned into a great business.  Here is a little interview I did with her over facebook. Check it out!

Me: What made you start A Slice Above?


Aneesa: Due to my own severe food allergies, if I wanted cake I almost always had to make it myself. So having made so many cakes for friend's and family occasions, I started having more and more people asking me for cakes with interesting designs themes.


Me:  Is this your full time job? Did you go to post-secondary for something else?


Aneesa: This has become my full-time job. I have post secondary education from a private aesthetics college, where I ended up working in the spa and eventually became one of the instructors there. But due to an old car accident injury, I had to take off so much time from work to rehabilitate (and later had to leave) because of that I had more time to take on more cake requests.


Me: What are some of your favourite cakes? or style?


Aneesa: I prefer cake orders that are unique and ones that allow me to let my creativity run wild. I like  having leeway, making each order special. I often have no clue what I'm going to do until I'm actually working on it!


Me: Have you had any famous clients?


Aneesa: Jully Black is definitely a client. I've done other cakes for bigger names but I wouldn't necessarily call them clients. I did a cake for the cast of "Battle of the Blades, Season two" (where I've become friend with Theo Fleury from the Calgary Flames...) ;)

Me: What is your favourite flavour of cake?

Aneesa: I'm always a fan of a good moist, rich, chocolate cake! Can't go wrong there!!!

Me: What's next for A Slice Above?

Aneesa: My short term plan is to continue doing as many corporate, charity, or high profile gigs (and of course my regular "all" occasion cakes) as I can get to see where my business takes me. Long term plan...I'm leaving it in the hands of the universe, I never planned to be doing this in the first place and it just sort of happened. I look forward to seeing where I (and my edible creations) end up!


Aneesa offers peanut and nut free cakes as well as dairy free, egg free, vegan and gluten free cakes plus she does some really excellent work. Please check out her facebook page where there are tons of other pictures and her contact info.  I wish her all the luck!  These are some of my favourite cakes she's done, I have an affinity to food cakes.

Pizza cake

Made for a women who had just won the battle against
breast cancer

Made for Bluebird: A Food & Art Thing

Spaghetti and Meatballs cake
Enjoy 


Friday, May 27, 2011

Friday Favourites



I can't believe it's almost the end of May, this is my first Friday Favourites in a really long time.  Hopefully you will enjoy some of the stuff posted here.  Of course I'm going to include a plug for my soap business.

Here we go
  • In Toronto there is a group of awesome bike riders that organize the Cupcake Bike Ride, May's ride is taking place this weekend.  I can't wait to go!
  • Goodies Gourmet Soap's fragrance contest is almost over, you have until May 31st to get your ideas in. 
  • These amazing rainbow chocolate chip cookies are made by Jessie the CakeSpy mastermind.
  • This party looks amazing, especially the cupcakes from Amelie's House.
  • Susan Yuen makes the cutest bento boxes and her pictures are great.
  • Nadege Patisserie is a French cafe in Toronto, prices are a little high and some of the products aren't the best but what is the best is their Salted Caramel macarons.
Also my friend Cailin has moved her blog back to Tumblr, so check that out too.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Cupcake Fimo charms



One thing I like to do in my spare time (which I don't have much of lately) is making fimo cupcakes, fruit and other things.  I just wanted to share some of my creations with you.  They look so yummy, and I love to wear the stuff it always gets a great reaction.













Enjoy!


Thursday, May 19, 2011

New line of soaps



Please check out my new line of soaps called Epicurious at my etsy shop from Goodies Gourmet Soaps.  All of the soaps are inspired by natural fruits and herbs.  I really love the pictures too done my photographer Marc at mk:photographics.  

Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Herbal Infusions

I love tea, I especially love loose leaf tea.  My favourite place to get loose leaf tea in Toronto is Herbal Infusions. Herbal Infusions has a great selection of teas including black, green, white, oolong and herbal.  They have just launched their online shop, the are currently shipping all over Canada and the United States.  They also have a Tea of the Month Club, which means you get a 50g bag every month so you can sample the new teas, fun eh!

Currently, my favourite tea is the Grapefruit Eucalyptus. Perviously, it was the Cocoa tea which is the shells of cocoa bean, this tea is amazing.  Herbal Infusions is the only place in Ontario that has this tea, you have to go try it!

Not only do they sell loose leaf tea, they also sell tea pots, cups, presses, flavoured sugar, honey and anything else you need to make a great cup of tea.  To top it off they have a tea bar where they make tea lattes, regular tea, iced tea, iced tea lattes, etc.  I think it's worth the visit if you are downtown, the employees are super friendly and knowledgable and you'll get a great tasting tea.




tea from an UNESCO site






Sugar

Shop
Enjoy,

Contest!

Sugar Scrubs


Besides teaching and volunteering at Pride Toronto.  I try to run this baking blog and I run a soap company called Goodies Gourmet Soaps.  Well, my soap company is having their first contest.  Here is the info to participate.  The prize...soap!

We just got three new scents and now it is time to name them and we’d love your help!

For the person who comes up with the best name of the scent you will win a fun soap of your choice in that fragrance. Below I will describe what the scent smells like and all you have to do is come up with the best (dessert or sweets inspired) name. Check out our existing fragrances first, cotton candy is already gone ;)

Ok here we go...

#1 - sickly sweet sugar with a hint of vanilla (smells like Lush’s Snow Fairy)

#2 - Honey, citrus and toffee (smells like Lush’s Honey I Washed the Kids)

#3 - smells like liquid sugar...remember those big rainbow lollipops? (smells like Lush’s Rock Star)

Contest is open until May 31, 2011. All you have to do is email us your idea, don’t forget to tell us which number you are naming.

Get your thinking caps on!


If you have any questions please let me know info@goodiesgourmetsoaps.com





Monday, May 9, 2011

Berry Spelt Muffins


I know, I know I've been away for quite a long time, especially long in the blogging world.  First off, I took on another class at work because one of our teachers had a stroke and as Pride Toronto is only 52 days away I am spending a lot more time on that as well.  Oh and my Mom deleted all of my Easter baking pictures off her camera...

Here's a recipe that I came up with over a year ago and I'm finally read to share it with you (it probably could use some more tweaking), if you try it out please let me know how it works and if you have modifications.  I originally made this recipe for a POM Wonderful contest, after submitting my recipe I learned that the contest was for the POM fruit not the juice.



I really hope you like them...introducing my recipe for Blueberry, Raspberry and Pomegranate Spelt Muffins.

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

In a bowl mix together:
4 tbsp. oil
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 eggs
1/2 cup pomegranate juice (any flavour will do, I used blueberry)
2 tsp. vanilla extract

In a small bowl combine:
2 tsp. baking powder
2 cups spelt flour
1/4 tsp. salt

Mix together to get out any lumps.

Mix wet and dry and add 2 cups of blueberries (I did 1 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup raspberries and 1/2 cup blackberries).

Put into lined muffin tins and bake until a tester comes out clean 15 - 20+ minutes depending on your oven.

Pomegranate juice

Batter

Warm muffins
Hope you enjoy!