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!

Enuka Okuma Wedding Cupcakes

I recently had the wonderful opportunity of attending and got to make cupcakes for the beautiful Enuka Okuma on her very special wedding day.  Although I don't have pictures yet, the cupcakes were shown on a clip from Entertainment Tonight Canada.  The part with the cupcakes is at the end but I think you should watch the whole thing, it was the most beautiful wedding.  Congrats Joe & Enuka! xo



Enjoy!

D'lish Cupcakery

Last week I posted a review of OMG Baked Goodness with my friend Cailin from A White Picket Fence.  We had some communication issues because I posted on just one cupcakery from our cupcake crawl and she posted both. So, time for my second post from our cupcake crawl.

D'lish Cupcakes is located in the trendy neighbourhood of Queen St. W. right around Niagara St.  I must say the cupcakes that I tried were delicious (or d'lish) but the one major thing that bothered me was that the store looked exactly like Sprinkles. Their decore, menu, presentation and packaging were very similar.  On to the taste...

My Review

1) Belgian chocolate - the cupcake was a good, moist chocolate cupcake with (a too runny) marshmallow filling the chocolate ganache was quite good.

2) Red Velvet - AWESOME!!! It has a very dense and smooth texture (as  I said in my last post I have a texture issue), they added some spice which was really nice.

3) Carrot - there was way too much butter in the icing and the cupcake was more like a muffin.

One good thing is that they only use 100% butter in their icings and cupcakes, no shortening here!

Overall, I'd go back.  Their cupcakes are really good, you can tell the baker has taken a long time to perfect the recipes.

Enjoy!

OMG Baked Goodness

Back in April, my friend Cailin from A White Picket Fence and I went on a mini-cupcake crawl to a couple of cupcakeries in Toronto.  It was a wet and gloomy day but we didn't mind as we were in search for some awesome cupcakes.  Our first stop was OMG Baked Goodness which is located on Dundas St. W. between Dufferin St. and Lansdowne, a very cute shop.

Now let me start off saying that I really don't enjoy vegan cupcakes and that's just what OMG is a vegan cupcake store that also sells tarts, sweet breads and other sweets.  But we were there for the cupcakes, and I guess the cupcakes were good but nothing compared to regular eggs and dairy cupcakes. Cailin and I bought three different kinds of cupcakes.

So my review - the chocolate cupcake I had it was a good dense chocolate cupcake.  The vanilla, cupcake tasted like a corn muffin.  It was really lacking the sweetness you'd expect.  The carrot we tried was really good, the spices were perfect and the cream cheese icing was not too dense, but it did taste like a muffin and not a cupcake (I have a major issue with textures of things!).  Probably my biggest issue was that the icing had gone all hard, it was like they were sitting out for a long time and when we got there they had only been opened for one hour.

All in all, I wouldn't go back again but that's because I'm not vegan and I can eat regular cupcakes.  If I was it would probably be my go to shop for vegan desserts.

Summer Favourites

I know it's not quite summer yet but I thought I'd post some of my favourite things for summer.  Not only is summer coming up on the 21st but my birthday is almost here on the 20th.  This list is what summer is  to me.

1. Clothes - Johnny Cupcakes x Hello Kitty .2 collection
2. Dessert - Red Velvet Whoopie Pies
3. Product - Goodie's Gourmet Soaps
4. Dessert - Pavlova
5. Fruit - Strawberries
6.  Organization (Party) - Pride Toronto
7. Activity - cycling

Enjoy!

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 

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,

Toronto Bakes for Japan was a success!

Wow, thanks so much Toronto for coming out and supporting Toronto Bakes for Japan.  They raised over their $10,000 goal.  Toronto Bakes for Japan made over half of it on Saturday at Brickworks Farmers Market and the rest on Sunday at Liberty Noodle, The Rivoli, Cafe Diplomatico and Cafe Amaranto.

There was so many awesome baked goods, from butter tarts to brownies, savoury tarts and biscuits, cookies and of course cupcakes.

Here's a little round up of the goodies.

Little Purse cakes from Sweet Things TO

More Sweet Things TO

And More

Bunny Sugar Cookies

Savoury cookies from Fashion Food

Hundreds of Cupcakes from Shastacake

Hello Kitty sugar cookies from my new friend Sam

Gluten Free Macarons

Cake Pops from the  Cake Pop Shoppe

Sushi cake from Alice's Cakes

Tons of other great stuff, of course what I brought.  I made butter tarts, rocky road brownie cupcakes and Hello Kitty and Japan chocolate fudge cupcakes with buttercream icing.

Brownie cupcakes and butter tarts (in the back)

Thanks Toronto,

Wordless Wednesday

Enjoy!

Toronto Bakes for Japan

Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. (Howard Zinn)

What: A simple concept – a bake sale to raise money for Japan.

When & Where:

Saturday, April 9, 2011, 9 am to 1 pm (New!)

• Farmers’ Market at Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Ave, Toronto

Sunday, April 10, 2011, 11 am to 3 pm

• Liberty Noodle, 171 East Liberty St, Toronto
• The Rivoli, 334 Queen St W, Toronto (New!)

Who: Kind and committed people from across Toronto coming together and using their talents for a great cause.

To Whom: 100% of all proceeds from this initiative will be donated directly to the Japanese Red Cross Society.

Why: Because we can; we must.

How:

1. If you want to participate, use the Contact page over at the Toronto Bakes for Japan website, or drop an email to torontobakesforjapan@gmail.com and tell them how you would like to help. The sooner, the better because the event is only 3 weeks away.

2. RSVP: You can RSVP to the event on Facebook.

3. Spread the word: Today, if videos of funny cats can go viral, why not word of a good cause? Share the link with anyone you think would like to help. We can use all the hands we can get.

4. Check the Toronto Bakes for Japan site or Facebook or Twitter (hashtag #BakeForJapan) for more details.