Elanie celebrated her 21^st birthday this weekend with a double party! Elanie’s mom arranged the cupcake order with me in the weeks prior to the parties, to match the theme and Elanie’s taste.

On Saturday night she had a bash with her friends with a classy silver and white theme. For this party I made mouth watering vanilla cupcakes in silver paper cups with a variety of secret centres- fudge, creme caramels, coconut ice, malted biscuit balls and a berry nougat. I topped them with my delectable white vanilla butter icing and a little glitter, a black fondant flower with a white centre, and a silver fondant “21″ mounted upright on a white fondant disc. I added some small silver dragees for some extra sparkle.

And for the first time, I made a cake for a customer! I have always baked my son’s birthday cakes, but I’ve never done one for someone else. This one is a vanilla sponge cake with a caramel filling and white vanilla butter icing covering it. I decorated with with the same black flowers as I used on the cupcakes and put Elanie’s name on top of the cake in silver fondant lettering mounted on white fondant.

On Sunday, Elanie celebrated with her family. The green and purple colour scheme was very striking, and after chatting to Elanie’s mom I mounted a green and purple “21″ on green and purple fondant discs to stand upright on the cupcakes. Daleen, Elanie’s mom, asked for a multi-coloured flower garden using fondant daisies on top of alternating green and purple vanilla butter icing and provided the green and purple polkadot cupcake collars. These little beauties were also vanilla cupcakes with several different secret centres.

Happy birthday Elanie! I hope your celebratory weekend was all you hoped it would be!

For Damien’s birthday, I made his favourite cake- which is actually his own “creation”. When he turned 13 or so, I took him to a bakery and asked him what kind of cake he would like for his birthday as I was not going to be able to bake for him that year. He asked for chocolate cake layered with strawberries, caramel and cream. He had it again a few times after that, so this year when he turned twenty I asked if he would like it again.

I switched the cream for cream-cheese icing this time, and I poured a chocolate ganache over the top for a bit of a variation, and it was very yummy indeed. And very rich!

And here he is, cutting his birthday cake while we sang “Happy Birthday”!

I attempted to make a multi-layer cake for the first time in my life! I’ve seen so many of them around and I just had to try it.

I layered chocolate and vanilla sponge cake and sandwiched them using chocolate butter icing and tinned yellow cherries, and vanilla butter icing and black cherry preserve.

It looks really pretty, and it tastes pretty good, but I need to use a different sponge cake next time, these were dreadfully dry.