Every Moving Crew Needs Fuel

So I had several friends move this month (enough that I suggested we rent a party bus and do a housewarming-crawl.) Of course with moving comes moving food: Pizza and beer. I decided to make a cake at the last minute so I didn't have a chance to make a beer cake as well.

This cake was a pretty simple concept. Basically I just made a big round cake and iced it with pizza-crust colored icing. Getting the colour was probably one of the hardest parts. I've tried to make this colour before using cocoa powder but even when I sifted it it still ended up with brown spots. This time I decided to get creative with my Wilton gel food colourings. I make this colour using a mix of brown, copper (light skin tone) and golden yellow.

Now for the fun part: The toppings!

I made this cake on Good Friday, and my local cake supply store was closed. That left me to scour the bulk aisle at the grocery store. The pineapples are made of little yellow sour gumdrops that I scooped one by one out of the bin. the dried cranberries I thought looked like sundried tomatoes. The "pepperoni" is made from Sun Ripe fruit snacks that I cut out using the round end of a large icing tip since I didn't have a round cookie cutter. My brother-in-law and I ate the scraps because they are made from 100% fruit and full of vitamins, so we didn't want them to go to waste. The grocery store didn't have any chocolate covered raisins or anything similar, so I used two bamboo skewers to hand-dip Rice Krispies in melted chocolate to make it look like ground beef. For the sauce, I used some cheap strawberry jam (cheap because it had fewer chunks of real fruit than the name brands did so it spread more easily) and I mixed it with a bit of the leftover icing to make it a little more opaque. The mozzarella cheese is made from homemade modelling chocolate grated with a cheese grater.

And there you have it! Pop it in a pizza box (preferably a clean one) and you have your moving-day cake!

Double Rainbow... All the way across my plate!

So nine months is a looooooong time in Internet Viral Video Land, but who remembers the Double Rainbow guy? If you lived under a rock last year, allow me to fill you in. Paul "Yosemite Bear" Vasquez filmed a video of himself (presumably while under the influence of some kind of illicit substance) reacting to the emotional and profound sight of a "double rainbow" in his yard in Yosemite National Park and then posted it to YouTube. Some time last summer, comedian and late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel stumbled across this internet gem and declared on his Twitter account that it was the "funniest video in the world." Less than two weeks later, CNN announced that it had received over 4.8 Million views. As of April 7th, this number is closer to 27 Million views, not including re-posts, emails, and various auto-tune remixes.

So what does this all have to do with cake? Well, my cousin Laura kinda has a thing for stuff like this. She has been known to quote popular trends long after they are over. References to them can still make her laugh loud enough to make my cats run away. If you are going to quote The Mask around her, be sure to cover your ears first. (You should all know that I love my cousin very much and I mean all of this in the most good-natured way possible.)

When Laura's birthday came along this year, I knew what I had to do. I had to make Laura an epic double rainbow cake. I had a vision in my mind and it looked a little something like this:

Mission accomplished, right? WRONG. I knew I had to go above and beyond for my cousin's birthday cake. I had to take it one step further and create... a TRIPLE Rainbow Cake.

Step One was to mix myself a Roy G. Biv of colours, I chose to use basic white cake batter and gel food colouring as the pigment is more concentrated than liquid.

My husband was not too pleased when he got home and saw the mess.

Step Two was to actually pour the batter in to the cake pans. This part was easier than you might think. Basically you start with the colour you want to be on the outside of the cake and pour it straight in to the middle of the pan. Next you pour your second colour right in to the centre of the pan, on top of the first colour. The first colour will spread towards the outside of the pan as you do this.Repeat with all the colours until your pan is full. I found that it was best to use slightly less of each colour as I went along because it takes more batter to create the same width or ring towards the outside of the pan. I also reversed the order for my second cake.

While the cakes were baking, I decided to start cleaning up before Paul had an aneurysm. Since I hate wasting left over batter I ended up using it to make "paint splatter" cupcakes.

The best thing about these cupcakes is that, once they are iced, they just look like a normal cupcake. I brought them to my parents' house and when my dad went to eat one it blew his mind.

Anyway, if you are wondering what the finished cake looks like, here it is!

Success! So bright, so vivid! The only problem with this cake might be that it can be very colourful coming out, too. Ahem. But that's not very appetizing, is it?

Happy Birthday, cuz!

Welcome to Food Is Art Too!

Thanks for checking out my first ever blog post! I am a 24 year old banker from British Columbia, Canada. When I'm not giving people financial advice, I love to play with my food. My favorite thing to do is to make creative cakes, cupcakes, and desserts. I especially love making cake look like something else; flowers, sushi, Chinese take-out, you name it! Fortunately I have a large group of family and friends who are all willing to let me exploit their birthdays/anniversaries/weddings/child-birthing for my creative purposes.

Until now photos of these cakes have been in an album on facebook, but I feel that it is time to expand my horizons. I have recently started making cakes for people and companies by request and whenever someone hires me, they ask if I have a website that they can refer their friends or clients to. I decided that a blog would be the easiest way to share my work with people looking to hire me, while still keeping it casual for my friends who just want to see what I've been up to lately. I also like to post instructions and how-to guides for some of my more creative cakes. Nothing I do with my cakes is really a secret, and I love to share tips with people!

When I need a break from cake, I also enjoy inventing my own food recipes or tweaking the classics. I have no formal culinary training, so I really appreciate people who volunteer to be guinea pigs. While not every experiment has been successful most of my dishes turn out pretty tasty and, sometimes, even really, really good. From time to time when I come across one of these recipes I will post it here.

Once again, thank you very much for reading. Please check back often to see what I've been up to in the kitchen, and tell your friends! Also, I love taking requests. Again, I am not a professional baker but I do love a challenge.