Coco Cake Land Lately

Follow Coco Cake Land on Instagram!  Plenty of behind the scenes cakey times and little snippets of Coco Cake Land life. The top photo features these crazy cute cake toppers by Little Cat Design Co for Sweet and Saucy Shop! My fancy photos were all ruined due to some glitchy computer irritation (I dunno what happened but I am bummed!) so all I have is this little instagram pic for now until I re-shoot - Rats! 

Hope you're all doing great, cake pals - and happy happy Thanksgiving long weekend to my pie eating American readers and friends! My dream is to be invited to an American style Thanksgiving feast one year. How many pies are at your Thanksgiving dinner??

xo Lyndsay

Rainbow Cat Birthday Cake!

Happy birthday to meeee! 

Yes, today is my birthday! To celebrate, I wanted a rainbow cake, but I also wanted an animal cake - so thanks to some of my Coco Cake Land Facebook fans, I had the idea to combine the two into my dream birthday cake. So here ya go: RAINBOW CAT CAKE! It maybe also kind of looks like a bunny but when I showed it to Teddy he made a MEOW sound (he's 15 months old) so I think it's legit enough for me! :)

Yep, I'm 37 years old today. A lady isn't supposed to share her age but it's 2013, guys - and we need to stop being so freaked out about women aging. So there you have it. Sounds golden oldie to be 37 but I've got some pretty sweet Asian genes on my side, so I'll keep on trucking and hope for the best. Besides, growing old is a beautiful thing, right? We're slathered and badgered daily by the idea of staying "young." But I've had some amazing times in my 37 years. Rough times, too - but that's what makes us stronger and wiser. And more wrinkly. And prone to ice cream binges. 

People often ask me how I got into the cake biz and how I started making cakes. Well let me tell ya - I've had 101 careers, and truly, I'm always thinking of what my next "career" will be. In the past fifteen years, I've worked at a photo developing shop, I was a secretary for a mental health centre, I temped in a lawyer's office, I worked in an art gallery, I toured in bands playing music across North America and even Europe, I taught art to children, when I was 30 I even worked at a snow cone stand and had an 18 year old "manager"! I traded a snowcone for a fake tattoo from the teen who worked across the fairway from me.

Too many jobs to even remember. A couple of years ago I even started taking classes to become an elementary school teacher but then didn't end up following through with that idea (man, Canadian Geography SUCKED!) and now it's been five years since I started making cakes! I've learned and grown and developed a particular design niche with it - and met so many awesome people along the way. So yeah, learning to bake at 31 has been a pretty, pretty good turn of events, I'd say.

For anyone reading this who might be wondering what the hell they're doing with their life - there's been many times I've felt lost and unsure of what I was doing or what I wanted to do next. I guess now I feel like my life is a continual work in progress and that it will continue to ebb and flow. I'll always be wondering and searching and learning, but with a firm base of my belief in the utter importance of family, friendship and love, and love most especially for my little boy, and my husband R.

Oh, and crazy mad love for some RAINBOW CAT CAKES!

RAINBOW CAT CAKE DIY 

A note about this cake: due to the multiple cake layers and a LOT of buttercream, this cake is a heavy block-headed, cat noggin on a plate BEAST! I used 7 inch cake pans and still the cake will feed 20+ guests for sure. (When the cake is this tall you don't need huge slices. Or do you?? :) Also, place your fondant "face" bits on the cake just prior to serving, so the fondant doesn't get too melty. 

You will need: 

A double recipe for a vanilla cake - box mix or from scratch, whatever you like!

Five 7 inch cake pans

Five bowls for mixing your rainbow cake batter colours 

Gel food colouring in your fave rainbow colours - I used pink, yellow, green, blue and purple for my layers!

8 cups (woh!) of vanilla buttercream

An offset spatula for frosting your cake

A piping bag fitted with a multi opening tip (also known as the hair/grass tip)

White fondant and gel colours to mix and create your cat's eyes, ears, nose and whiskers

Make it!

1. Make batter according to recipe instructions. 

2. Divide batter into five bowls - add gel food colours to each and mix to combine. (the amount is up to you - just know that a little goes a long way!)

3. Pour into greased and floured cake pans. Bake according to recipe's instructions. 

4. Let cakes completely cool. 

5. Make buttercream according to recipe instructions. 

6. Level your cake layers with a serrated knife.

6. Place your first coloured cake layer on a cake board or cake stand. Frost the top, and add the next colour. Continue until you reach your last cake layer!

7. Frost the entire exterior of the cake.

8. Pipe the entire exterior cake with buttercream "fur!" 

9. Make your fondant face pieces using piping tips for cutters, or just your hands, and make ears by creating fondant triangles and placing them on wooden BBQ sticks.

10. Place your ears into the top of the cake - pipe "borders" around the edges of the ears if you like!

11. Place your fondant eyes, nose and whiskers on!

12. MEOW - you are ready to party SO hard! 

Gad it is SO exciting cutting into a rainbow layer cake! Eeks! It is pure beautiful magic!

Rainbows and sunshine and kitties - that's not a bad analogy for life, right? I hope you guys are all doing great - and thank you for coming to my blog and having a cakey visit in Coco Cake Land! 

Happy weekend, cake pals!

xo Lyndsay 

Little Rainbow Party

I was inspired by this beautiful wooden rainbow stacking toy to create a simple rainbow party! Nope, no buckets of crazy colored buttercream or tie-dye cupcake insides or layers of coloured cake here! Just some lovely vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, dressed to impress in every-colour-of-the-rainbow cupcake liners and fashioned with colourful flags.

Children's parties needn't always be jacked to the nines! All you need is a selection (even three different colours!) of cupcake liners, a few rolls of Japanese washi tape and the cutest inspiration: your baby's own toys.

You can even use those coloured cupcake liners to make a very cute and very easy festive garland, as I wrote about here - the striped liners with the white centers work great because they look like stripey little starbursts. Simply open cupcake liners flat, and use clear tape to adhere them to a few feet of string!




And yes... you can have a cupcake! Two, even!

Thank you to Land of Nod for sending me the rainbow stacking toy and alphabet letters! 

Pretty Tri-Coloured Easter Cake & Tutorial!

Spring is upon us... Easter! But hey, this cutie tri-coloured rainbow cake would work for so many other events too - birthdays, bridal or baby showers, Pride weekend, coming out parties...! So much fun! I know everyone and their dog's pet cats have been rocking these rainbow multi-coloured layer cakes, but gosh darn it, they are so pretty and so fun to make... and when you cut into it... man, you just feel this giddy satisfaction... this primary school feeling of "I did it!" 

This cake was inspired by my sweet cake pal Rosie at Sweetapolita - I recently watched her pastel swirl cake tutorial and was like, "I would like to try that!!!" So here ya go. My cake is much more... "rustic" looking than hers, as she is the MASTER! And my colours turned out way more vibrant than I had intended... I really thought I was going to make a pastel Easter cake... instead it turned out to be a little on the "crazy pants" side... hence the name.

Happy Spring, everyone! 

CRAZY PANTS EASTER CAKE TUTORIAL

You will need:

1. Three 7 x 2 inch cake pans sprayed with vegetable oil and lined with parchment paper circles (for easy cake removal - or you can butter and flour your pans, too)
2. Vanilla cake recipe enough for one 9 inch layer cake - this recipe works! Or visit my friend Rosie for some great recipes! (or, no biggie here - go with a boxed cake mix!)
3. 4 cups of vanilla buttercream. This recipe by Sweetapolita will do great!
4. Three types of gel food colouring: I used Wilton brand gel colour in Violet, Sky Blue and Fuchsia.
5. An offset spatula to frost your cake with!
6. A piping bag fitted with an open circle tip, for filling your cake layers evenly (optional)
7. A little candy egg, and a toothpick with some craft paper or washi tape for a flag (optional decoration)
8. Three medium sized bowls to mix colour into your cake batter, and into your buttercream.
9. A bench scraper to smooth and blend the sides of your cake - or you can use an offset spatula.

Okay! Mix up your cake batter according to the recipe's instructions, and then... 

Once you have your cake batter prepared, divide it evenly into three bowls. Put a teensy bit of gel food colour in each bowl - you can start with less then add more if need be. Mix gently to blend using a spatula or spoon.

Place coloured cake batter into your 7 x 2 inch cake pans. You can smooth out the top with an offset spatula to even it out in the pan if you like. Place in oven and bake according to recipe's instructions.

Once your cake layers are baked and cooled, using a serrated knife, level your cake layers so they're flat. Then, begin to layer your cake using the vanilla untinted buttercream frosting! Divide the frosting in half and use the first half for filling and crumb-coating your cake.

I used a piping bag fitted with an open circle tip to create an easy and even layer of frosting, but you can easily just use an offset spatula or even a regular old butter knife to fill your cake with.

I layered mine with the purple on the bottom, blue in the middle and pink on top... looks like a cute little hamburger now, doesn't it!?

Time for the crumb coat! This is the frosting layer that seals in those pesky crumbs.

All done! Totally ugly here but not a big deal! At this point I place it in the freezer for the crumb coat to set, about 10-15 minutes.

Now time to mix the remaining half of buttercream into three different colours. Again, I went with purple, blue and pink! Easter!

Bring your chilled cake out of the freezer. Now time to frost the colours! I started at the bottom with my offset spatula, frosting on the purple. Then I frosted on a layer of the blue - then I started from the top with the pink and will connect the pink and blue.

Doesn't this look like a 7 month old baby made this!? (not to fear... I call this a cake in progress...)

Taking your bench scraper or your offset spatula, smooth all around the cake, combining the colours while you smooth it. Okay, "smooth" is a loose term with this cake! "Smear"??

But look! Even with not the very best colour-combining and smoothing job, cake looks so cute and festive and colourful!!! I used my offset spatula to create a little swirly effect on the top of the cake. Add a little candy chocolate egg and a matching cute flag and you are ready to PARTY!

Slice it out... don't be shy! Get your fork ready, too and call your buddies to the table.

Eeks! Then freak out at how mini-exciting it is to see the insides of a multi-coloured cake!

Take even MORE pictures with a slightly different set-up! Cake photography nerd!

And even MORE pictures! ^__^

Then... your work is done... you may eat your slice now... chomp chomp...!


Hope you enjoyed this tutorial, blog buddies! Happy cakeing to all!


xo Lyndsay