I can't believe Naima is 6 years old already! And I've made a cake for every one of her birthdays (although I'd prefer to forget about the disaster that was her 1st birthday cake! Worst flop ever!)

This cake is a yellow cake with a fluffy chocolate frosting. The recipe is from Gourmet magazine and although it's simple, it is really yummy!

The cake was covered in green fondant but the colors weren't vibrant enough. The one thing that really occured to me is that in the Smurfs movie, Smurf Village was very vibrant and colorful so I painted the fondant with green food coloring to really make the colors pop.

The Smurfs needed to be quite small so I was lucky to find some toys that were just the right size. Making gumpaste figures this size would have been tricky! It's a shame though because I would have liked to have Baker Smurf and Crazy Smurf on the cake...

I also would have liked for Clumsy to be on his head with a path of destruction left behind him. He looks so harmless as they made him for the toys.

Brainy - so cute!!

Gutsy doesn't look nearly as cool as he did in the movie - must be the Scottish accent that does that for him!

Happy Birthday Naima! I hope you like your cake - and that I can make it across the border on a long weekend to get it to your party!

This was an Almond Crunch Chocolate Confetti Chiffon Cake for a birthday celebration at work.

The cake itself contains almond extract, amaretto and finely ground pieces of semisweet chocolate. The cake was then topped with an almond glaze and crunchy almond slices baked in sugar and egg white.

I always love the texture of chiffon cake and this recipe was no exception! It was so delicious!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE passionfruit so this cake recipe (again from Momofuku Milk Bar) was a must-try for me! The cake layers were chocolate chip cake which was then soaked in passionfruit puree after it was baked.

Each cake layer was topped with passionfruit curd, chocolate crumbs and coffee frosting. I had been really curious how coffee would go with passionfruit and chocolate but I must say that the flavors were very well balanced so that none of them were over-powering.

Again, this cake was a lot of work which seems to be the norm for Momofuku but it was delicious and I would totally make it again! This book is quickly becoming a favorite of mine and I still have so many recipes left to try from it! I'd also really like to get to NYC someday to try the real thing!

This was the second cake I've tried out of the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook and I really liked this one (although it was a LOT of work!). The cake layers were banana cake soaked in milk and each layer was topped with chocolate-hazelnut ganache, hazelnut crunch and banana cream and the top was covered with hazelnut frosting, sliced bananas and hazelnut crunch.

The chocolate-hazelnut ganache had a homemade hot fudge sauce in it and the hazelnut crunch was based on a from-scratch hazelnut brittle with feiulletine added so it ended up being a lot of prep. But it was delicious and well worth it! I can now see why this cake was one of Oprah's favorite cakes she had ever had!

This recipe came from a new cookbook I got at Christmas - Momofuku Milk Bar - and there are so many recipes in it that I can't wait to try! I have done some cookies from it but this was the first cake I tried.

It's not often I want to try a new carrot cake recipe as I'm quite happy with my carrot cake but this one was so unique that I just had to! The carrot cake layers were soaked in milk and then topped with "liquid cheesecake", milk crumbs and graham frosting so it combines the best of carrot cake and cheesecake. It ended up being perfect too because I made it as a belated birthday cake for a friend who loves both cheesecake and carrot cake. It was good but I think I'll stick to my carrot cake recipe and maybe add in the liquid cheesecake filling!

This wedding cake is for a New Years Eve wedding! The ambulance is made from fondant and gumpaste and was requested because the couple met when they were working for the ambulance.

The cake is a Black and White Chocolate cake which is vanilla buttermilk cake layers filled with alternating layers of dark chocolate pastry cream and white chocolate mousseline buttercream.

The tiers were covered in fondant (my first time working with Satin Ice and I loved it!) and stacked.

The cake was decorated with gumpaste flowers in varying shades of blue and silver gumpaste leaves. The couple's names are piped inside of a heart with buttercream on the top of the cake.

A few vines are piped on using buttercream. The borders were also piped on with white chocolate buttercream.

Happy New Year!... and I hope it's a beautiful wedding too!

I was really excited to try this recipe and then as luck would have it, I got really sick and didn't make it to the Christmas dinner with the dessert!

The base was made from pecans, almonds, nutmeg and brown sugar and smelled really yummy when it was baking. The crust was topped with a layer of bittersweet chocolate and then filled with an eggnog mousse (complete with brandy) and three paper-thin bittersweet chocolate discs (one of which you can see on the top of the cake). I used pearl dusted gumpaste snowflakes and gumpaste lettering to finish off the decorations.

I did end up well enough to have a piece of the leftovers a few days later and it was quite good.

Merry Christmas!

This was a lemon meringue cake for a farewell party at work.

It was four layers of lemon chiffon cake soaked in a lemon sugar syrup. Each layer was topped with vanilla bean caramel and a lemon cream.

The whole cake was then topped with heaps of Swiss meringue that was lightly toasted. Lemon isn't one of my favorite flavors but this one was pretty good!