This is a Crunchy Milk Chocolate–Peanut Butter Layer Cake, which is chocolate cake layers filled with chocolate ganache and layers of crunchy peanut meringue covered in chocolate and iced in a milk chocolate buttercream. YUM!

The design is a "drippy cake" which I learned in a demonstration class last Thursday in Abbotsford with Andrea Sullivan. I really love the gumpaste cherries with their whimsical (florist wire) stems!

I really love all the bright colors on the cake board and the bright fondant sprinkles that are scattered on the outside of the cake.

The candles are made with gumpaste and are so fun. I really like the "splash" of purple icing under each candle where it looks like they were shoved into the cake too!

It seems I got a bad batch of fondant so this cake gave me no end of headaches to put together but I'm happy with how it finally turned out after two days of fighting with it. Happy Birthday Craig!!

I loved taking the classes this weekend and it has me really keen to sign right up for some more awesome classes in September at Cake Love 2011!

I was lucky enough to be able to take a class and a cake demo with Andrea Sullivan, a fantastic cake artist from Toronto, who is offering classes in Abbotsford, BC this weekend and this cake is the result of the class.

The cake is a banana-pecan cake with coffee buttercream that I've been wanting to try for awhile now. I added a rum sugar syrup to moisten the cake layers and add a bit of flavor.

The cake was carved to look like a pillow and covered with fondant. Some ribbon roses and ribbon leaves and some fondant tassels and piping complete the look of the pillow.

The cake board is covered in fondant made to look like sheets of fabric and I LOVE how this turned out! A few fondant pearls are also scattered around the cake board for a little accent. I'm really tired from today's class but it was so worth it to be able to learn from a cake artist that I have been inspired by for years!

This cake was made of sour cream chocolate cake layers soaked in a Kahlua sugar syrup iced with a mocha mousseline buttercream and covered with a Kahlua-flavored fondant. I made this flavor for a cake in January and everyone who had some of that cake wants the same flavor so I guess that's a good sign!

The cake is topped with two gumpaste shoes. I absolutely love the colors on this cake. The birthday girl's favorite color is orange and it was specifically requested that I not use black to avoid it looking like a Halloween cake and to keep it vibrant with other bright colors.

The cake board is covered with white fondant pressed with a texture mat and wrapped with an orange and hot pink ribbon. The border of the cake is done with lots of simple colorful gumpaste flowers and leaves and a tube of red (fondant) lipstick.

I quilted the sides of the cake with a roller and brushed some tangerine color onto the sides to give it a little contrast in the color. I love how this one turned out and hope it is just what the birthday celebration needs!

This is a sour cream chocolate cake soaked in a Kahlua sugar syrup filled and iced with a mocha mousseline buttercream. The cake was covered in a Kahlua-flavored brown fondant. 

The cake board was covered in brown fondant and wrapped with a pastel pink ribbon. The lettering on the cake board was done with a press set and pastel pink fondant.

The design was finished with pastel pink and green fondant in an abstract design for a father-daughter birthday celebration. Hope it's a great day for both of you!

While I didn't stay up all night to watch the royal wedding last week, I will admit that I started doing a google search to find the wedding cake as soon as I got up the next morning. I found the idea of the chocolate tea biscuit cake interesting and was able to find a recipe for it online. It turns out that I needed to bring something to a work lunch this week anyway and so I thought it'd be a good time to try it out.

The recipe was quite easy. The cake isn't even baked! Anything with this much chocolate in it has got to be delicious though. It is basically chocolate and chopped tea biscuits covered with chocolate ganache. I used more chopped tea biscuits and piped chocolate ganache to garnish the top of the cake.

This was unbelievably delicious! Only problem was that once chilled, it was very hard which made cutting it tricky... but definitely worth the effort!

When I saw this recipe in one of the recipe newsletters I receive, I knew that I had to try it! I have wanted to try Cannoli for ages but have yet to find a bakery that sells them or have time to try a recipe on my own. At any rate, this recipe takes the flavors from the Sicilian pastries and makes a cake version of it.

It started with a light and airy sponge cake that was soaked in a Triple Sec sugar syrup. The filling was made with ricotta cheese, chocolate chips and a hint of cinnamon. The outside was iced with a Triple Sec whipped cream and then sprinkled with chopped pistachios and chocolate chips.

I wasn't totally sure that all of these flavors would work together but they did and it was absolutely delicious! Yum!

The recipe is available at http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/recipefinder/cannoli-cake-roll-1437.