What is the hardest cake design you have decorated?
That is a hard question, cause over the past years I have had a number of challenging cakes. Probably one of the most challenging cakes was this two tone purple and white cake. I had to divide each section at an angle and airbrush it a deep purple. It was REALLY difficult not to get too much over spray on the white section. Plus, when I was making the drapes, I needed an extra set of hands to help hold the drapes in place. Thankfully, I had my step-mother who happened to be visiting, step in and give me a hand. The other challenging thing about this particular cake was the flowers. I didn`t know what kind of flowers they would be UNTIL I went to the venue. They turned out to be lilacs. I am VERY ALLERGIC to lilacs. I spent a max of 5 min in the room, but already I was reacting to them. Unfortunately, I didn`t have time to spend recovering from the reaction, since I had to back to the shop and start working on a wedding cake for the next day.
What can be used for a dye substitute for icing?
This can be difficult, especially in today's age with so many people being sensitive to food color. Personally, I have an issue too, since my son is extremely sensitive to red food coloring. We stay away from any colored drinks, candy, etc. In fact, colored juice is non-existent in our house. The only thing I can suggest that is for brown icing one can use cocoa, strawberry/raspberry juice for pink icing and lemon rind gives a yellowish color. Other than that it's really hard to get a real deep color without using dyes.
How long have you been in business for? and also you use your gramma's recipes, now with cupcakes and cake being so popular and now with every flavor, do you find you are adjusting your recipes into the new flavors? like keeping the base the same but adding?
We opened up for business in May 2007. We still continue to use alot of my grandmother`s recipes, for most of our cakes and cupcake recipes. For some recipes, like our spice and lemon cake, I have adjusted our vanilla cake recipe. Since we don`t use box mixes as a base, all our recipes are from scratch, having come from many hours of searching, testing and tweaking.
What is the easiest way to cut calories in cake while keeping exceptional flavor?
One way is to use applesauce for some of the fat, but then you might not always get the same results. Your cake may be heavier and denser. You can also use artificial sweeteners, but again, you may not get the same desired results. Personally, for me, cake is a dessert and is meant to be sweet. If you are looking to cut calories, I would either eat a smaller piece or just not eat it at all.
When you make cherry flavour cake or icing, what do you use to flavour it?
I use cherry juice for flavoring.
You work out of your home, or do you have a shop somewhere in town?
At the moment, we are a home-based business, by appointment only. We work out of a second kitchen licensed by the city of Fort St John and health inspected by Northern Health, separate from the rest of the house. I would LOVE to have a shop in town, however, right now it`s not feasible with my children attending a rural school. I would have to close up shop at 2:30 everyday to go and pick them up from the bus. Unfortunately, we do not have access to child care either.
