Back in July of 2011 i had the privilege to make a 20th Anniversary Cake for my husbands fellow “Rocky Mountain Land Cruiser Association” friend located here in Calgary. These guys are dedicated to the art of off-roading (all in their Land Cruisers of course) and they are a wonderful group of people that i have had the privilege to get to know over the last few years. So when one of the members was celebrating their 20th Anniversary I jumped at the chance to contribute to the party with a cake i’d been dying to make. I wanted to make it look sleek and sophisticated. I decided to make a 3 tier cake, each tier a different flavour of cake. The bottom tier was a chocolate cake with Cream Cheese filling, the middle tier a Vanilla cake with Coconut filling and the top tier was a chocolate cake with Banana Cream filling. The main colour had to be silver to keep in theme with their silvery anniversary. I covered the tiers with white fondant and went to work making each tier unique. I decided to use a quilting technique on the bottom tier and added small white edible pearls to separate the quilt pattern. The middle tier was inspired from another cake i saw and decided to try my hand at it. I didn’t have the exact same cutter so i used what i had and made the most of it. This part of the cake took a while as i had to make each petal individually and attach them onto the cake one at a time. Patience is not my virtue (ask my husband) but i took my time and was relieved to put on the final petal! The top tier was made with the Cornelli Lace technique (which i also used on my brown/orange bow cake), another time consuming pattern. By the time i was finished i had lost all feeling to half my hand…but it was sooo worth it!

Aaden’s 2nd Birthday was a true test of my skills. I found this cake in a book i grabbed from the library and as soon as i saw it i knew it would be perfect for Aaden. I loved making this cake. It was a challenge as this was the first 3D cake i was making. Good thing for instructions:)

The third cake i made for a friend of my moms whom she used to work with in Cochrane. This was also a first for me and very last minute. I found this recipe for a Apple-Cinnamon cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream and i knew i had to make it. It sounded delicious and it tasted even better! The design i came up with after going back through my Wilton books and found the technique called “cornelli lace”. I thought it would look pretty along with a bow and i loved the final outcome.

My daughters birthday was fast approaching and i knew i had to make something spectacular. LIke i said, it’s in my nature to always try to outdo myself. She had mentioned she wanted a “Tangled” theme. So many ways i could have gone with this cake. I decided to take things in a whole new direction. Once again, a first for me. Good thing i had my husband to help me with the construction of this beast. I ended up attaching PVC pipe to a cake board to make sure this thing would stay up and be able to hold a 6″ cake on top. The roof of the cake was RK (Rice Krispie) treats as well as the entire tower. The top of the tower and the bottom were Vanilla cake filled with Strawberry Buttercream. I look back at this cake and it makes me smile:) Amelie loved it and all the kids loved watching it get cut. I cried a little cause i knew how much time it had taken me to make this beast but in the end I have to “Let them eat cake!”

I also had a request for a 8th Birthday party that was taking place at a Rock Climbing establishment here in Calgary. I figured why not make a rock climbing wall? I had baked 2 different size cakes and put them together to create the wall part of the cake. My husband was the one who actually came up with the idea of making the “rock pattern” and i’m glad i listened;)

I have made many friends over the last 20 years living in Calgary but this was a special cake i made for a very close friends baby shower from my first few years in this country. I got the inspiration from our childhood stories about Storks and where babies came from.

I made this Hot Wheels cake for a wonderful 5 year old boy named Josh. His mom asked me to make something special for his birthday in a ‘Hot Wheels’ theme. I wish i could say that i knew what i was going to make right off the bat but despite having a 3 year old boy at home, i had no previous notion of what to make for this cake. I searched and searched for Hot Wheel ideas and i saw so many cars, black cars, purple cars, red cars, even pink cars…but to make a cake with just cars wasn’t the way i wanted to go. At least not just cars, needed a little more umph…needed to make it pop more then just a little simple cake. So i found this ring of fire and thought i would give it a try. It’s always tricky for get things to defy gravity (no matter how small) and this ring was small and thin but i managed to make it work…barely. I loved the little cars i made though. They didn’t look like traditional Hot Wheels which made it even cuter:) In the end, Josh loved it:)

I also got asked to make a Christmas cake for a very dear friend. I was so excited to get this one started. I was nervous at first as i had so many ideas i didn’t know which one i wanted to concentrate on. My brain tends to jump from one idea to another, sometimes it takes me days to buckle down and get a design together. I think even that sentence took me a while to write….

Back to the cake….

I tend to complicate things for myself as i frantically search for new recipes and i tend to try them when i make cakes for friends (good thing they always turn out delicious:) ) This one ended up being a marble pound cake with a bavaria cream filling. I must say this was a first for me. The pound cake was very heavy but tasted quite good. I had troubles with the Bavarian Cream, as it was a first, and it tasted divine (though i learned from my mistakes). I knew i wanted to do something fitting for kids as well as adults. I searched and found some inspiration (thanks to google) and decided to tackle another first. As soon as i saw this snowman i knew i had to make him! He reminded me of St.Nicholas from my youth in Poland, very European looking. I amazed myself at how fast i was able to make him. This made me thrilled as i knew that i had come a long ways from my very first cake. I was even more thrilled to make the snowman:) Loved the top hat and his scarf, then adding a little icing sugar made the whole thing come together. I was beyond thrilled with this cake. I still grin when i see it cause i know how happy it made me. The way Christmas used to make me feel when i was a kid!  So let the New Year begin…

I was excited to get it done. I loved the finished product and couldn’t wait for everyone to see it. But even this robot cake wasn’t able to pull me completely out of the rut. I wasn’t excited anymore about making anything. I was stuck.

I put so much energy into learning and acquring new information and techniques into creating these cakes that i couldn’t see past the time and energy that i put into it. I was feeling short changed. You know when you feel like you give and give and just can’t seem to get anything back? Maybe it’s just crazy hormonal issues, or maybe it’s this weather? Or maybe, just maybe i was loosing my desire for cakes. Somewhere along the way i wasn’t feeling the passion anymore. Where did it dissapear to? Why had it left? Why couldn’t i turn on the oven and the mixer and start making something?? It proved challenging to even think about it. I would rather go and sit infront of the TV and loose myself in midless television sitcoms then to even think about cakes. Sure, i’ve made cupcakes here and there but nothing else. Nothing. Life seems to get in the way sometimes.

I need to find it again. I need to get the blood flowing again. I need to feel pride and know that what i’m doing is what i’m supposed to be doing. I need to get all the bad thoughts out of my head and get my hands dirty again (so to speak:))

Ok, here i go…

In the end the cake came out better then expected and the clinic was thrilled with it as well:)

So off I went to meet this lady to see what kind of condition it was in and what I could possibly try and offer her for it. I had her turn it on for me to make sure it was working and in decent enough shape for me to even attempt to bargain with her. Oh, how it purred like a kitten! I got excited and automatically got anxious to take it home and make some cake or some buttercream, anything! So after a couple of minutes of talking about the mixer and baking and all that jazz I got down to business. Now here’s the thing. Once, I saw this mixer I got so excited I forgot about the price and about trying to save a buck ar two at this point…I just wanted it. So needless to say my bargaining skills didn’t get the workout they so desperately needed.

In the end, I got a new (used) mixer and if I do say so myself, it looks AMAZING in my kitchen:)

My legal name on paper is Aneta. Yes, spelled with an “e” not an “i”. It’s Polish. No one had ever called me by that name though untill we came to Canada. The whole family just always called me Ania. Which in no way is similar to Aneta. I have no idea why they decided to call me a completely different name, but they did. So, be it Aneta or Ania, it’s the same person.

When it comes to pronounciation, it’s “Anita”, but with an “e”, and “Anya” but with an “i”. I really wish i could just have one or the other but so many people know me by one or the other or both. I used to care what name i went by but now, i really don’t. I won’t get offended with one or the other. Just stay away from all those “I-need-a” jokes…it’s been done to death:)

Ania, or Aneta:)

I seem to recall one cake that i had managed to stumble across as I googled “Monkey Cake” in desperate need of a cake for my sons 1st birthday. This is what i found. (Thank you Martha Stewart:))

Thus the obsession begins…

This cake didn’t even taste good. Looking back on it now, it didn’t even look good:) I was never a baker. I used to bake my moms cakes (Polish sponge cakes) and loved to make those but it was only one cake that i would make with her over and over again.(The BEST part was licking the mixer heads and bowls!)  It was a delicious cake when it was fresh. Once it sat around for a day or so it turned into rock. So when i couldn’t find a good recipe (thank the lord someone came up with Google!) , i turned to the tried and tested recipe…but i guess i forgot about how hard it gets. So needless to say the cake was not enjoyed by all;(  My son didn’t care for it either, I think he was more scared of it then anything else.

Turn the clock a few months later and i find cake classes being advertised through Michael’s here in Calgary, thus i convice my sister-in-law to head out into the world of cakes with me. It was mostly to get ourselves out of the house and away from screaming kids, diaper changes and the ever “what’s for dinner” and “i have no more clean socks” comments from our husbands. So once a week, we would head out, not without grabbing a coffee first of course, and sit in a room with other women (probably there for the same reasons we were there), to learn how to decorate like the pros!

Week after week we would learn new techniques on how to make our cakes look fabulous, and week after week we would purchase new gadgets for making our cakes look fabulous (oh if only our husbands knew:)) So as the months went on my obsession grew. Watching TLC’s ‘Amazing Cakes” and “The Ultimate Cake Off” would send shivers down my spine. Man, i want to make cakes like that! Why can’t I? Why shouldn’t I? I’m artistic, right? Yeah, i could do this.