Love right now: chalkboard on my food storage bins!

Since opening bite-sized I have a lot of white powder in my house: all-purpose flour, cake flour, white sugar, castor sugar, iodized salt, sea salt, baking soda, baking powder... the list goes on! I have them all in air-tight containers, but how to tell them apart? How do you write on plastic? Chalkboard paint!

my blank "canvas".
I found these buckts (that stack when not in use) at the Great Canadian Superstore for $18.

block off the section with paint tape and prime.
I used CIL ANYWHERE primer from Home Depot

once primer has dried, put on the first coat of chalkboard paint.
I used Rust-Oleum Chalkboard from Home Depot

a side view after the second coat.



the final product, alongside my new Harrod's apron

And there you have it! You'll notice the top two containers are missing labels; that's because I pulled them off when i was removing the paint tape. Be careful! I should have sanded the plastic for a better stick, so I'll do that this time around. Can't wait to use my chalkboard paint again! I'm thinking on the freezer so we can mark what went in there and when ;)

Saying "I do" to giant cupcakes

I have Wilton's giant cupcake pan but never imagined it as wedding appropriate. Until now.

Aren't these gorgeous? All images via San Diego Wedding Insider.

A sneak peak at an upcoming wedding order!

I'm doing the cake and cupcakes for a wedding in a couple weeks and here's a sneak peak.Cupcakes are two flavours: my richest dark chocolate and lemon. And there is matching chocolate buttercream and lemon cream cheese icing! The wedding colours are purple and green, so I incorporated that too. (The cake is not featured today.)

Purple pansies

Lemon

Dark chocolate

Mmmmmm, which is your favourite?

Julia's cake

Here is the cake I made for friend and coworker Julia's wedding. She wanted three flavours, three buttercream icings, quilted fondant, and sequined ribbon. I didn't think it would all come together in time, but I got it in under the gun!

Sure, there were mishaps: a broken 16" base, torn fondant, running out of icing sugar, misplacing my quilting tool 3 hours before the wedding starts; but it was all worth it!

Attaching the ribbon at the hall

Standing by the finished product!

A side view. That's a lot of shimmer dust...

All cut up. Chocolate, vanilla, almond.

Thank You cupcake order

An order came in for some Thank You cupcakes. Here is what I came up with.

I stamped the butterfly with "thank you very much".

Front view of the big flower. Thanks to Cake Journal for this one!

More of a side view of the big flower. Aren't they just gorgeous?

Before I closed the lid.

 

The final packaging.

bite-sized photo shoot

Can't believe I didn't post these pics sooner! It's almost June and I'm clearly a slacker... though I did remember to post the photos to facebook in two albums, post them to my site, and send out mass emails to friends and family with the link. :S

Here is the permanent link to the shoot: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcmyworks/sets/72157624004123430/ 

A special thanks to Marc from Marc My Works! Photography. Amazing photos, Marc!

A rose may smell sweet, but how does it taste?

Now that I'm baking cakes, I'm curious as to what can go on them. Brides like to have flowers on the cake, but are all flowers edible? Not a chance!

There are more options if you include "petals only" compared to just "whole flowers" but there are still a good number of flowers you can stick on a cake without fear of killing your wedding guests :)

Whole flowers:

• fruit blossoms
• carnations
• gardenias
• violets
• lavender
• lilacs
• roses
• snapdragons
• peonies
• phlox
• pansies "Johnny Jump Up"
• and more!

I am very excited about this. I'm pretty good at fondant/gum paste/royal icing roses, but nothing compares to the real thing!

Giant cupcake liner

What a brilliant idea! I've been wondering how to make the bottom of my GIANT cupcake look cute, and I stumbled upon this fabulous tutorial to make a candied wrapper.

Before pic (this cake serves 12!) from Wilton.com:

Process pics and tutorial thanks to Oh, Sugar!:

Is this woman amazing, or what? Love love love!

bite-sized babies!

Friday night's launch party was a success! Lots of great feedback and three orders!

Thank you to all who showed up; it was great to see you all and I hope you enjoyed the night as much as I did.

I was so frazzled that I didn't take pics until everyone had left, so unfortunately, there aren't pics of all the flavours. But here is a selection:

Four different flavours on this tea tray.

The vanilla was a little dry, so I think I might change the recipe a little.

The chocolate pound cake was not as popular as the double chocolate with the double chocolate icing, but still no complaints!

bite-sized tags

So the official launch party (and first taster night) for bite-sized is this Friday and I'm making flavour tags so people know what they're eating. And they turned out so cute! I bought the manila tags for business and order cards and the theme just grows. Next I'm make a huge sign for my lawn that will look like a shipping tag with the cupcake on it.

Here are the tags:

 the set

icing and half of the cake flavours

 half of the cake flavours and the icing tag

 the cards that will be posted with the matching cupcakes

bite-sized is better

OK, so when I get interested in something, I throw myself at it. I am jumping head-first into this whole cake world and loving it!

I already have some orders to do cupcakes for special events and might even be doing a wedding cake.

I am so excited! I'll have to start posting pics of my cake creations asap.

I have created a one-woman business called bite-sized (apt for my stature) and orders can be placed through the website.

Whether you're referring to food or my brand, bite-sized is better ;)

bite-sized.ca 

... if the main link doesn't work, try http://sites.google.com/site/paigeisbitesized/ instead.