Candy Sushi (and my ultimate demise by sugar coma)

There is one thing I dislike about my job.  No, it’s not my co-workers, Summer Orientation days or designing parent newsletters.  I positively adore all of the above.  It is something substantially more ridiculous and avoidable: the amount of CANDY in our office, and my extreme effectiveness in eating all of it.  Be it at the front reception desk or in my supervisor’s office drawer, there is no shortage of sugar.  As all my co-workers know, I can often be found shamelessly sneaking into someone’s office to get Riesens, jubjubs, licorice or, most often, all of the above.

This being said, eating candy sushi after a full day of pigging out on office treats was not that enjoyable of an experience.  Making this sushi on Thursday night, I found myself surrounded by a pile of fruit roll-up wrappers, Bulk Barn bags and Rice Krispies squares.  Under normal circumstances, I would have been in heaven.  This night, however, found my stomach lurching into an unpleasant rollarcoaster.  Please do not get me wrong, these were good, but unless you would like to have a major sugar crash, I sincerely recommend you eat them one at a time.

So why in the world did I made this candy sushi?  WELL, since we do everything together, my co-worker’s and I decided to throw a sushi party.  After the great success of Gord and LJ’s sushi making adventures a few weeks ago, we all decided that these Japanese delicacies needed to be replicated in mass quantity.

Never one to conform to basic standards and bring something easy like cucumber or avocado to the night, I decided I needed to make something cool.  This was where the website Mommy Knows (awkward site for a 20-year-old girl) came in.  She posted a fantastic candy sushi recipe on her site, and it contained the best and most simple instructions on how to complete this treat.  Basically, all you needed to make these sushi were fruit roll-ups (to double as seaweed), thinly-made Rice Krispie square sheets and some more sugary candy for the inside filling.  Super easy to make and, I think, super realistic.  Try it at home for your next sushi party!

I put my sushi on a cake, which may not have helped with the sugar overload…

So how did the regular sushi work out?  Well it was just GREAT!  As per usual, I ate way too much, but it was totally worth it.  My personal favourite – avocado, strawberry and banana rolls – can only be described in one word: amazing.

Me, pre-sugar coma, happy as a clam.

Pool Party Cake (!!!!!!!)

Before I begin this post, I feel it is important to note the following:

What you will see below is the cake of my childhood dreams.  When I was young, my mom had a copy of Canadian Living’s “Kids in the Kitchencookbookwhich I would flip through occasionally, wondering how in the world one was able to cook.  Now, a decade later, I return to my humble beginnings to complete the pièce de résistance of all Canadian Living cakes: The Pool Party Cake(each word deserves a capital letter because, to me, it is a holy entity of awesome). To be honest, I’m a little surprised my mom didn’t make me this cake as a child; I guess there were very few pool parties to go to in Northern Ontario and my birthday was in winter…

When I first heard back in June that we were planning to have a potluck at work, I very nearly had a happiness heart attack.  I KNEW that the time had finally come for me to make this cake, and that the world was finally prepared to be exposed to its sheer wonder.  Also, the cake kind of doubled as a surprise birthday cake for one of my wonderful work supervisors, Jeremy, who was (against his will) getting a belated birthday celebration at lunch.

Let the cake-making begin: Buying all the candy supplies was the hard part – I spent a solid half hour in the Bulk Barn, carefully measuring out gummy candies and determinedly marching up and down the aisles in search of the elusive vanilla wafer cookie (turns out I needed to get them at Walmart).  A short time later, my shopping was complete, and with my new 9×13 glass cake pan filled with goodies, I waltzed (bused) home, anxiously wondering what the results of my cake attempt would be.  Due to some sort of miracle, the cake turned out perfectly.  Despite a minor meltdown that occurred when a deep crack developed through the middle of the cake, the process was rather uneventful and my neuroses was kept at bay for the most part…

Of course, my adventure to deliver cake to potluck continued this morning when I had to find a way to transport said item to school.  Normally I would just ride my bike, however, I had invested too much time and emotion in this cake to see it slide off my handlebars and run over by my Schwinn bicycle.  And so, my worried ass took a cab to school and, in an attempt to pay the driver with my debit card, almost granted the cake a death-by-debit-console-falling-in-pool disaster.  Luckily, everything except my sanity made it to work in one piece.

I would also like to note one final thing: if someone on Ace of Cakes somehow stumbles on this post, please give me a job and/or let me tour your shop.  I promise I would only freak out a little.

Hilary and Cake: an intimate moment. Also, note the wafer cookie entering my mouth…this was because of a failure in cake architecture that caused several half-wafer pieces to come unattached from their other sides.  Beware future cake-makers.


Some happy potluck-ers/amazing co-workers, pre-cake arrival, pre-food coma.

Arrival of cake for the birthday boy!


Happy Belated Jeremy!

(Thank you Iman and your ever-speedy facebook uploads for these last two pictures)

END OF STORY? I am addicted to making cakes.  Next time, I try conquering fondant.

Gord’s Dinner, Part Three: Chocolate Volcano Cake

BY FAR THE MOST DELICIOUS, DELICATE AND DIFFICULT THING I HAVE EVER MADE.  I am so proud.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.  In my mind, these chocolate volcano cakes are the Holy Grail of dessert and, being a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I knew I would go to extreme measures to ensure that they were completed perfectly.  The recipe was from Canadian Living, obviously, and the preparation instructions originally scared me to death.

Here are a few things I learned from these cakes/morsels from heaven:

1. How to separate the yolk from the egg white
1a. When you continuously blend egg whites, a heavenly, peaked mixture comes into existence.  I knew this happened, I have just never experienced the magic before.
2. These cakes are called volcano cakes for a reason.  One of them blew up as I tried to pick it up.  My counter consequently suffered a chocolate flash flood.
3. A set of six ramekin dishes for $9 is the best investment a girl can make.
3a. I need a second job to afford all the extra dishes I am buying to make my food plating a pretty process.
4. The picture below DOES NOT do this cake justice.  If I could include a scratch-and-eat feature on wordpress, I swear you would all love me.

Happy Birthday Sarah

A celebration of my wonderful co-worker Sarah’s 19th birthday!

My lame excuse as to why I’m going to be majorly M.I.A this week:
1. It is faculty-intense week at work, which means I am working six days straight for nine hours a day.  This means that all I want to do when I get home is lay in my comfy clothes and watch The Bachelorette.
2. It is HOT outside, about 42°C…I can’t handle the heat, so I’m staying out of the kitchen!