End of 2025 Roundup!

What a baketacular December!

Hello everyone, and happy beginning of 2026!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am absolutely holi-hungover and not because I imbibe in anything. The month of December flies by in a flash no matter what I’m doing, leaving me too tired to do much more than remember to shower and sleep. (Occasionally I do other things too, but mostly work, shower and sleep.)

However that doesn’t mean the oven wasn’t firing all month! While I didn’t get a chance to do Christmas cookies for personal distribution in December, I had plenty of other wonderful opportunities to flex those creative and culinary muscles and I must say I think they went pretty well, all told. So let me try and run down what I’ve been doing since I stopped in last…

First:

For one of my delightful co-workers who was attending a Friendsgiving, I put together a six-inch red velvet cake and, of course, themed it thematically with fall decorations and cream cheese flavoured frosting. I’m leaning into the idea of using these kinds of edible decorations more; they’re fun and add a pop of colour/whimsy.

Second:

Every year at The Screening Room ( http://screeningroom.net ) is a very important event to me and many others: The David Schwartz Memorial Winter Gala. Dave was my husband’s best friend (and over the twenty years we’ve been together, he became mine too). Sadly, cancer took him September 2020 and as a result he never got to see the Winter Gala he had hoped to plan when he got better. However, his amazing brother Todd and a very special group of friends and family gathered together and brought it to life. Every year a new theme is picked, every year there are charity basket raffles, LOTS of great food, games, and general fun with proceeds going to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Dave’s memory.

This year the theme was video games, and since I am a baking nerd with gamer thumbs (iykyk) I leaned into it.

We had Mario red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese flavoured frosting and filling, and topped with Mario cookies I hand-coloured for accent. The sprinkles, too, are Mario themed which was such a happy accident.

And although I SWORE up and down I had a Luigi cookie cutter … I didn’t. So Luigi met a sad fate at the maw of a pirahna plant: lemon-lime cupcakes with lemon filling, lemon-lime frosting, sanding sugar and a hand-coloured cookie.

** Fun fact: the pirahna plant cupcake was made with all gluten free ingredients, and the cookies were too! I respect all the gluten intolerant out there – it’s rough, I know – and I will always do all I can to ensure the safety of what I make. I can’t call myself a gluten free kitchen since I do have flour about, so keep that in mind.

Scratch-made treats all winter long!

Third:

Another lovely coworker of mine asked for a cake for a couple’s combined birthday party, but with a twist: the couple is interracial and the theme of a black-and-white cookie was the inspiration. Not only was this a white and black velvet checkerboard cake but it also had an EDIBLE COOKIE DOUGH FILLING and oh man I gotta say it was pretty frickin’ tasty.

But I also have eaten more than I should of just regular cookie dough sooo… I’m biased.

Hilariously she told me that – like I usually recommend to folks when they have cake – she ended up slicing it into slabs (the best way to serve it to crowds, rather than wedges as cakes tend to fall then) and was confused when the checkerboard didn’t assert itself.

With checkerboard cakes you HAVE to wedge them because you don’t see the pattern very well and she realized that after the party. “Still was delicious, though!”

Fourth:

I have to admit something here: I do not have children and have never had an interest in having some of my own, HOWEVER I adore my family and friends’ children to bits and hearing about their escapades always makes me smile. (Hey, they say it ‘takes a village’, I’m the weird aunt and I’m happy with it.)

I also have discovered very little makes me truly happier than making treats for children. I really have no idea what it is that makes me so gleeful about it, but it does and first birthdays are SO special. Really it’s kind of an honour to be commissioned to make things for an event like that, and I’ve gotten pretty decent at smash cakes if I do say so myself.

This smash cake/large cake combo was for a sweet little girl named Marisol, commissioned by her mom. The smash cake brief was ‘floral, pink, and with one-derful written on it’. This was a two-layer, six inch funfetti cake with vanilla frosting.

I really like doing flower cakes like this, maybe because of all the colours and the depth of intricacy you can get to, and I leaned into pastels rather than too bright because that seemed harsh.

The large cake confused me momentarily. The brief was ‘please include the long dogs from Bluey’.

…

Remember how I mentioned I don’t have children? I have never seen an episode of Bluey in my life and so my first thought was: “… wot?”

Fortunately I have access to the internet and can you believe there’s a Bluey Wiki? Well, I found it and learned that ‘long dogs’ are sort of these little daschund looking pups that are hidden in the background of the shows as a sort of parental Where’s Waldo when watching with their children.

Okay, that’s brilliant – I can have fun with that.

The cake itself is a chocolate cake with cookies-and-cream filling inside, and vanilla frosting outside. The long dogs were made with a little fondant and I played about with them hiding on the cake sides (and one brave fellow floating away on the top). They turned out cute, fun, and vibrant, which is what children cakes should be.

Festive treats warming your heart!

Fifth:

This one was just for friends consumption: I had leftover cake and I had the free time. It was holiday season and I had friends coming over so we could watch the Great British Bake Off finale (finally, I got so behind) and well, you have to celebrate, right?

Three six inch layers: two chocolate, one funfetti, with some leftover frosting from all my other orders; the reindeer was a cookie cutter pressed into the leftover slice from levelling the chocolate cakes.

And lastly, but by no means least:

A celebratory holiday treat to my lab coworkers for a tough 2025 in the books: gingerbread cupcakes, cream cheese frosting, and Christmas tree decorations on top with sprinkles and glitter.