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I’m a huge fan of Flickr user Schmish’s artful works. She runs The Wicked Little Cake Company out of Toronto and by golly, looking at her works I wish she were local to me.

My husband and I are huge sushi fans (raw for him, tempura for me – yes you can mock me later for not being a real sushi eater) so imagine my delight when I opened up my Flickr stream a few weeks back.

I could figure out a few of the ingredients myself: the masago looks like sugar pearls, lustre dust for some of the coloring… but it was just so lifelike I had to ask Jaime for the details. Here’s the word from the source:

Ha, yup, the masago was made of sugar pearls painted with orange food colouring.

The sushi cake is actually pretty darn easy. This was my first (and definitely not last) sushi cake. The “rice” was pretty much just small pieces of cake covered with white vanilla buttercream and rolled in coconut. You can do it out of rice cereal treats as well (ice and roll). I happened to overbake that day and had lots of cake leftover.

The toppings and sashimi were mostly made out of fondant with a bit of tylose mixed in. You could also use a 50/50 gumpaste to fondant ratio, but I was in a rush to go have fun so I didn’t have time to make gumpaste. Tylose stiffens up the fondant and makes it a little easier to work with.

I’m a go with the flow kind of decorator and make do with what I have… the tuna was coloured with red petal dust, the salmon with orange petal dust etc. I think the key is to selectively brush on more of the petal dust after you’ve shaped and marked the fish so that you give it more depth and realism. Same with the shrimp.. shaped it out of the fondant/tylose mixture and dusted it with the orange and red petal dust. I did a couple pieces out of coloured white modeling chocolate as well, but there was no real difference between the modeling chocolate and fondant – just taste.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the rundown, Jaime! Apparently we just missed her on Food Network Challenge’s episode “Best In Show Cakes”. Keep an eye out for the re-run!

Have you ever seen a cake so delectable as both a cake and its decorated doppelganger?

Ants on Watermelon Cake

Originally uploaded by sugarcrushmiami

This cake is a great mixture of fondant and buttercream. The ants and watermelon shell appear to be fondant, where the softer interior and ant legs are buttercream frosting.

A perfect cake for a summer picnic – decorations that won’t slide away in the heat!

Apple cardamom cupcakes wrapped with white chocolate highlighted with 24k gold dust and a shabby chic rose from Flickr user schmish.

I love the artful placement of the sugar pearls. And wow! I really want to get a hold of some molding chocolate for those beautiful wrappers.

My husband is a lover of Honest Tea organic fresh brewed bottled tea. When I was perusing the food aisle at Marshall’s and saw some chocolate bars labelled “Earnest Eats”, I thought “Hey I gotta give these a shot!” Earnest Eats makes whole grain partially organic delicious treats. Chocolate peanut butter looked especially tasty; one cannot go wrong with that flavor combination.

My husband grabbed one in a rush for breakfast one day and called me minutes later; “You have got to get more of these bars!”

The plague of Marshall’s is sometimes you find great foods that you can only locate online thereafter. I found some at Alice – the online supermarket with free shipping for 6+ items – but lo and behold price comparison shopping to the rescue! Amazon offers a subscription to bring the pricetag per bar to under $1! Not bad considering the lowest I see stuff like this is $.69 each.

Eagerly awaiting my shipment to arrive…