For Berliosca, it all started with the boom box cake for Monte’s 80’s-themed birthday party.

From that portable cassette player, we moved on to an old-fashioned turntable to celebrate Tony’s greatest hits, as well as his 60^th birthday.

The next request was for a more modern turntable—a Pioneer CDJ-2000 to be precise—to celebrate DJ Darkness’ birthday.

After that, AM 650 radio had Berliosca do up another vintage record player for their big anniversary bash.

And just when we thought we were done, we got a request to make yet another turntable, this time a Panasonic SL-1200MK5, to celebrate Paige’s 21^st.

What we loved about this last one was how K was so specific about the extra details on the figurine that represented his girlfriend.

He wanted features like her hat and favourite outfit to be perfect (how many guys out there can identify their girlfriend’s favourite outfit?), and he was particularly careful about making sure the figurine would be as skinny/fit as Paige is (otherwise he’d be in BIG trouble).

Madeline’s aunt contacted Berliosca all the way from New York to order her birthday cake. Happily, the party was in Vancouver, so we didn’t have to worry about shipping logistics.

Panda bears are really important to the family and the cake design was taken from a t-shirt that the little birthday girl was going to wear at the party. (Check out the pictures of both the cake and the t-shirt.)

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Inspiration for a cake really can come from anywhere.

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We always thought that Halloween would be the occasion for this type of design, but our first pumpkin cake was for an engagement!

Mr. Squash proposed to Ms. Pumpkin, she said yes, and they needed an appropriate cake to celebrate. During the consultation we were really tempted to ask for the story behind their pet names, but a little mystery is nice so we cannot tell you why.

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Just to give you a better idea of the size of this cake, the board is 18″ X 18″ (45.7 cm X 45.7 cm). Huge.

Both real-size pumpkin and acorn squash were carved out of vanilla cake and milk chocolate ganache.

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The people behind Cassie and Friends promote awareness of juvenile arthritis and raise funds for research, pediatric rheumatology programs, services, equipment, and events. Their team raised money at the Scotiabank Half-Marathon and 5K run, where I got to meet 4-year-old Cassie herself. (It’s always fun to hobnob with celebrities.)

After delivering Cassie’s cake to the Stanley Park finish line, I stayed to help serve it to the runners and guests at the Cassie and Friends tent. Unfortunately, nobody (including me) thought to bring plates, forks, napkins, or even a knife to cut cake with. Oops. Usually my cakes attend parties in homes or event venues that have kitchen facilities, so this situation has never come up before. This event, however, was in a public park.

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We ended up using a Swiss Army knife to cut the first few slices before some good soul found us a regular kitchen knife. I felt strange serving cake from my hands (yes they were clean—I licked them myself) into the waiting hands of eager cake-eaters, but nobody seemed to mind. When people started coming back for seconds it became clear that napkins were unnecessary. We should have bragged about being environmentally friendly or something.

Photos by Maria Leticia Photography