On a sweltering mid summer day our fearless head Baking and Pastry instructor Charmaine Baan headed out of town to the tiny hamlet of Elmira deep in the heart of Menonnite country. Her mission; to source out the finest and most succulent of Ontario’s berry harvest.
Where: The Elmira Produce Auction
The rules: Produce must be grown within a 75 kilometer radius of Elmira.
The major advantage of going to the auction (or to an on-farm produce stand for smaller quantities)is cutting out the middle man. This means that the fruit is at it’s most fresh and delicious, particularly important with things like raspberries and strawberries.
The delicious berries are ready for their journey.
Charmaine’s trunk brimming with berries! Back at the school: Our fab team of apprentices assist Charmaine in sorting, washing and lovingly storing the still vine-warm strawberries, blueberries, currants and raspberries.
Our apprentice Rebbecca stores the berries to freeze in the freshness!
And at the end of the day, all the boxes are returned to floralane produce – to be filled with more delicious berries!
Come and join Charmaine in her preserves class on Aug. 8th and learn how to create signature fruit fillings and other delectable treats with these very berries – and taste the sweet, sweet ending to this story!
Our creative team, Apprentice Dalana Fleming, Operations Coordinator Kendra Marjerrison, Intern Marissa Scibetta and past student Chloe Les Pierre created this adorable cake for L&M Bakers Supply to showcase their products at the Bakery Showcase in Mississauga that opened yesterday.
Welcome to our brand new Bonnie Gordon School Creative Team member, Ava Roth!
Ava will be teaching her new Painting on Cakes class at the school on June 11th, see details here.
For many years Ava has worked as an artist in a variety of mediums, including painting with gouche and embroidering on paper. She has always loved fine and ornate work, and brought this baroque style to all of her art. A decade ago she started a small business painting custom Ketubot (traditional Jewish wedding certificates) which she continues to do. As an embroidery artist she developed a technique for sewing thousands of stitches and beads on Japanese paper. Most recently her art has been shown at the C1 Gallery in Toronto.
In 2008, when she discovered cake design, she immediately saw a new outlet for her obsessive love of fine detail. Since she had always loved baking, the transition to cake artist was more a shift to a new medium than an entirely new career. After taking several classes at the Bonnie Gordon School and working as an apprentice for a top wedding cake designer, she launched her own cake design business, Rostin Cake Co. At Rostin she has applied the creative and technical skills that she honed as an artist to cakes, and has developed a truly unique and innovative style.
She is thrilled to teach the art of painting on cakes to students at The Bonnie Gordon School and she looks forward to seeing you in class!
Bonnie Gordon School would like to say thank you to everyone involved in this year’s Cake Show for helping to make it such a great success! To all of our wonderful volunteers, judges, sponsors, spectators, and of course all the talented participants, we extend our warmest gratitude. There were many amazing works of art on display, and most importantly, we were able to donate double last year’s amount to The Stop Community Food Centre.
If you couldn’t make it down to Wychwood Barns for the show, or if you just want to re-live the memories, why not have a look at our Winners Gallery here and see some more photos of the show on The Cake Show website?!
We would like also to congratulate Jamie Ho who was The Bonnie Gordon School Creative Team’s pick for Honourable Mention from the show for her amazing carousel horse cake!
It’s been all systems go at the school for the last few weeks with The Cake Show preparations and all the media coverage that the event attracted! Did you catch any of the T.V. appearances or articles in the newspapers and on the web?
Bonnie appeared on Global TV in a segment that ran on the station for a week. See her chatting with the programme’s host and director during a break from filming above.
Then she appeared on Canada AM when she taught the hosts a thing or two about cake design and they battled it out to see who could come up with the best design! If you missed it, you can watch the ‘cake-off’ here.
Signe Langford wrote great article that appeared in April 20th’s Toronto Star. In it she describes how Bonnie has taught and mentored many of the cream of Toronto’s cake designers. Read it here.
On Thursday, Bonnie and 25 of her former students headed over to The Windsor Arms hotel to clebrate 25 years of Wedding Bells magazine. Each created a fabulous cake to display at the event. Read an article about the event and see some of the beautiful cakes here.
We are also excited to welcome Terese De Grace from Rogers T.V. to the school next Monday, 10th April to film a special cake decorating segment for her show!
We are delighted to welcome Sally Bratt, a graduate of Confectionary Arts, back to the school as our brand new Figure Modelling teacher. Sally is a very talented artist and highly accomplished illustrator, so we are extremely excited to add her to our team. She has created her S2: Introduction to Figure Modelling class for all of you who want to learn how to create adorable little gumpaste figures to use as cake toppers.
Sally has always loved baking but was mainly a ‘cookie artist’, making Christmas cookies for friends and family, until she discovered Bonnie Gordon School of Cake Design. An OCAD graduate in Communication and Design, Sally started her own illustration/graphic design business in 2000, Creative Mouse Illustration & Design, and is a published illustrator/designer of countless children’s educational books. Seeking a new creative outlet, she thought she would tap into her love of baking and try her hand at cake decorating. Sally attended the 5 week Confectionary Arts Programme at Bonnie Gordon School in Dec, 2009, discovered that cake design and sugar art is her true passion, and has now started her second business venture, House of the Rising Cake.
Having always been a 2D artist, Sally was shocked at how easily 3D figure modelling and cake sculpting came to her and when she was approached by Bonnie to teach a class she was thrilled. Through research and trial and error she is quickly honing her skills as a 3D sugar sculptor and is very excited to pass on her knowledge to other newcomers in the cake design world.
We have added new dates for our Confectionary Arts classes due to overwhelming demand! The new classes will run from from April 26th – June 4th. See full details here.
Have a look at some images from previous Confectionary Arts classes below:
We have created these classes to enable students to fast-track their studies in the confectionary arts. The classes focus on teaching the fine art of cake design in a highly creative, hands-on environment with emphasis being placed on the development of individual creative expression.
Each of our components have been designed to offer our students access to the most current techniques and highly qualified instructors. Our goal is to provide a wide range of technical skills, while also exploring cake design as a true art-form. To learn more, feel free to contact us by phone at 416-440-0333 or via e-mail. We would be happy to provide further information and answer any questions you might have!
Sign up for all Confectionary Arts classes and receive a discount! Call the school at 416-440-0333 for details!
Bonnie Gordon School is proud to present The Cake Show 2010 to once again showcase the incredible talent of our students and alumni at the beautiful Artscape, Wychwood Barns, with partial proceeds to be donated to The Stop Community Centre.
The categories for this year’s show are Wedding Cakes and Celebration Cakes!
Have a look at our gallery from last year’s show here.
If you would like to take part, there are three different ways that you can be involved;
The Cake Art Exhibition is a display of beautiful and unique confections created by the students and alumni of the Bonnie Gordon School. If you want to join in, but don’t want to compete, this is the place for you!
The Cake Design Competition celebrates the talent of Bonnie Gordon School’s students & alumni. They will battle it out in this year’s competition under the themes of Wedding and Celebration.
or
If you think your cake is the most mouthwatering of them all, why not enter it in our Cake Tasting Contest and try your luck?!
If any of these whet your appetite, download an application form from here and get started on your own edible masterpiece?!
Find out all you need to know about this exciting event, whether you would like to take part in our different competitions, or just marvel at the design talent on display on our website: thecakeshow.com.
If you have any questions, come to our Sweet Talk forum and ask The Bonnie Gordon Creative Team here!
Isabelle Loiacono taught The Art of Chocolate Level One to a class full of eager students over the weekend. While the class emphasized technique over creativity, all the students were jovial because of the invaluable chocolate skills they learned and new friendships that were formed. In fact, even Isabelle cited that it was her favourite class to date, not only because of the course material but because of the enthusiastic/engaging nature of her students.
As an intern, I personally felt as if it was the most inspiring and educational class I’ve had the privilege to sit in on.
Faiza Mirza (above) was one of the students in the class and had this to say about it: “The chocolate class was AMAZING – we got lots of hands on practice and by the end we were pro’s with both the tabling method and seeding method of tempering chocolate. Going through the methods by practicing on dark, milk and white chocolate made us master each method. We also learnt how to make great fillings/ganache’s for our chocolates, how to make shells using molds for truffles and how to use chocolate transfer sheets on our truffles. I highly recommend this class – it was a lot of fun and you leave with tons of delicious treats!”
The sun was out and so were the Spring blossoms in our kitchen last week for the debut of our Cupcake Bouquets class! Isabelle Loiacono showed our students various flower piping techniques to create these yummy, edible, floral centrepieces, perfect for all celebrations. These beautiful bouquets will no doubt be the centre of attention and bring a little sunshine into any room. If you’ve caught a little Spring fever after seeing these incredible creations, come to our next Cupcake Bouquet class on Saturday May 1st from 12:30 – 4:00 so you can create your own masterpiece!
