25th Birthday Cake

Chocolate...chocolate...chocolate...

I love making these cakes... for starters I get covered in chocolate, which is always a good thing, secondly they smell fantastic and fill the whole house with the most wonderful aroma, and I think they are the fail safe cake for anyone, of any age for any occassion, because everyone loves chocolate!!!
This particular cake has a white chocolate mud cake for the top tier, and chocolate for the bottom tier and was for a lovely guy's 25th birthday.

Wedding cake, almost finished

This week I have been making a wedding cake for a friend, who wanted a simple and elegant cake, with a little bit of bling. Her bouquet is a posie of roses, so I am going to replicate that for the cake. Here is it before the roses...

Busy week ahead

This weekend I have a wedding cake and a two tier birthday cake, so it's going to be very busy... plus we are going camping on Saturday, after delivery of the cakes, of course! I am very excited, it's my first two tiered wedding cake, and I can't wait to put all of the elements together and see the end result! Of course... pictures will be posted!!!!

Flower Cupcakes

I have been playing around with various buttercream recipes, and recently tried Swiss Meringue Buttercream. While it was lovely and smooth, I found the taste a little too buttery, so seeing these cupcakes were just for us, I thought I would play around with the recipe and reduced the quantity of butter and I think it tasted much better. Next time I think I will add a little more sugar, and perhaps use vanilla beans rather than extract. I am determined to get the perfect buttercream... one that pipes beautiful swirls but tastes fantastic! Here they are decorated with daisies, ribbon roses, five petal flowers and a large fantasy flower.

Hot Pink Cupcakes

These cupcakes were just for fun... using the leftover elmo icing, I added some more butter, milk and icing sugar to tone down the red turning it into a beautiful hot pink which looked great with the hot pink cake cases.

Elmo

Today's cake was for a little boy's first birthday, and his Mum requested an elmo cake. It was just for their family, so a single layer carved from a 9" vanilla butter cake was perfect.

Novelty Cakes.....

This must be the week for novelty cakes...I have had 3 enquiries, an elmo cake, a ute cake and a butterfly cake!!!! Something new for me to google at nights:) The elmo cake is for this Thursday, so I will post some pictures then... the rest are still in the works!

Beach Theme Cupcakes

This week I have been creating beach themed decorations for a cupcake order for 42 cakes for two little girl's birthday party. I really enjoyed this order, the fun colours and getting to be a little creative. The starfish were made by using a normal star cutter, then squishing and squeezing the fondant until it resembled a starfish shape, then adding the finer details like the dimples and lines. It was also a great chance to make some more frangipani, and use my new flower cutters. I tweaked my butter cream recipe and the result was a beautiful creamy icing that tasted just like vanilla ice cream - and the appearance of the little vanilla seeds made it look like sand. I was really happy with how they turned out, and I am enjoying one of the leftovers now with my coffee..... yummy!!!

Baby cakes

My Mum is attending a ladies coffee morning tomorrow and needs to bring a plate, so she asked me to put together a plate of tiny bite sized cakes for the ladies. Thankfully, some new cutters that I had ordered online arrived yesterday, so I whiped up these little daisies to top off the cakes. I ended up with another cupcake order for Saturday, so I didn't have alot of time to spend, but they looked very pretty and tasted delicious! Have a lovely morning Mum!!!

12th Birthday cupcakes

This morning's order was for 20 cupcakes for a girl's 12th birthday party. She loved the purple blossoms used on my niece's 6th birthday cupcakes (on 23 March), so I used the same blossoms, but made a few changes to make them a little more elegant and more suitable for a 12 year old. They were caramel cupcakes, with swiss meringue butter cream (with a hint of caramel) decorated with purple and yellow blossoms. I also used my patchwork cutters to create the birthday girl's 12, and I was really happy with the result.

Testing out a new recipe

I bought myself a new piping tip the other day, and I have been wanting to try the Swiss meringue butter cream icing for a while now, so this morning I finally had a bit of time to give both of them a whirl... and the result.... well I love them both! The icing pipes like a dream, it's so smooth and silky while still holding it's shape perfectly, and the tip - well I love it too! I think the rose swirl looks fantastic and I can't wait to use them both again:)