Stomp, Stomp Stomp

My kids love dinosaurs...my son in particular. What is it about boys and dinosaurs...hmm? I wanted to practice some decorating. I bought a cheap cake mix and added a few extra's to it so it'd taste good (was a butter cake mix with lemon essence, poppy seeds and melted white chocolate added).
I made a lemon, white chocolate ganache and proceeded to decorate.

Dinosaurs!!!

Lessons learned:
1. White chocolate ganache doesn't really set when it's warm and humid! OK, so I've read about that one numerous times, but now I have 1st hand experience.
2. I need to work on losing the ganache mound on top of the cake.
3. I have noticed more improvements in my covering and my edges are heaps better too!

Anyway, "the dinosaurs were dancing in a prehistoric swap. They shook their heads, swished their tails and did the dino stomp. Dance dino, dance dino, stomp, stomp, stomp...."

Spring Garden

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending a day with Anita, from LaLa Cakes. When I arrived she had everything all set out ready to work. Cake, fondant already coloured, ganache prepared, tools layed out and a apron ready to use as well.

She demonstrated each step and then I followed. She showed me how she levels and tortes her cakes, so I followed...she has a very level hand and does it all by eye unlike me who has a small cake leveler. We then "syruped" our cakes and ganched. Layers and then on the outside. Main lesson learned here is that I have not been spending enough time on my cakes to get them just right and I have not been using the right tools...
We played around with flowers for the decorations...she taught me how to make ribbon roses.
Lunch break and then back to it. Covering the cakes with fondant and then smoothing to get really sharp edges. Again, I have not been using the right tools for this...but now I know the secret...

Finally, the best bit. We decorated the cakes!!!

Thank you Anita for such a great day!!

Baby Riley

A good friend on mine had her 3rd child the other day. A little boy named Riley. I made her some cookies and practiced icing them. Sadly, I forgot to take a photo of them before I gave them to my friend, so had to make do with my phone whilst at the hospital. My phone does not take the greatest of photos.

Anyway, back to the cookies. I made some chocolate and some vanilla sugar cookies in circles and car shapes. I iced in white and baby blue royal icing.

Apple Season

It's apple season...well here in Victoria/Melbourne it is. Just the other day I picked some apples from one of my apple trees. There is not much better than fruit picked from your own trees.

Well, a mud cake might be slightly better, depending on your mood. This one is a bit of a mish mash on the inside. A white choc mud/choc marble cake make up the top and bottom layers and sandwiched in between is a layer of devils food cake. It was filled and covered in ganache and then covered and decorated with fondant.

After a dodgy job of covering the cake (the fondant dried out a bit too much and started to crack and tear) I had to think of a way to hide the awful bits. Considering my recent apple harvest, I decided on an apple orchid.