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.

I Love Cupcakes

I really love cupcakes. I love the ready made serve of cake, I love the opportunity they give me to practice a bit of decorating, I love trying new cake recipes with them and I love how they look. And most importantly, they are YUM (unless something goes wrong)!!

This week I made a couple of different cupcakes. The first was a chocolate recipe I hadn't tried before..was ok...but not great. I made some whipped choc-mint ganache and practiced piping swirls on them. This is they:

The next ones I had a go at were devils food cupcakes. These were good. Not too sweet, so really lent themselves to a bit of ganache (milk chocolate) decorated with fondant. This is what I did with them:

Oh so pretty!! I think these would be great for a special celebration cupcake stand, don't you?!

Experiment Gone Wrong

OK, so the other day I posted on my facebook page that I was going to make a Mars bar cake...

I baked a caramel mud cake which was yum, cut it in half then filled and covered with milk chocolate ganache. Mistake number 1 - I used the cheapest compound chocolate I could get from the supermarket. It was disgusting and the ganache was not that great.

Then came decorating time. I had no plan in mind. Mistake number 2 - having no plan at all. I thought about mixing all the fondant I had left to give a marble affect. Didn't work out so well. Then I had the bright idea (well, turns out not so bright) of making it into pouring fondant and covering the cake with that. Mistake number 3 - actually following through with that idea.

After a very ordinary job of covering the cake I did a very ordinary job of decorating it.

Believe It Or Not

I can't believe I made this cake - dark chocolate and orange (jaffa) mud with dark chocolate ganache, home made chocolate fondant, home made red, orange and yellow fondant, and some gum paste flowers I made.

Apart from the chocolate fondant and the colour orange, I had no real plan for this one...I made the design up as I went. I guess you could say it's inspired by all those cherry blossom cakes you see around with my own take on it. Every time I look at this pic, I can't help but think, WOW, I made that. Gotta say, I'm excited!!!

For Kathryn

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to a friends Hen's gathering. An evening with African drumming, food, games and possibly singing. Dress code - The Beatles. Kathryn LOVES The Beatles. The location was her mum's house. When RSVP'ing I asked is if it would be ok if I took a cake with me. Of course it would!!!

So, there was no decision to make when it came to the flavor of the cake - CHOCOLATE. And a theme - The Beatles. Nothing too difficult for a beginner such as myself though. Googling images I found this:

That image would make a pretty good cake. And not too difficult either. Not saying there would be no challenge involved, it's just that it would be achievable....surely....

Step 1 - Bake the cake. I made a largish one, so used what are called bake even strips (homemade ones) to help the cake bake evenly and not burn around the edges. Have to say, this was a great idea. I made the best chocolate mud cake ever!!

Step 2 - Torte and ganache. I trialled a different cream from what I had used previously in ganache. OH MY GOD - devine!!! The cake was cut into 3 layers and filled with the ganache. I then covered the cake following steps found at Sugar Sweet Cakes and Treats.

Step 3 - Some more experimenting. I decide to make my own fondant. Glad I did, it's easy enough and I think it tastes better than using bought stuff.

Step 4 - Cover the cake and decorate. i'm not going to go into much detail here, but I did discover how difficult it is to work with fondant in high humidity. I was making some silhouettes for the side of my cake and they were melting as I went. Argh...end result...ok, but would have been a lot better if I wasn't working with melting icing.

The Bride to be was happy, the other guests were impressed and the cake was one of the most amazing things I have ever tasted. Pure chocolate heaven!!