Wednesday, November 9, 2011

It's a beautiful day..

Well it was a beautiful day. My lovely friend Emma and her fiance Tegh are now married. It was a beautiful wedding held on the gardens of Bretts Wharf in Brisbane. We were very lucky to be invited as it was a small and intimate wedding.

Emma and her bridal party looked beautiful and Tegh was very handsome. I really enjoyed the speeches as they were very personal and humorous. Teghs' sisters were MC's for the night and did a marvellous job. So thank you to you both for letting us be a part of your special day.

And I was very lucky to be asked to make the cake, cookies and figures for their special day.

The cookies were a lemon shortbread and embossed in roses. The bridal theme colours were baby pink, avocado green and black so I tried to incorporate those colours into the cake and cookies.
 

Their cake was a three tier white chocolate mud cake with white chocolate ganache. There was a quilted tier with silver cachous and a tier with white swiss dots. The top tier was left plain. A large black bow and pearl and diamond brooch was attached to each tier with a pale pink, avocado green and black striped ribbon.


On the top of the cake was a little couple make of sugar paste to represent the couple.


So good luck Emma and Tegh and all the best for the years to come.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I was working in the lab late one night..

When my eyes beheld an eerie sight....actually it was more likely that I was shopping when I beheld the eerie sight, but it sounds better this way. What am I talking about....Halloween cookie cutters.

So as my husband is starting to work out, I have a thing for cookie cutters. It has not reached epic proportions yet, but I could get there given time. I love them. And there are some great ones out there - like this one below. I loved it. It is a Fred brand one and my eldest and I had some fun playing around with it.
As Halloween fast approaches there are blogs and websites that are overloaded with festive cookie designs. I love them. I was never into halloween to tell the truth but this year I am. And we are planning to dress up too. If I can find a funky hat before then.

This is a shortbread vanilla cookie with white royal icing.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Wedding cake - traditions and elegance

Okay, so I have been busy making a friends wedding cake and cookies...ohh now you know. That is where I have been lurking..but I am not ready to show you that yet. In the midst of all the decorating I have been doing I was thinking about my own wedding and the cake we had. No, I didn't make my own and I think any bride who does is very brave and very organised. We had lots of family travel to us for our wedding so even if I could have, I don't think I would have had the sanity to do it. So getting back to it. Our cake...was very small - only two tiers and was made by the wonderfully talented JudyC in Brisbane. It was a fruit cake (see I told you there was tradition) and there was some orchids to match my bouquet (elegant).


And we loved it. I told my hubby I wanted a big party all over again (one day) for our wedding, so that we could celebrate all over again - and this time I might make the cake ;)  So, did you love your wedding cake? Would you celebrate the same way all over again?

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Pink for a cause

I know it is September but sometimes I have to get my butt into gear early. October is around the corner and that means Pink Ribbon day is around the corner. I have a few ideas in mind for this year but I am not sharing them yet. Instead I thought I would share my past pink ribbon efforts.

Last year I made these and donated all the money to the pink ribbon day cause.



These are lemon or chocolate shortbread cookies with a pink fondant covering embossed or plain, with a lustre shimmer dust. Mmmmmm might have to bake tomorrow..I love the lemon ones! So dont forget pink ribbon day is coming.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

I think everyone has their good moments and their 'what am I doing?' moments. Well this was a' what am I doing moment'. I decided for my older daughters birthday to make cupcakes for her whole daycare class. Well she was sitting with me when we ran across Jo's cupcake gallery.

Well she instantly fell in love with her cupcake princess' and I said' sure darling - I will make 2 dozen of those for you'. I love making figures normally and if I didn't have to make multiples of these I would probably be more excited about it. And, this would have been fine without the other two cakes I had to do that week....but by the time I got to doing these on the Tuesday night I was over it. She still adored them, just as all little girls and daughters will, but I would love to find another time when I have 'spare time' to try them again.

If you haven't been over to look already then please do, Jo's cupcake gallery is marvelous and she is a very talented cake figure artist with a unique style. I love her work. As you will see on Jo's page her princess' look great.

 


Thursday, August 4, 2011

A christening and first birthday

Really busy at the moment every one. But I thought if I don't post this now I never will.

This is a christening and first birthday combined cake. It is two stacked mud cakes, one being dark chocolate hazelnut and the other cherry ripe mud cake. Both divine tasting, although my favourite is the hazelnut. They are covered in dark chocolate ganache and vanilla flavoured satin ice.

The bear is styrofoam and everything is else is edible.


The design comes from Debbie Brown's Gorgeous and Gruesome cakes book.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

and Finally..Ellawynne's 4th birthday

It has been a busy month and needless to say I have been a little quiet. As I mentioned previously my first born, Ellawynne was turning four this month and we had a double celebration with her birthday and her little sisters - being only a few days apart.


Ellawynne wanted a fairy barbie cake for her birthday and thankfully her only request was that Barbie had 'legs'. I think she was concerned that all barbie cakes had chopped up Barbie dolls. So whilst I wanted to make a Debbbie brown princess and the frog cake, I instead had to do the barbie cake. Must admit it was more fun that I thought and I tried to make it look like her birthday present, the Fairy secret Barbie.  This is her:


Anyway, the cake is a butter cake in three Neapolitan colours with butter cream frosting and a satin ice icing. Everything is edible including the wings, though I don't recommend it. And I am happy to say Ellawynne was very excited and instantly new who it was.



So do any of you have a little fairy or princess having a birthday soon?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

More than 1000...

Hello to you all. I am so excited. I have made over 1000 hits on the site and i must admit I thought it would never happen. But it has and I am glad to see people are visiting and reading (although it could just be my mum and dad)!

So I thought since people are visiting it might be nice if people said hello!!!! Please comment. I would love to hear what you think of my creations please.

So it is getting close to July and this year I have two cakes to make for my girls. Last year I only had one so you can guess our little family has expanded. Anyway, the reason I am reminiscing is my first daughter could not make her mind up last year as to what sort of cake she wanted. She changed her mind so many times I gave up in the end and did a simple cake for her.

The cake was a white chocolate mud cake with orange blossom water and white chocolate ganache filling. I had originally planned to model one of the disney princesses but didn't end up doing that and used some little tinkerbell figures I had instead. The cake was decorated with white spots, and red roses. Needless to say she loved it anyway.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Sweet as Mum or nanna for that matter

I haven't done too much this week with cake so I wanted to put up some pictures of some cookies I made for Mums day presents.  They are a lovely vanilla or lemon shortbread. With royal icing on the letters and RTR topping on the dresses.







Friday, June 3, 2011

Cake, lemon, buttercream and curd...yumm!

This is one of my favourite cakes to make. The flavours just spring to life and blend so well.

It is a lemon sour cream cake with lemon buttercream and lemon curd. The outside is lemon buttercream tinted a nice deep yellow colour. It looks a lot darker than it was thanks to the black background I used for photographing. Might try white next time.

I was asked to make it a buttercream coating on the outside and decided to add some fondant discs on the bottom for decoration. 


 Hope the birthday boy liked it.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Sugar and spice and everything nice

Well, I promised a look at the baby shower cake. This is for a lady having twins hence two little pairs of gumpaste sneakers. This is a banana cake with cheesecake flavoured buttercream and RTR topping. As I was lucky enough to taste this cake, I can say it is the yummiest banana cake.


I also decided to make a set of cookies for the expectant mum. These are vanilla shortbread with a rtr topping as well. Aren't they cute!!


Friday, May 20, 2011

mmm chocolate...

I have babies on the brain this week but I have left the photos on my other computer. So first i will go back to a birthday cake I did for a friends partner. i took inspiration from Faye Cahill cake designs in Dulwich Hill, Sydney. She makes beautiful looking cakes.


Anyway, my friends partner was having a birthday and he doesn't like the fondant icing but did love the chocolate cake I make. So apart from that there was no special request.


So yes, it is chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache layers. The outside is a whipped chocolate ganache and chocolate truffles.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Rainbow cake and getting on the band wagon.

I couldn't resist anymore. I saw the lovely sweetapolita's blog at sweetapolita and her great rainbow cake. Well as I was going to a party I wanted to bring something festive. The rainbow cake is so very easy to make and I used her recipe as well. For the buttercream I used a shortening based recipe which had a very light mouthfeel and looked white too.

I didn't do any fondant coverage or decorations - sometimes you just want a lovely looking cake that just tastes great.

Unfortunately, it was very dark at the party so the picture is not the brightest and the host was so lovely to take it for me. Therefore, I think I will have to make this all over again one day!!! Any excuse will do.




Oh and as you can see I made 7 color layers - just to be different.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Royal wedding cookies

Here is a photo of a recent order I did this last week for a royal wedding party. The lady I did this for is English and so she wanted to celebrate the nuptials of Will and Kate So she asked me to make crown cookies after seeing my previous ones. She requested red and blue as her colours (always fun to come up with) and I went for a royal icing finish. I decided that I wanted a different shape for one set of the cookies too so I hand cut half the set. The red cookies were vanilla and the blue were lemon shortbread. I coated the piping in gold sparkling sugar too.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

and where to start continued....

Ok I am going back a bit..with all the Adriano Zumbo hype that was going on last year I decided it was time to try macarons. So I bought a book called I love macarons by Hisako Ogita and tried a recipe in there. Not much happened...they were very flat although they did taste nice.

Well it seems that once you get the macaron bug you have to keep going..so I tried again. After much blog searching..I found the myfoodgeek site http://www.myfoodgeek.com/2007/06/08/almost-foolproof-macarons/. I wont post too much about detail or 'feet' but I will say it's a great place to look for troubleshooting.

Thankfully this site gives great tips..and my next batch worked. So i officially have the macaron bug now. My macarons were vanilla with coffee buttercream and were given out as christmas gifts.



oh where to start...

Running a bit behind here....

I did have a play at some decorating at easter but I continued on with the cookie theme. So more fondant covered lemon cookies.


I actually like the quilted easter egg the most. It is simple but looks so detailed.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Thinking of the children

Well it was way past time for me to try and help out in some way...

The devastation in Japan has been all over the news and I know we are all affected by it. Well, work decided to hold a fundraiser for the Japan Save the Children Fund. I wanted to help out in some way and do more than just donate some money so I provided some cookies for people to purchase.



The fundraiser was a successful event and I am proud of the work my work colleagues did to make it successful. So thank you very much to everyone who contributed.


And please don't forget the people of Japan and continue to donate.

Monday, March 21, 2011

The Royal Wedding is coming..

I just loved playing with this cookie cutter. The designs are endless and my daughter had some fun helping eat them too.

In response to the royal wedding coming up I wanted to try my hand at making a 'royal' themed cookie and so these are the combinations I came up with. The cookies are a beautiful lemon zest shortbread with maroon royal icing decorations (although they look a bit pink). And the bottom cookie on the right is embossed fondant icing with gold lustre dust!





Friday, March 18, 2011

Lots of kindness - CakeJournal PDF tutorials are up for grabs

Okay, anyone with an interest in cake decorating will know of the Cake Journal Website and Louise' wonderful blog. She provides great tips, beautiful photos, lovely recipes and lots of great links...and PDF tutorials!! It is these tutorials that are up for grabs and if you follow this link she tells you how to get them.


So a big thank you to Louise for her hard work in producing these PDF's and for sharing them.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Happy Blue Birthday!

Yep it is all about blue this month...well teal blue anyway.

A beautiful lemon cake with lemon curd and white chocolate ganache. Also a lovely teal blue loopy bow and quilting around the cake. This one was lots of fun and the birthday girl loved it!


Monday, February 14, 2011

Treats for a sweet princess

Cookies would have to be one of those treats in life that children just love, and you know what, adults love them just as much if not more. These were a big hit. A cream cheese vanilla cookie with marshmallow fondant. The cookies were decorated as embossed princesses, hearts, flowers and tiaras.


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

A Fun 40th Birthday for the whole family

A special cake this week.
But first the outside: a 40th birthday cake for a mum with two cute little girls. Had to include Dad too of course.

And as for the inside....Yummy!! A beautiful chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache. The batter was divine....the sort you could eat like pudding.  It is the yummiest chocolate cake I have ever tasted and so moist too.