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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.