Sean's Cricket Cake

My friend Gretta ordered a cake for her son Sean to celebrate his 13th Birthday, it was a cricket inspired cake and I made it a rainbow cake with strawberry buttercream. I had free creative control of the cake as she didnt really mind what it was going to be... I liked that just fine...it gives me alot of room to imagine whatever I thought I could achieve. I set about baking a bright rainbow cake, two slabs buttercreamed together using my buttercream recipe, dyed green because that was the colour of the cake I had to trim off in order to shape it square.

So i put the square slabs together and brushed the cake with jam syrup to keep it moist and allow the fondant to stick instead of using white choc ganache. It helped to keep the square shape and the sharp corners... it was a well shaped cake after the fondant was applied.

I added fondant grass and a cricket pitch in lighter green

then i rolled out the green fondant, ordinarily i would have dyed the fondant the day before but i didnt have time due to family committments so I did no prep work for my fondant this time, but it worked well as the fondant was very soft and i achieved a very smooth finish. Catch 22 there sometimes it can be too soft and its difficut to apply in a slab across the cake.... but i used grease proof paper to flip it over and get an even coverage.... it was also a nice thin layer of fondant because it was nice and soft.... or maybe i'm getting better at it... lordy i hope so.

I made the grass texture with this cool tool.

I made the cricket pads and bat, my hubby who is mad for cricket said that Sean would have this kind of bat.

i cut out fence pailings from white fondant and stuck them on the side of the cake with a wet brush

i did the stumps with sandy coloured fondant on skewers stuck into the cake,

I rolled the skewers on the bench to get them evenly covered in fondant and reduce finger marks

I added a red cricket ball and a cricket bag for his gear, and i was going to leave it at that but i decided to add the figure just to make it a bit special. Using gum paste I rolled the body out and used a straight knife to get the details. I stuck a skewer up the middle of him poking out his neck to attach his head and a smller skewer across his shoulders to attach his arms

little teeth and beads of sweat eyebrows, for detail and grass stains on his knees and a red flush on his face painted on in dyes, shoe laces and eyes done in gourmet pen

you can just see the baggy green cap in the background next to his feet and of course i added a sign!
cos i am so fluent in cricket ...not! Mu hubby assured me that it was a funny sign.
lol me. Gretta and ean came to pick up the cake and they were impressed, its a cool cake... i said wait til you cut it, it a rainbow cake.
Gretta sent me these pictures from when they cut the cake, and you can really see the rainbow effect!

great colours and you can see how lovely and thin the fondant turned out!

it was a hit!

 Happy birthday Sean i hope you had a great party and you loved your cake!

Flower Cupcakes for Aunty Rita

I had a great day at my Aunty Rita's house making tradition Italian cuisine, the way my grandmother;my "Nonna" used to make. On the menu for our masterclass was eggplant croquettes, (melanzane fritte) and whitebait fritters.(nunnata)
For this occasion i made some mud cupcakes and a mini mud cake covered in fondant. i made fondant and gum paste flowers, and put vanilla butter cream on the cupcakes.

I was in a purple flowery mood, I tried to go for a lilac but ended up with purple! Story of my life!










The white bait fritters and the eggplant fritters.... the eggplant are waiting to be fried in this picture...drool.Such an awesome day , there were many sweets and savouries on offer!
next post I'll show you how i did those flowers and hopefully do a better job...lol...
xx