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

Memory Box Memorial Birthday Cake for Gabby

I had the honour of making a memorial cake for my good friend Gabby's Grandfather who would have turned 100 if he hadn't passed away just weeks before his birthday. So armed with photos photoes of him and his medals from the war, his engineers set and what I remember of him, thinking about the fact he always drove around in his Jag... I set about designing a cake that would incorporate all those memories. So i decided to make a wooden memory box that held these things that symbolised him.

I started with his picture on fondant mixed with modelling paste to look like his photo.

I built up the edges of the cake after i ganached it and and used Rice treats...as buddy would say,sticking them down with ganache. 

My stupid phone switched off so I didnt get any pictures of making the war medals, which is annoying, or the making of the engineer tools and the jaguar mascot.

the tools were allmade with modelling paste and fondant mixed together half /half, and I did the detail on the medlas with my icing tip and a fondant tool... i coloured with gold and silver paint and copper coloured lustre powder.

The interior of the box is lined with blue fondant and sprinkled with blue coconut, to soften the look of the box's interior and make it look like it has been lined with material. Yep that meant at 11pm I was dying coconut. lol

theres a good shot of the Leaping Jaguar

I added his name and  Year of birth and death on the front of the cake.

I made the wood grain look with a sharp tool and drew long lines into the side of the cake to create texture and glazed it with apricot jam and water mixture to make it look shiny like a lacquered box.

I was really honoured to do this cake for Gabby and her family, Her grandfather was a real dapper gentleman about town, and it was a touching tribute to him on what would have been his 100th birthday. Happy Birthday Frank Couch Michell wherever you are!

Strawberry Cupcakes from my Mate Betty.



This Post is for the special people out there who find it hard to get their heads around the cupcake, there are couture cupcake courses out there and there is a fair amount of cupcake snobbery going around at the moment. So this blog is dedicated to the time poor  domestic GODS AND GODDESSES out there who want the couture look but have half the time. Okay it all started because i cant walk past a bargain. I saw that Betty cake Mixes were on special and so i bought a few, because i am no cake snob... i have 4 kids and if i can use a packet mix at home i will! So i tried their new one, and it smells just like strawberries! 
I went to my BFF Marnie's house today and i decided to take some cupcakes, I was really pressed for time so I used my bargain cake mixes , Strawberries and Cream OMG Yum!!! And quickly threw them into the Kenwood mixer that i ressurected from my mums house and Beat me some batter... it was totally pink! Sweet as!

I just dolloped the icing on top of the cupcake, quite roughly... i was making it up as i went so i was pretty sure you wouldnt see it as messy by the time i figured out the rest.

I used the frosting provided because i dont like wastage and Its a yummy mix as well, so i thought i would stack some fondant flowers onto the cupcakes and make something girly and pretty.... i had very little time so i improvised.....

I used the little icing pens you can get from your local supermarket.... it saves alot of time and fiddling around with piping bags... we have no time people! i drew a flower on top of the cupcake and then thought i needed something else so i got some fondant out....

You guys can buy some premade icing flowers from the supermarket... or alternately you can buy some fondant and some cutters... they come in handy... your local supermarket has small packets of fondant for cheap and you can use basic food colouring to dye it the colour you want.... they even sell cupcake toppers online for cheap on those hand made websites.... its do-able people!

i used my balling tool to shape the flower so that the petals stood up them i just stuck it on top of the dollop of icing

one dot of icing on top for the centre of the flower and its lovely... if you like you can put a cashous in the middle of the flower for something shiny... but its up to you. xx

there they are ready for marnies house.

Lawn Bowls Bag cake.....

My next cake was a lawn Bowls bag, for a friend. She also got the twee pot cake, so she is officially my best customer! A picture of the bag was sent to me, as the birthday boy is an avid bowls player.... and this is how it turned out.....

The cool thing about this cake was that i got to buy a new tool to make it.... i call it a zipper and stitching tool, like a pastry cutter, but with 3 interchangeable heads.... it rocks... alot of the detail was made with the stitching tool.

it started out as all cakes do... with chocolate slab cake and chocolate buttercream.

cut to shape, to look like a bag

 ganashed and i made it quite smooth...lol...not shown.....

then fondant all over in sections, plus a pocket ready for the black trimmings and handles to be applied.

it was all about small details, using a piping tip i made the studs and made the silver emblem fondant and my trusty edible silver paint

zipper detail

I applied fondant to the board like grass and textured it with a clean cloth...and made a jack.(white ball) out of shaped rice bars and fondant and a black bowls made the same way. add the zippers and you may not be able to see but all the black detail has stitches to look like it was actually sewn.

Add the handles, which was a bit of a conundrum, i decided to use plastic tubing covered in black fondant and mounted on skewers to stand them up...

its a good pic of the bowls ball and there you can see the skewers holding up the handles.and i added the square stitched patches to make it all flow together and it was done..! sort of... i mean i am leaving out the smaller things that make it special like the studding detail and the white polishing cloth sitting under the larger ball. all the zippers added with water as my sticking agent....the lettering of the happy birthday sign....

Craig and Danielle were really happy with the overall look of the cake and i was pretty happy with it also. the back of the cake looked the same as the front except for the pocket, i put only one pocket on the cake.... it looked quite like the picture sent to me... i'll let
you be the judge. xx

1961 FB Holden cake

My father in law Bob turned 65 last week so we dcided to throw a surprise birthday party, the cake was left to me and my sister in law and I thought it would be grouse to do a car cake like the car Bob  owned way back when.i baked mud cake simply because i thought it would model well as a 3 dimensional cake

So i baked a few slabs of mud and started ganaching and stacking, i had drawn what the cake should look like so i could get my mind around where all the acessories should go and get the proportions right.

i tried to get the curves right, building it up a bit with the choclate ganache....love ganache work!

i rolled out some fondant and coverd the ganached car with light blue fondant

it was a delicate process poking, prodding and coaxing the fondant into shape. i maade markings on the fondant for windows, and where the white wings should go along the car.

i tucked the excess fondant under the car rather than simply cutting it off to give the illusion of being off the board. you can see all the while refining the shape of the hood and boot, especially around the lights

meanwhile using my shape cutters i cut out 2 circles for the headlights, colcoured them silver and texturized the toplayer to look like a head lamp. i painted in the grill ready for piping on the detail....next the tail lights

the tail lights were layered fondant coloured shapes, literally the whole car was broken down into shape components that i made and attached, i then painted in the windscreen and side windows, not to forget the white wings on the side of the car. its really beginning to look like a car at this stage.

small details were added in , like shading on the chassis to give it a more real look, around the bonnet and trunk, under the wheel arches and in the doors.... strangely enough i completely forgot some components alltogether like mirrors and door handles.... weird....

chrome details

i piped in the grill, made black wheels to stick in under the guard,  added the bumper bar and a number plate BOB 65....voila!!