Modelling - Teddy Bears' Picnic

My first foray into modelling...

Paint tube

I made this cake to celebrate a friend's new artistic venture - www.facebook.com/fionaspaintings. It's based on a Planet Cake design, and created using their carving and ganaching technique. The cake was home made coconut with lemon white chocolate ganache.

My hand painting isn't great

Piping gel gave the fondant the look of wet paint

The crimped end is one of my favourite bits

Modern cakes - "Herbie"

The final cake for my Modern Cakes 2 course was a car. Most of the class carved their cars into convertibles. I went with Herbie the Lovebug.

Created using a Wilton car pan, loads of ivory, red, black, blue and white fondant, and edible textas.

Handbag cake

Week two of Modern Cakes 2 saw us assembling handbag cakes. Most of the class went with a Chanel type bag, with quilting and monogram. I wasn't overly fussed with that, so decided to make the type of bag you'd be happy taking to Spring Carnival.

Sadly I didn't have time to get the good camera out, let alone mess around with lighting, so the photos aren't my best. I guess that means I'll just have to make another one. If only we lived somewhere big enough to set up a permanent food set. A person's got to dream!

Sugar flowers

I've been doing a sugar flower course over the past four weeks. Each week built towards the final posy, which is why there haven't been any posts about it before now. Here's the finished product. I'm pretty happy with it.

Roses and jasmine

Roses, jasmine and little blossoms

While we were creating the posy flowers we had time for an open style rose. I think they look a little like hibiscus flowers.

Individual roses

Roses and rough icing

I think this would be just about perfect for a Spring Carnival picnic. If you're not limited to chicken and champagne, that is.

Pile of presents

As posted previously, I decided to re-use the exploding stars cake topper for Smidge's birthday cake. I decided to make a pile of presents cake to make sure the whole thing didn't end up looking too much like a wedding cake; he's only one after all. The cake is a dairy-free coconut, and was delicious.

Chocolate fences

Chocolate curls and fences, secured with ganache. A simple way to get a striking cake. Striping the curls makes it look even more impressive. This one was a chocolate mud cake, and served as birthday cake for a male friend.

Exploding stars cake

Finally, a finished cake. I'm very happy with it, and will most likely re-use the topper in Smidge's first birthday cake in a couple of weeks. Sadly he can't have this one as it contains dairy.

This week in cakes

The week started off with Mothers' Day, celebrated with a chocolate cake covered in ganache and decorated with leaves made from chilli chocolate. Its tiered because I didn't have a deep 23cm pan, so ended up using a 20cm sandwich and 12.5cm deep.

Closely followed by a sheet sponge on Monday for a birthday dinner. No photo of that - it was pretty plain to look at, although I'm told the eating was good.

Thursday and Friday I made my first topsy turvy. Not a bad result for a first try. In fact, it was good enough to get me a query about a wedding cake!

The design was chosen by the birthday girl's mum, and is a pretty close replica of one made by Pink Box Cakes. Black fondant is not my friend!

Modern cakes, week two

This week we worked on assembling our toppers and icing our boards. I'm fairly happy with the way my topper has worked out.

Modern cakes

I've finally started my second cake decorating course. This one is modern cakes, and is the sort of stuff I'm interested in. It runs for six weeks, and we're going to decorate up to three cakes. I wish there were time to do more, but given each class only runs for two hours, there just isn't enough time.

No cake this week, sadly. We prepared cut-outs to put on top of a two-tiered cake. Given that I have a first birthday party coming up, my cut-outs were of ones and stars. Pictures to come when the cake is complete.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Finding a great icing recipe isn't easy. There are so many out there; lots are too greasy, lots are way too sweet, and some are too sweet, too greasy and too runny all at once. This recipe is incredibly easy to modify, and gives you a sweet and silky icing that is easy to pipe. The only caveat is don't try to use it on a hot day.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

4 egg whites (from 59g eggs)
285g sugar
425g butter

Method

Add the sugar to the egg whites. Place over a saucepan of simmering water and stir with a whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Using a stand mixer and whisk attachment, beat the eggs until thick and glossy. Change the whisk attachment to a paddle attachment, reduce the speed to medium and continue mixing until the bowl is room temperature to touch. Meanwhile, cube the butter. When the meringue mix has cooled, slowly add the butter, one or two cubes at a time. Continue until all of the butter has been incorporated into the meringue. If the mixture appears to curdle, stop adding butter and continue whipping until the mixture smooths again. Once it's smooth, start adding butter.

Castle cake, take one

Castle cakes can be as simple or as difficult as you like. This one was pretty straight forward, mostly because I used meringue butter cream and lollies instead of fondant and piped decorations. I'm pretty sure I'll try variations on this, hence the take one.

The cake was made from four quantities of a standard butter cake, baked in a 25 cm pan, 12.5 cm pan and lamington tray. The turrets were cut from the lamington tray using a medium sized scone cutter, topped with waffle cones. The whole thing was cemented together using chocolate ganache and lots of cake dowels.

Here's a shot in progress:

And here's the finished product:

So there you have it, about the easiest castle cake going. From all reports, the birthday girl enjoyed it. I certainly had fun putting it together.

Quick and easy for grown-ups

I was recently asked to make a cake for a grown up's birthday. Normally I make cakes for people much younger, or for special events like baby showers, Christmas and so forth. So I was a bit stumped. It wasn't an event birthday, like a twenty-first or fortieth. The guy in question isn't passionate about any hobbies. Nobody was forthcoming with any sort of theme, other than orange and poppy seed.

In the end, I decided on chocolate curls. Decorations don't come much simpler, and I think they add a nice touch to an otherwise plain cake. You can jazz them up with contrasting chocolate colours, but for an orange and poppy seed cake, I figured subtle was the way to go.

Here's how it turned out.

Getting started

I've always liked baking, but have only recently decided to get into decorating. Well, proper decorating that is. Rather than learning from books - which really wasn't working out all that well - I signed up for a four week course at a local cake shop. Here's what I've learned so far.


Week one
Really, there's nothing like a cake decorating class to bring your self esteem crashing back to earth. No photo this week!


Week two

Week two was all about figure piping. The clowns are made from a product called Thick and Rich, which is possibly the least buttery butter cream icing I've ever tasted. It's so far from being a dairy product that once it's whipped, it doesn't need any refrigeration, and can quite happily sit on a cake for days at a time. If you ever stumble upon a cake decorated with this stuff, my recommendation is to scrape it off before eating the cake. Still, at least I learned how to make clowns, a skill which I'm sure won't go to waste provided I've got time to whip up some royal icing.

My shell borders have improved already. These ones look like badly realised surf to me.

Week three
Week three was time to make character cakes. The rest of the class decorated cartoon characters and puppets. One student did Darth Vader. I took the easy way out.

Still, the boys were impressed enough that Deux wants this for his fifth birthday. Obviously I got something right... as if the finger smear in the corner wasn't enough of a give away.

Week four
Week four was the final lesson for the first course. This cake turned into a birthday cake for Maman. Everyone deserves a princess cake once in a while.

I've signed up for another course, this time with more of a focus on fashionable cakes. While I probably won't get a lot of use for my adventures in "butter" cream icing, I still think it was good to get some foundation skills under my belt. Here's hoping the next course turns out some cakes that I'm not ashamed of!