Krystal's 30th Birthday Cake

This past weekend was my sister-in-law's 30th birthday party.  A few weeks ago her husband contacted me and asked me to make her a nurse themed cake for the party.  Of course I said yes!  I was a little bit stressed out about it because it is the first cake I have made for her.  Thankfully it turned out pretty well despite the heat I was battling in making it.
The cake is a bit of a hybrid of a few cakes that I found via pinterest.  Originally I was going to make a stethoscope as well but I didn't end up having enough room so I just left it off.  I was pretty stoked with how the syringe turned out!  I think that is my favourite part.  The ecg line was drawn on with edible marker.
I am really happy that they asked me to make this cake! I had a lot of fun making it and it is one cake I was actually semi happy with when it was finished.  Usually with every cake I make I get to the end and hate it.  This one though I was kind of happy with.  I wonder what cakes 2014 will bring?!

The First of the Birthday Cakes!

So it's official....I am soon to be the mother of a one year old child!  I have no idea how this has happened.  Wasn't she only born yesterday?!  I have a sneaking suspicion someone put a super speed spell on the last year.  If you hear who it was let me know.  I'd like them to put a slow down spell on the next year so I can soak up a bit more of my baby time.  But, I digress.....



The real indicator of the birthday party season having arrived is that I made my first birthday cake this past week.  On the weekend my mummy's group had a bbq to celebrate all the kids birthdays.  It was a fantastic day!  Since being back at work I haven't been able to catch up with them as much so it was nice to see them all.  We decided on a fairtytale theme because the babies were born in the year of the dragon.  Fairytales seemed a bit more unisex rather than just dragons.  To fit in with the theme I made a castle cake.



The cake was my standard chocolate mudcake recipe with chocolate ganache.  The lavender fondant I bought already coloured from Spotlight.  It is by Satin Ice.  All other fondants were by Fondariffic.  I bought mini waffle cones from the supermarket for the turrets.  I used skewers to hold them into the cake and added paper flags to the top.  This is honestly a super easy cake to make!  I prefer cakes that look more cartoony rather than realistic.  They are super cute and super easy to make!

Mum's Birthday Cake

Mum put in a request for her birthday back at the start of the year.  She had seen a cute cake my aunty pinned on pinterest and asked if I could recreate it for her.  Now of course I couldn't say no.  I love to make cute cakes!  Plus when the women who has made you all of your amazing birthday cakes for the 25 years of your life asks for a cake you deliver!

Now if this isn't the cutest little cake ever I don't know what is!  Look at those little pigs bums poking out of the mud.  Adorable!  The pigs were the hardest part of making the entire cake.  I have never modelled with fondant before so I was just winging it.  I made the pigs a couple of days prior to mum's birthday so they were set properly before putting them on the cake.

I used the Planet Cake Chocolate Mudcake recipe again and made two 8" rounds.  I then made a simple chocolate ganache to cover the cake and for the mud on top.  Now the original cake used kit kats around the outside but I used those cadbury chocolate fingers instead.  It took 2 packets to surround this cake.  The ribbon around the outside is both decorative and helps to keep any loose biscuits from falling off the cake.

And that, my friends, is that!  This cake is really quite simple!  The pigs are a new terrain for me but they are pretty simple given they are just balls of fondant basically.  If you are wanting to try working with fondant and don't want to take on covering a whole cake this design would definitely be a good place to start.

Anna's Giant Cupcake

This past weekend was my adorable work friend Anna's 30th birthday.  We went out for a lovely lunch and she asked me to make her a birthday cake.  Her request was for a giant cupcake with a cherry on top.  I jumped at the chance as I have had the wilton giant cupcake tin for a few years but have only used it once.

I made the cake out of chocolate mudcake.  To make sure both portions were cooked evenly I filled the bottom half first and baked it for 15 minutes. Then I filled the top half and baked it for the remaining time.  Because the bottom half is a bit bigger this ensured that both halves cooked the same.

To give a real cupcake look I left the bottom half bare.  The top half was iced with buttercream icing which I tinted with sky blue gel colouring.  The cherry was made out of fondant and had a small piece of green wire in the top for a stem.  I was pretty excited to also get the chance to use my giant sprinkles.  I bought these ages ago just because I thought they were cute and this is the first time I have used them. I think I need to make some more giant cupcakes so I can use them again!

The chocolate mudcake recipe I used for this cake is a new one to me.  I got it from the Planet Cake book and I am so happy I tried it out.  Everyone raved about it!  Even my sister liked it and she is hard to please when it comes to chocolate cake.  I am going to be lazy though and instead of typing the recipe out I am going to direct you over here where you can grab the recipe.  Be sure to let me know if you try it and what you think!

Dad's Tip Truck Birthday Cake

Cake making is something I love!  I really enjoy the whole process so whenever family birthdays are coming up I get very excited planning cake ideas.  Saturday was my dad's birthday so I started planning ideas for a cake a few weeks ago.

Dad drives a tip truck for work so when I saw a cake similar to this one I knew I had to make it for him.  It is a 3 layer chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing.  I covered the outside in milo to look like dirt.  The truck was from Big W and I simply placed it in the centre and filled the back with maltesers and chocolate coated honeycomb.

One tip for anyone who might want to make a similar cake - honeycomb melts!  It takes a little while but once it is exposed to the air it starts to melt.  So I would suggest making the cake up until the point of adding the lollies.  Then just before you have to present the cake add these to avoid them melting too much.

I am so happy with how this cake turned out.  Dad really loved it and has added the truck to his collection.  The next birthday in the family is my mums so I think I better get planning!

Pinata Cake

Last week I baked a cake for a friend of a friend of mine's mexican birthday party.  The initial text I got requested a mexican birthday cake and said "i'm thinking donkey pinata chilli moustache cactus!"  We settled on pinata after seeing these cookies.

I used my white chocolate mudcake recipe as it makes a nice dense cake that works really well for carving and shaping.  First I did a thin crumb coat with vanilla buttercream before piping my colours on in vanilla buttercream with a star tip.

I am really happy with how this cake turned out and both my friend and the birthday boy loved it!  And for anyone wanting a good white chocolate mudcake recipe I have shared my go to recipe before here.  Be warned though that this is a very sweet cake so best for those with a sweet tooth.

Cake Decorating Tips

Every time I post a cake that I have made I get questions in regards to how I have learned to use fondant.  I thought it would be a good idea to share my top 5 tips for anyone who might be wanting to learn how to use fondant but doesn't know where to start.

Brittany's cow print birthday cake - my most recent cake decorating venture.

1 - Read, Read, Read!!!

Before I started using fondant at all I bought myself the Planet Cake book and I read it from cover to cover, twice.  I had never used fondant before so I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what I was getting myself into before I started.  There are a million cake decorating books out there so don't think I am trying to get you to buy this one.  It just happened to be the one I found when I was wanting to learn.  I do like it's format because it breaks down all the steps of cake decorating and goes into all of them in detail.  I am the sort of person who finds the more information the better so reading up before starting really helped me to get an idea of what I was about to do.

Housewarming Cupcakes - cupcakes are a great place to start before attempting to decorate a full sized cake.

2 - Start Small

The very first thing I did with fondant was cupcakes.  Cupcakes are the easiest place to start as they are small so you don't need to work with as large amounts of fondant at a time.  To cover cupcakes you simply need a round cookie cutter the same size as your cupcakes.  This allows you to cut rounds of fondant which will fit your cupcakes perfectly.  Then you are able to decorate on top of these rounds.  For my first cupcakes I simply cut fondant with heart shaped cutters and layered on top.  The image above shows some cupcakes I made for a housewarming with some fondant, round cutters, scalloped cutters and alphabet stamps.  This is a very basic design but still effective and a good place to start.

Corey's birthday cake from last year.  My first time covering a square cake which I still need some practice at.

3 - Take Your Time

The biggest thing I learnt from the Planet Cake book is that cake decorating takes time.  You need to ensure you allow yourself this time.  If you try to rush from baking to decorating your cake won't have cooled enough and things will go awry.  This was also reiterated in my cake decorating class.  For fondant decorated cakes I always allow 3 days.  I bake the cake and make ganache on the first day.  On the second day I will level, layer and ganache my cakes.  Once the cake is ganached I will let it sit in the fridge overnight and on the last day I will decorate.  If I am doing a non fondant decorated cake I allow 2 days.  The first day for baking and the second day for decorating.  This ensures that the cake is completely cooled before you do any decorating.

The cake I made for in my decorating class.  This was my first time stenciling and using sugar paste.

4 - Expand Your Knowledge

Once you have done a couple of cakes yourself it is time to expand your knowledge further.  For me this involved taking a cake decorating class which is something I would highly recommend.  I found that talking to a professional and having the opportunity to get assistance during the decorating process really helped me to learn more about what I was doing wrong.  Since doing my class I am a lot more confident with my cake decorating.  I came away with so many notes from the class and a lot of them were such simple things that made you think "why didn't I think of that!"  That is were the real value of doing a class comes in.  The little tricks and tips you learn from a real person that you just can't read in a book.

This is another super easy simple design with fondant used for the cheese and sesame seeds on the burger.

5 - Don't Be Scared To Try Something New

The biggest part of cake decorating which I am just pushing myself to do now is to try something new. Don't be afraid to try a more intricate design or to do something new (like modelling or make sugarpaste flowers).  There is always something different to try and you should never be afraid to give it a go.  I made some basic flowers in my cake class and next I would like to try making some bigger individual flowers with sugarpaste.  I am thinking a simple round tiered cake with one large flower would look amazing.  All I need to do is find an occasion to make it for.

Now quickly before I go a couple of people asked me about how I covered Tailah's birthday cake in sprinkles.  Now there is a tutorial here on how you can roll the cake in sprinkles but given that I had spent 2 days on this cake already I was not prepared to risk ruining it by picking it up and laying it on it's side.  What I did was to put my cake into a large container (this is to catch the sprinkles).  I then tilted the cake to the side (I had "glued" it to the cake board with icing so I knew it wasn't going to fall off) and sprinkled the sprinkles on the side.  You have to do it slowly so that the sprinkles actually catch to the icing.  I then (with very clean hands) grabbed handfuls of sprinkles and patted them onto the spots that were a little bare.  It's not the fastest method but it saved me the anxiety of thinking I might ruin the entire cake.

So there you have it, my top tips for anyone wanting to try out fondant.  Now remember I am not a professional by any means.  I am mostly self taught (with one class) and have gotten most of my knowledge from books and the internet.  So if I can jump into this and just give it a go then you can too.  If you decided to try out fondant let me know so I can check out what you have made.  Happy decorating!