Saturday Night Fever

So things have been fairly quiet on the cake making front, however whilst on my annual trip home to the UK I did make a fondant cake topper for my best friends's husbands party. Alas i wa snot able to make the cake since I would be getting back from a short trip to London with hubby, so i suggested i did this instead! The theme taken from the invite was of my friends husband in the John Travola pose in front of a giant disco ball: See link below for a picture. http://www.collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Saturday_Night_Fever_DVD/saturday_night_fever_30th_anniversary_collector_s_edition_dvd__large_.jpg

So of course i had to replace John T's head for John B's head! Here is the result!

Tiered cakes

So this is my first attempt at a tiered cake, as well as my first attempt at homemade MM fondant, made in honor of my British friend here for her 40th birthday celebration.......

The cake consisted of a 8 inch round bottom layer made of chocolate cake filled with a layer of white chocolate ganache, fresh strawberries and raspberries, and topped with raspberry buttercream frosting. The second layer (6 inch)and top layer (4 inch) were a light orange chiffon cake filled with orange buttercream frosting.

All cakes were covered in buttercream frosting and MM fondant.

I researched all the different ways I could do a tiered cake and also had to take in to account I had to get it to the restaurant in one piece.

i used dowel rods in the bottom and second tier for support and used a long dowel rod going through all 3 tiers. And this is where the fun started. It was recommend to me that each layer should be on its own cardboard plate, so as I was pushing the dowel through the top tier the card buckled into the second tier, thus pushing it into the cake, when i noticed the middle tier was bulging, i immediately stopped. to my dismay the middle tier had a crater! Consequently I removed the plate on the 4 inch and discarded it!

Needless to say the cake still held, and arrived in one piece to the venue, and most importantly tasted and looked great! Not bad for a first attempt.

With regards to the MM fondant, it tasted really good, so i will definitely be using it again in the future! I just wish I got the knack of putting it on the cake without creases and tears! Practice makes perfect! And most of the time you can cover up the imperfections with the decorations! Shh! Don't tell anyone!

Here is the results of the mini christmas cakes I made for Ewan's teachers at school. The fruit cakes were started in November (later than i should have) using a great recipe from a british cake decorator book by Mary Clee Cladman. I used 5.25 inch round mini springform cake pans. The cakes were topped up almost weekly/fortnightly with brandy until the final layers of apricot glaze, home made marzipan and royal icing were used to finish the cake off. I decorated the tops of the cake with fondant trees and royal icing baubles, and ribbon around the edge.

They were presented on a decorative ceramic plate with a candy cane and wrapped in a large seasonal celophane bag! I was really happy with the finished product, with contained a card explaining how and why we have christmas cake in the UK.

Christmas cake is normally served at around teatime. A Christmas Tea is traditionally very light -- cold meats, cheeses, pickles, salad, sandwiches, Christmas cake and mince pies. (Although to be fair, on Christmas day, the eating never stops from lunchtime to bedtime: chocolates, crisps, biscuits, cakes, fruit, nuts, sweets etc. Well, we do buy a lot of food -- so we do our best to eat it all!)
Christmas cake was originally Twelfth Night Cake, a rich fruitcake made to celebrate Epiphany. But the Puritans had removed Twelfth Night from the church calendar and by the late 19th Century it was becoming a night associated with mischief making, so Queen Victoria banned it as a feast day in 1870. The bakers, not wishing to lose any money, simply iced the cakes they'd already baked to represent a snowy scene and sold them as Christmas cake instead.
Homemade with raisins, sultanas, currants, glace cherries, candied lemon & orange peel, grated zest and juice of oranges, butter, eggs, flour and lots of brandy. Then baked for several hours, left to mature for several weeks and finished with marzipan and royal icing. And finally presented to you from the Palfreyman Family as a gift to enjoy! Just store this cake in an airtight container and it will last for several weeks!

If you are interested here is the wording on the labels!!!

"Christmas cake is normally served at around teatime. A Christmas Tea is traditionally very light -- cold meats, cheeses, pickles, salad, sandwiches, Christmas cake and mince pies. (Although to be fair, on Christmas day, the eating never stops from lunchtime to bedtime: chocolates, crisps, biscuits, cakes, fruit, nuts, sweets etc. Well, we do buy a lot of food -- so we do our best to eat it all!)
Christmas cake was originally Twelfth Night Cake, a rich fruitcake made to celebrate Epiphany. But the Puritans had removed Twelfth Night from the church calendar and by the late 19th Century it was becoming a night associated with mischief making, so Queen Victoria banned it as a feast day in 1870. The bakers, not wishing to lose any money, simply iced the cakes they'd already baked to represent a snowy scene and sold them as Christmas cake instead.
Homemade with raisins, sultanas, currants, glace cherries, candied lemon & orange peel, grated zest and juice of oranges, butter, eggs, flour and lots of brandy. Then baked for several hours, left to mature for several weeks and finished with marzipan and royal icing. And finally presented to you from the Palfreyman Family as a gift to enjoy! Just store this cake in an airtight container and it will last for several weeks!"

Ethan's 3rd birthday

So I finally did the lighting McQueen cake., and the red and black turned out well! It took me hours of colour mixing and piping, as well as a problem with the McQueen pan (i hate those pans) everything always sticks. Tip lots and lots of shortening! YUK! Anyway, after a second attempt of the cake, it turned out well!

The final cake was chocolate, with buttercream frosting. The car shape sat on top of a 9x13 cake that was piped in a white and black chequered flag. The car was then carefully placed on top and then i decorated that which took me the best part of half a day.

The end result though was worth it, and Ethan loved his cake! So did my eldest as well, he demolished the biggest slice of cake he has ever had! Kids, chocolate and frosting, you can't go wrong!

Well my next big job will be to finish off my Christmas cakes. I have to make the marzipan, fondant decorations and the royal icing! The smell of the brandy is soooo yummy when i unwrap the cakes to top them up with more brandy!

Here is the cake I just made for my friend Sarab, who's had a bit of a bad pregnacy and only just alsmost human again. So I wanted to treat her and make here the best chocolate i have made so far! She is also an ugg boot fanatic (she has at least 4 pairs) so I decided to make an ugg boot out of fondant and gumpaste. The Ugg boot turned out well and was also the perfect size to be a candle holder! The fondant circles were added to for a modern twist to the cake!

The cake was filled with whipped chocolate ganache (using a good quality cocoa powder) and the chocolate cake was flavoured with raspberry extract, and covered with chocolate buttercream. The chocolate cake was from a new recipe, using sour cream instead of milk, which made it quite moist. My friend loved the Ugg boot, to, and I am sure it is the world's smallest Ugg Boot!

Halloween (2)

And for my own pre trick or treat dinner I made more lemon and coconut cupcakes (yum) as well as halloween sugar cookies and decorated them in royal icing.

Halloween (part 1)

I offered to make 24 cupcakes for Ewan's Halloween party at school. Life is so much easier with my kitchen aid mixer........I decided I wanted the cupcakes to be special, even though 4 year old would probabky devour them in one bite! So I did my first attempt of using the candy melt method after being inspired by the book Little Cakes from The Whimsical Bakehouse http://www.amazon.com/Little-Cakes-Whimsical-Bakehouse-Cupcakes/dp/0307382826/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b...... This is a really cute book with lots of ideas and recipes. A few of which I can't wait to try. Anyway here are my results. It took a lot of time and effort but the results I think were worth it! Especially after the feedback I got from the teachers.

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My first request......

I was asked by my neighbour to make a cake for her work colleague's birthday, nothing fancy just lots of chocolate! So that is exactly what i did, with chocalate raspberry frosting and with some chocolate buttercream roses thrown in for good measure.

My neighbour has also asked me to do her son's 3rd birthday cake (Disney cars theme) so looking forward to that at the end of the month and coming up with some ideas..........unfortunately for me Lighting McQueen is red, and I hate doing red food colouring!

Liz's Birthday

Despite being exhaused after my efforts with Austin's cake, his mum, AKA one of my best/oldest friends here decided to have a birthday also around this date, and of course who can resist the temptation to make another cake!!!

This was a simple cake but i wanted it to be totally adult and delectable for a group of girls.....so i made a Chocolate Baileys carmel cake with chocolate Caramel Baileys frosting.........yummmm is all i can say, def. could taste the Baileys but that was my intention! All 1/2 cup of it (just in the cake).....I also played around with candy melts for the first time which was fun using them as shavings and leaf cutouts! A good opportunity to practice!

Optimus Prime Truck Transformer cake

Here is the results of my largest cake yet, finished on sunday in time for my friends son's birthday! I made most of the fondant details last week, and started the rest the beginning of this week (6 days before) . The cake was a big success, and I was really pleased with the result.



It is 22 inches long in total, and comprised of 2 x 9x13 inch yellow cakes, 1 x 9x13 inch chocolate cake and 1 x 9 inch sq chocolate cake. the cakes we sandwiched together in different layers of strawberry Jam preserve and also chocolat buttercream frosting.



I also used fondant details and painted them in edible silver dust. The large square piece of fondant ont he back is Optimus Prime's face done as a stencil, spraypainted and then outlined (all edible). The pipes are made from pretzel sticks wrapped in fondant!