Orange Cake

Made this yummy little cake for a special father's day afternoon tea. It was yummy and moist..denser than I excepted, but it was good. Iced with orange icing. All real oranges of course :)

• 3 oz butter
• 1 tsp orange rhind
• 3 eggs
• 3 tbsp orange juice
• 1/2 cup water
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 cups Self rising flour

1. Put butter, orange rhind, juice and water in a pot, stir until melted. Beat eggs and sugar until thick. Fold sifted flour into egg mixture, then add hot liquid, fold in lightly. Pour into a prepared 8" round tin. Bake in a mod oven for 35mins. Ice with icing made with knob of butter, 2tbsp orange juice and icing sugar to mix. Sprinkle orange rind over the top.
2. Recipe found here

Sesame Street Cake

And for my second project this past week I decorated this cake for my precious godson, Andrew who turned 1 last week.

The top tier is actually a dummy tier. And the bottom tier made from a layer of strawberry cake (made by Andrew's Mum), and a chocolate layer (made by Andrew's Dad). So all I needed to do on this one was construct it, ice it, and make the little figures. Hope you can tell what they are all supposed to be! (I think it you click on the photo it should enlarge if you want a closer look!)

And this is the cake once cut... it reminds me of that Neapolitan ice cream that you can buy.

Happy birthday little Andrew... you're an awesome wee guy!

Hot rod Cake

This was the first project of the weekend... my task was to create a hot rod cake. I was given the following two photos to work from.

And this is what I came up with:

For this car I decided to try out a brand of fondant called Satin Ice. Basically everything on the car that is black is Satin Ice. I liked that it came in a little plastic tub. I liked that it seems a but more robust than other fondants I have used. It had a slight vanilla taste to it which was quite nice. It is a bit more expensive I think than other brands I have used, but I think it's a good product for extra special projects.

I also brought a little pot of silver paint which looked really effective on the "metal" parts of the cake.

The recipient of the cake seemed really pleased with it and was already taking photos for facebook before I had left from dropping it off.

White Cake Mix

Well I must first apologise for not blogging for a while. I have been busy putting on a special party for my wee man who turned 1. He had an under the sea party. I think he enjoyed himself!

On that note I present... the cake!

The top tier was my normal rich chocolate cake that I have used for most of the birthday cakes I have made so far. The bottom tier is made with a white cake mix I purchased from kiwicakes. It's a special cake mix that contains no butter or egg yolks, so it is much whiter than the usual vanilla cake you see. For a cake mix I was quite pleased with it. It was moist and soft, and had quite a subtle taste to it. I think it would be nice in a wedding cake or other formal cakes that have white icing on them.

I made the piece of cake in the picture into a little turtle "smash" cake... which eventually ended up like this:

Some of my favourite cakes from the show

Below are a few of the cakes that I particularily liked from the cake show this weekend:

This was Greg's favourite:

How cute are these wee mini wedding cakes?

and... wow!

I won a pretty yellow ribbon!!

So excited! I came third place in the Non Guild Seniors category. When I dropped the cake off yesterday I became very intimidated by the quality of the other cakes in my class and thought that I definately wouldn't win a placing. But the judges must have seen something in my cake.

So here it is...

Front View

And Rear view

This is the first place winner

This is the second place winner

And a picture of the table for the non guild cakes (if you bring it up full size you might be able to spot mine in there somewhere!)

Off we go!

Well, it's cake exhibition today. I have NEARLY finished my cake. This morning when Emmy came out she said "I love your cake Mummy". So I feel like a winner already :)

Ok so I know my cake isn't the same kind of thing that I predict the other competitors will come up with, but I stayed true to myself and put all the things that I know Emmy likes on it. I have enjoyed the experience so far and learnt lots (I know what cake cleats are now!). And I am looking forward to seeing all the other cakes in the show.

Sneak Peek - My Exhibition Entry

Thought i would give you a sneak peek at what I have been working on tonight for my entry in the sugarcraft competition this weekend. Can you guess the theme of my cake yet?

Ladybird 1st Birthday Cakes :)

I made these cakes for a little girl who was turning one. The large ladybird is a banana cake. It was a bit of a challenge cooking such a large cake in a stainless steel bowl (it was a triple mixture), but I got there in the end!

And I made a little "smash cake" so the birthday girl could go nuts with it. That one was a plain vanilla cake inside.

And I wasn't 100% sure the main cake would be big enough for all the guests, so I made a chocolate cake that they could cut up if they needed more.

And...Sent!

Ok for the past few weeks I have been agonising over whether or not I should enter a cake decorating competition. I'm a newbie and have sooo much to learn about it. And the idea of competing with experts who have been doing it for 20+ years is rather off-putting.

But, I decided to enter. Just for fun. I don't expect to win or even come close to winning, but I figure it's all good for experience (and will give me something to obsessively blog about!). So my application went in the post today.

Click here to see the types of cakes that placed in the competition last year (I'm entering the NG Senior category)

Ladybird - Version 2

For Emmy's first birthday I made her these ladybird cakes:

They were my first decorated cakes and I was very proud of them lol.

Last night I decided to revisit this idea... for no particular reason. Here is what I came up with:

Tigerstix

I have often seen these in the shops, but didn't really know what to do with them. I finally brought some yesterday. Aren't they cute?

I whipped up a chocolate cake, covered it in chocolate buttercream, and stuck some of my wafer straws on. I topped the cake with just plain sugar cookies. Super simple!

Now, I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my wafer sticks before they all get eaten!

Subaru Cake

Just thought I would post a couple of piccys of my latest cake:

Congratulations William and Kate

Yep...I'm a royalist from way back, so I've been rather excited by all the wedding festivities this week. I couldn't let this wonderful occasion go without baking. On that note, this is the cake I baked to eat during the wedding:

My First Wedding Cake

A few months ago one of my friends approached me about making a wedding cake for her son and future daughter in law. I was a bit nervous about taking on this project, but it's something I've wanted to have a go at for a while now.

The theme was "Ivory, royal blue, and lilies". The bride emailed me this diagram of the cake that they had designed:

The first thing I needed to do was figure out how to make lilies. Not an easy task, and led to a little bit of frustration. I managed to find a tutorial online, and with a bit of fiddling around I came up with this:

I wasn't too sure how big the tins needed to be, but after chatting with some of my cakey friends I decided to use 12, 10, 8, and 6 inch tins. I was pleased with those sizes. The pans looked well proportioned when I stacked them on top of each other.

I also had to learn the ins and outs of stacking cakes. I realised that you need to support each tier of the cakes using cake cards, and dowels for support. If you don't do that, the cake will fall, or at the very least the icing will buckle.

Anyways, I had to change the design a little bit to make it look ok, but here is the final product:

In the venue they had blue table runners that matched the blue on the cake, so it looked nice once it was set up (and yes it was a tad difficult to transport to the venue + up a flight of steps!)

I haven't talked to the bride yet, but apparently they loved the cake, and it tasted good too. And as a bonus a number of guests also commented that they liked the cake and wanted to know who made it. So hopefully I may get to make some more cakes in the future.