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Showing posts with label cake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cake. Show all posts
Saturday, 6 April 2013

postheadericon Mother's Day Cake!

This Mother’s day I was actually really busy with flat hunting and working so this cake actually I only spent about 6 hours over the night and morning but I did have a big helping hand from my lovely boyfriend =D

 

 
 
 
I had no idea what kind of cake I was going to do even once the cakes came out of the oven so it was a bit of a crazy mad rush! I eventually decided on making a present cake with a bow on the top. I have actually done this style of cake before in this post for a birthday cake so the idea is one that can be make for lots of different occasions! I ended up making it super girly and actually it would have been more suited to my style because I am quite a bit more girly and love pink!
 
 
 
 
 



I chose to do an apple cake spiced with cinnamon mainly because my mum likes eating apples and although I have tried an apple cake before it didn’t turn out right and so I needed a new apple cake recipe. I made a new style of icing actually called the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, flavoured with maple syrup and that was interesting to try out.  It is a meringue based buttercream, made by whisking egg whites and sugar over a heat and then adding your butter and flavourings. Both the cake recipe and the icing recipe were from the same website at Raspberri Cupcakes. She also has other amazingly gorgeous looking recipes to try!
 
There are a lot of tutorials on how to do the bow and I will probably do a bow tutorial the next time I do such a cake =) I guess it would have worked a bit better with gumpaste, as does most finiky icing work, but I think that marshmallow fondant is actually edible and yummy =)
 
 

Sunday, 24 March 2013

postheadericon High Heel Shoe Cake!



I am finally starting to go back through all of my cake photos and making blog posts about them. It is about time because this cake was made back in January!!!

                                      
So this was made for my best friend Jasmine for her birthday! Here is a link to her blog - you should totally follow her if you want to make lots of awesome, creative homemade things!

So I decided a while ago that I wanted to try and make a high heel out fondant. Most of the heels that I had seen online had been made out of gumpaste which I have never tried to make before. Although I would like to make it one day I much prefer working with Marshmallow Fondant and wanted to try and make it out of that even though I knew that it would be a lot trickier to stay totally hard. So, here are the steps I took to make the shoe:


 
My idea for the shoe was a red shoe with gold glitter on top because Jasmine had previously glittered some of her shoes before so I knew that she liked that effect. My glitter didn’t work out as well as I had hoped and the effect turned out to be more like lustre dust on it. 

One site I would highly recommend for tips and advice on making gumpaste shoes with lots of examples in case you don’t know what time of shoe you are going to do would be this site by sugarteachers.blogspot.co.uk.
I would recommend making the heel first. This gives it time to hard up so once you put the sole on top it doesn’t fall. Remember and stick a dowel, or depending how tall the heel is, a cocktail stick so that you can stick the heel onto a polystyrene stand and the sole can have something to stick onto.  I ended up using a flat shoe for the template- size 6- and using the same method as the trainer shoe cake. I drew around the shoe and then cut a bit of cardboard out for the template. Using the cardboard template again for a guide you are going to want to cute the same shape out but with about 1cm off the edge so you get the inner sole- I used a light pink for mine. This can be stuck on the main sole with edible glue or even a little bit of water. As you can see in the 2nd photo I put something underneath the heel because I wanted to support it. This was a 2litre bottle I believe that I cut a section out of so it would stay round and then got the size right so that it could fit under the shoe.

This was the finished shoe just drying off and ready to be put on the cake! I based my design on one that I had seen on the sugar teacher’s site and I think that it didn’t turn out too bad. The heel of the shoe was made purely with trial and error- figuring how tall I wanted the back to be and then tapering this down until it met with the sole of the shoe. The front was done in pretty much the same way- getting a rough idea how much to put on the shoe and cutting it down until I got it to a shape that I wanted. When I put the front bit on I left it to harden up by rolling up some kitchen roll and putting it under to that the shape would stay ‘up’ and it worked for me!
I wanted it to say Vivienne Westwood just because that is one of Jasmine’s favourite designers! And the red stripe on the front of the shoe was made by painting on red food colouring with a little bit of vodka.



The cake that I had actually made was a beetroot and pistachio cake and this was definitely not my choice! I was not best impressed that I would be making a cake with beetroot but actually I had to swallow my words because tasting the batter before it even went in the oven was so fabulous! And look at that colour! >>>>>
The cake did not turn out that bright after being in the oven but the taste was still so fine and with the pistachios it was gorgeous! I ended up just adapting a carrot cake recipe that I liked- substituting the beetroot instead of carrot obviously and adding in chopped pistachios. I would definitely recommend using beetroot in cakes!




I did add other things onto the cake: It was supposed to be a shoebox cake but next time I will work on it to make it more like a shoebox! And I also added in some make up, nail polish, ‘tacky’ rings and some pearls to make it more girly!




Saturday, 5 January 2013

postheadericon Christmas cake!

This was of course made before Christmas but as usual my posts are late! i wanted to go for a 'Santa stuck in the Chimney' theme but I managed to leave Santa's legs til the end of the time I had and ended up running out of time so the legs and feet are not so pretty =P



The bottom layer was carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting and covered in marshmallow fondant and the top layer was a chocolate cake filled and covered with chocolate ganache- a chocolate heaven!

The wee snowmen and Christmas trees I made a couple of days before and they were made out of marshmallow fondant. I didn't actually have any cutters that would have helped so instead I just used a fondant embellisher for an outline and then cut them out with a small sharp knife. The little stars were made with a plunger cut out for stars which is a very handy tool =) And I used liquid gels to paint on the wee details and let them dry overnight.





 I was really happy with how smooth the ganache went on to the cake and what a professional look it gave to the cake. I am pretty sure that i might have tried to use ganache before but wasn't as convinced but now I honestly want to use ganache for everything! If only you could make it in a fat free way! I decided to make a brick effect since it was to be a chimney which obviously means you cant see how smooth it is but next time =P




I do wish that the carrot cake had the height of the chocolate cake but I forgot how dense carrot cake is! then the proportions of the cake would have been better for the idea of the cake I think. But I guess too much chocolate cake can never be a bad thing!


Thursday, 27 December 2012

postheadericon Visiting Cake Boss in New Jersey!



This was possibly one of the coolest things that I did this summer! I absolutely love watching Ace of Cakes and Cake Boss and since I was staying with a host in New Jersey we went one morning to visit where the magic happens! Since I stayed in New Jersey for a few days I managed to complete one of my list- to visit 3 new states in America!

Since the host, Rio, had a driver’s license from Hoboken New York we got to skip the general line! When we went there was a line of about over 50 people waiting outside and when we went in there was quite a lot of people already in there. Overall it was a nice experience but unfortunately we did not see any of the cast which was very sad! =(  

 
I was nice to see all of the photos of the cast and the family along the walls and of course there was a lot of memorabilia since this show has gotten very popular!

 I got to see the display cakes so that I could see the level that they had and hopefully get inspired so one day my cakes will be displayed!



 
 I bought 4 of their cannolis and 4 lobster tails which I shared with my host! They were sooooo yummy! Very creamy and crispy and I loved them! Something that I wish that I could eat every morning =P




Wednesday, 5 December 2012

postheadericon 15th Anniversary for Mum's Boss!



At the end of October I finally got my first paid cake job! My mum’s boss was celebrating her company’s 15th year and they asked me to do the cake which of course I was so excited to do! I was left to my own ideas about what to do with the cake but my mum gave me some ideas to go with which would relate to the company. The company is a counseling company so my mum thought it would be fun to incorporate different faces of emotion in it so I decided that I would try cake pops for the first time!

I made the cake pops a couple of times prior to the event just so that I could get a feel for how to make them and how to decorate them but this was the first time making them so I actually managed to cross two things off of my list! As well as the cake pops I made a cake to go along with it with the company’s logo on it, the leaf. I decorated the cake pops and the cake with food colouring.
Normally I would use vodka with this to dip the brush into and this will help to dry the colouring faster and the vodka will evaporate however since I didn’t have any at the time because I made this at my mum’s house instead of mine, it was a lot harder to dry but a night in the fridge did solve that!.
So, the cake pops were made out of chocolate cake, mixed with a cream cheese vanilla buttercream and dipped in white chocolate. Then the actual cake I made was a lot plainer- a vanilla cake with a vanilla cream cheese buttercream again and covered with some marshmallow fondant.




Me with my mum's boss!
Overall I was pretty happy with these cakes. There were some things that I wish I was better at doing as I am not too artistic the faces could have been better and my fondant I had some problems with! But the client did like it and I even got my photo in the local paper! =D

My mum is on the right and the 2 other ladies and man are her work mates!


Saturday, 1 December 2012

postheadericon Girly Cake!



This was the first cake that I made after coming home from America and it was made with one of my sisters after a lot of persuasion from my sister! We decided that we would make a red velvet cake which is starting to become one of my favourite cakes! Filled and covered with a vanilla buttercream dyed pink to make it as girly as possible! Pretty simple decoration, inspired by the Great British Bake Off as we were watching the finale while baking- pretty inspiring! Raspberries and chocolate for sure you can’t go wrong with and I would happily eat it all day long!

So here it is, the cake made by my sister and me :D





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I am a 21 year old student who loves to bake and make yummy sweet things
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