Thursday, 29 March 2012

Tim Burton Cake

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This cake was made for my best friend's work mate and she wanted a Tim Burton themed cake focusing on The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride and Alice in Wonderland! I was super exited to do this cake!

The cake itself was 4 layers- 2 chocolate and 2 vanilla with raspberry jam and a vanilla buttercream. I was very sad as I had to carry the cake to her party and by the time I had gotten there the cake managed to shift, so the Happy Birthday was all smooshed- ah well! I will one day beat gravity!

After putting the cake on the cake board I decided to turn it into a 'mad hatter' cake;

I made the fondant accents to look like the swirl mountains out of the Nightmare Before Christmas. All the fondant is as usual Marshmallow Fondant.

Some of the photos are a wee bit blurry but hopefully you will be able to make out the chocolate part, made to look like gravel and tree branches as I wanted to express the scene from the corpse bride where the rind is put on the finger/branch. I did dust the 'ring' with gold dust although I am not too sure if it gave it a good effect or not.
All of the gravel and branches were actually made out of modelling chocolate but I am not too sure how I feel about it- I may do a new post on it.

This is the maggot from the Corpse Bride's eye and the top of some colourful mushrooms were added to show Alice in Wonderland.

Originally I had wanted to do a shadow of either Jack Skeleton or of the Oggie Boogie man from the Nightmare before Christmas but I ended up doing the Cheshire Cat :) You can also see the front view of Zero, but that was last minute added to I didn't spend as much time making him.

And the Pumpkin King himself, Jack. Half of his legs are actually stuck into the cake for added support but it did mean that the effect of his legs being so long wasn't there. I did enjoy making the wee pumpkins though!

And lastly I wanted to add in butterflys as they were so prminant in the Corpse Bride- first at hte start and also when the bride turns into butterflys in the end, plus it meant that I could use a butterfly cutter! I dusted the wings with silver dust as well to give it some colour!

I think (and hope!) that it was well received and I very much enjoyed making this cake!

Labels: cake, tim burton | 0 comments

Monday, 26 March 2012

Going vegetarian

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Don't worry, I am not going vegetarian properly! I would definitely not suit that at all- I love steak wayyy too much ;)

But one of my things on my list is to cook more vegetarian meals. Although I have been doing this at least once a week, its been pretty standard foods that I don't think is worth blogging about- most people know about omelettes!

A while ago however I found some quorn mince in the back of my freezer and decided to use it up with some vegetables that needed to be used. So a sort-of-but-not-really chilli was made.

I browned off the quorn with garlic and added carrots, celery, canned tomatoes, tomato puree, mushrooms, spinach and sweetcorn!
Yes, very colourful! You can add whatever you have in your kitchen pretty much!

After adding some seasoning-again you can be pretty adventurous with the seasonings as well- I ate it with some rice and it was not bad!

It was only because I had the quorn in the freezer that I used it but I don't know if I would buy it that often- I have tried the quorn sausages and the mince does taste a wee bit better than them, but I think that it was mixed in with other foods.
If I were to make this again I would add it kidney beans and chickpeas instead of the mince. Although you can obviously add other beans, these are my favourites! Plus very easy to make when super busy!

I am looking for more vegetarian meals just to try and bit a wee bit cheaper and healthier so what would you guys recommend?

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, vegetarian | 6 comments

Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Mother's day cake 2012

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For this mother's day I pretty much did the same as last year. Since I work on Sundays, I decided to go home on Monday armed with a cake for my mum. It was supposed to be a surprise but I ended up telling her, though this was mainly because I wanted to check that she would be in the house so I wouldn't have to wait outside!

I did have trouble with coming up with a cake that I wanted to do but after a wee look at cakecentral.com I came up with what I wanted to do; a bouquet of flowers;

The cake was a vanilla cake with white chocolate in it, one from my 'Cake Bible' book. I did a chocolate buttercream for in between the layer and under the fondant and also added fresh slices of strawberries in between the layers. Who doesn't love strawberries with chocolate?! I do wish that I had added extra strawberries but I shall hopefully remember that for next time.


I actually started this cake on Friday.
Friday I made up the Marshmallow fondant.
Saturday I made a start to the flowers. The main ones are supposed to be carnations, hopefully they look something like them! I spent ages just trying to get it perfect so I actually only did 4 on Saturday but it wasn't so boring as I was watching Black Books as well.
(If you have't seen this TV show I would recommend it- it stars Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig)
Sunday, after 2 12 hours shift I got to work! I have one of the giant cupcake pans which helped to create the rounded top without having to carve it.

I do wish that I had done more of the carnations so that there were less spaces and I realllllllly want to be able to get properly smooth sides on my cakes! I know that this time it was because of my buttercream; although it did taste fine, the consistency was a bit weird and it dried very quickly so I didn't have time to smooth it all out, hence the bumpyness!

But I did like the cake as I hadn't ever really attempted flowers before. I am definitely going to make more fondant flowers as decorations! And if anyone has seen any good flower tutorials then it would be greatly appreciated! =D

Anyway my mum, one of my sister's and my brother liked the cake so was a successful mothers day!

Did you guys do something for your mums? I hope that they had a wonderful day because of it!

Labels: cake, flowers, mother's day | 7 comments

Tuesday, 20 March 2012

Dirty Dancing Date!

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So me and Chris had out first 'date night' in a while because he surprised me with Dirty Dancing tickets! Yup, I was blown away and super excited!

Us being the silly sausages that we are did manage to get the dates wrong on out first attempt to see it and we ended up turning up a week earlier than it was supposed to be. Awkward when you try and tell two old ladies that they have stolen your seats!

Fast forward to a week later and we got dolled up ready for a lovely evening. We actually just went for a pub dinner as we were running late as usual! We both had scampi and then for deserts Chris had a chocolate fudge cake and I had waffles with ice cream and wee chocolate bits, heavenly though not so good for looking good in a dress =P I don't have any photos as I didn't want to just whip out my camera when the food arrived, still too shy to be a food blogger!

Dirty Dancing was absolutely fabulous! I think that it is in Aberdeen until the end of March and would highly recommend it! Chris also thought it was amazing and I don't think just because there was a lots of hip swaying and half nakedness from the ladies =P I did end up tearing up a wee bit at the line "No one puts baby in the corner" but who doesn't?!

We ended the night going out for a few drinks and meeting Chris's karate buddy as it was his birthday and we ended up in a club which I hadn't been to before, drinking, dancing and then heading home. All in all an awesome date!

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, dirty dancing | 0 comments