I made some stuff...

I haven't fallen off the baking planet. I'm just not baking as much as before but I do still get orders and still love doing them. I have made a couple of things over the past few weeks or so, here they are.

This wedding cake was a monster and I can't even show you why...It had three tiers, each a different flavour and then each tier had three layers that were each a different colour. The cake went from light grey to dark purple inside. I sooooo badly just wanted to cut it open once it was finished but obviously I couldn't...so just use your imagination :)

My cousin had a Cake Boss type birthday party and she asked me to help out. I went there and demonstrated to 20 12 year old girls how to decorate cakes. I was so fun to see them all trying the things I had taught them (and also realising its not quite as easy as it looks). Each girl had a two tier cake to take home in the end which was probably the best birthday favour ever. Now trust me when I say that 20 12 year olds decorating cakes is NOT a clean process...

It was a really fun day and I do so love teaching. I have been wanting to teach baking for a long time now so it is something i'm currently looking into starting (anyone who wants a Cake Boss birthday just shout!).

This was one of my favourite cakes because this girl left the sides of her cake bare and did an asymmetrical arrangement which was so beautiful.

I made Alice in Wonderland cupcakes for another little girls birthday - I have done these before but the little mushrooms are just my best, they completely change the mood as soon as you pop them onto the cupcakes.

These were Red Velvets I made for a lucky husbands' birthday a few days ago - it wasn't Colin but he's used to not getting treats like this. Perhaps I should make something for him soon.

Hawaiian cake + Instagram

I recently made a Hawaiian cake for my cousins 8th birthday party. My aunt baked the cake and asked me to decorate it so I went over to their house the day before the party and did the cake there. It was difficult to try and decide what I might need to take with me. I usually just wing it as I go along and so end up using all sorts of different tools and decorating things. I managed quite fine though with the little box of goodies I took with. The cake was awesome (if I say so myself) and it was one of my favourite cuz it was so much fun to do with my three little cousins watching me.

I did forget to take my camera with though to take a photo of the final cake so all you have is an Instagram picture on my phone. On that note I thought I would share some other recent Instagrams which include a Padstal on a roadtrip, Molopo (our holiday home and my happy place), succulents at home and the Buddist retreat I went to over the weekend.

Rugby mascot cake

I made this cake for a surprise 30th birthday. The guy who's birthday it was went to Grey College and this dog was their rugby mascot. Apparently he loved the cake so much that he wouldn't let anyone eat it at the party.

They did eventually eat the cake later that week, but he kept the mascot and I know that it was recently still on their dining room table (and the birthday was in June!). I'm always super nervous when I'm making cakes for friends so it was so nice to have someone love it SO much.

Black + Gold

The wedding is LESS THAN A MONTH AWAY!! Which means things are starting to get frantic and crazy but i'm still surviving and managed to do something not related to the wedding or work (which is unheard of these days).

Last weekend I managed to get out a biscuit order for a wedding. The colour scheme was black, gold and white and the biscuits came out so nicely that I almost wanted to do them for our wedding even though it doesn't match our colours in ANY way. There was no time for proper photos so you'll have to settle for instagrams

I hand painted all the bronze and I think its AWESOME. I've become really fond of hand painting stuff lately (the wedding cake has a lot of hand-painted business on it so you'll see that soon too).

The biscuits were for this amazing lady from Prep'ed by Sasha. She contacted me a while ago after finding my blog. She has a catering company but doesn't do baking so has been looking for a baker to help her out - I obviously jumped at the opportunity so we'll see how things go.

I doubt i'll be back on the blog before the wedding and honeymoon and stuff are all over so don't expect anything from me until at least the middle of May. So see you later!


Here's a Little Dog donut pic just cuz it's so cute...

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines day everyone...I totally went all cheesy and did hearts and stuff, well I tried to make them a little designer-ish at least

Sit back and smell the roses...eventually

I had a HUGE wedding cake to make for this weekend. I mean like 7-tiers huge. It was the biggest cake I've ever made and took the longest. Luckily it was a fruit cake so I did have some time to work on it - not having to worry about keeping it fresh.

The bride wanted roses on the cake and I suggested icing roses rather than silk roses..so guess who has been making rose after rose after rose for DAYS! In the end I think they did turn out really nicely though so it was all worth it. And I learned a new skill which was great, I really enjoyed making the flowers and I think I will do it more often for cakes now.

The bride was super happy with her cake so I was super happy too. It was a stressful/tiring week but well worth it at the end.

 

 

(Photography note: Once again these photos are all taken at night. Usually with my cakes I take the photos in the morning before the cake gets delivered but because this cake was so big and was going to travel for 3 hours I wanted to pack it all up the night before so didn't have an option to do natural light photos)

Blue biscuits

I finally made some biscuits again this weekend! It's been long enough and I was very happy with the way these turned out. They weren't for any event specifically, I just want to see how the blue and white would look together - and I think they look pretty good!

I also tried my hand at making roses to go onto a cake, it takes a bit of practice but they came out pretty good for my first try I think (also, I don't have the correct petal cutter yet, I'm waiting for my order to arrive so I was using a heart cutter for the petals). I need to make a whole bunch of these for a wedding cake that I'm doing soon so hopefully I'll get the petal cutter soon and then I can start churning them out.

Eiffel Tower cake

So when I downloaded the photos of the Eiffel tower cake off my camera I happened to find another cake on there that I had completely forgotten about. It was a snake cake that I made for a kids birthday party ages ago.

 The Eiffel Tower cake was really challenging to make but I'm pretty happy with the result and the fact that I made it. It was fun to do something new and so extreme.

My cake orders seem to be picking up again now so hopefully i'll have some exciting new things soon. I'm not sure what it is about the end of the year but everyone seems to get cake happy...which is fine by me :)

Obsessions

Yesterday was my birthday, yay for me. I love my birthday, and it's always a huge thing because the day after (today) is a public holiday so usually I end up having a whole long-weekend worth of birthday. This year though we are busy getting everything ready for our engagement party, which is next weekend so my birthday wasn't really anything big. We went to dinner last night with a whole bunch of friends and it was wonderful. I'm so grateful for the amazing people that I have in my life.

What it also means is that I've had my camera for a year now...and I still love every day with it. Last year this time it was glued to my face and I shot an entire memory card full of images. Lately I haven't been using it as much but I need to get back into the swing of it because I really do love taking photos.

As a birthday treat I thought I would share another obsession with you. Jars. I LOVE glass jars. I recently re-organised my bookshelf, that you saw here, and added a whole shelf of jars. They are such a beautiful storage mechanism because they become a display item at the same time.

I suppose it doesn't really help me that the Consol shop is literally over the road and I can buy boxes of jars for really cheap there. (Dunno if you noticed the increase in ribbons on my bookshelf as well - yup, can't help myself, and I even think there are more since I took this photo!)

I have so many jars of things in this house, our cereal is in jars, some of my baking ingredients and even my cupcake cases. That is probably my favourite jar because its the perfect storage place for all those cases - I tend to compulsively buy those as well so I have millions of them (also more since the pic was taken).

Have a good day all :)