Dark Chocolate & Rum YUM!

This was an order for a cupcake gift box of a dozen of my 'Deluxe Gourmet' style cupcakes for a males birthday.

They chose a nice grown up flavour combination of my 'Black Magic' cake (dark chocolate butter cake) with a rum flavoured Italian meringue buttercream swirl.

I then finished each one with a generous mount of 70% dark chocolate curls & a wafer 'straw' with a chocolate centre.

YUM!

The customer said "Thank you for the chocolate cupcakes.  They were the Best!  Really loved them"

The Cyclone Ului Wedding Cake!

Well this particular cake certainly has a story to tell!!!

To begin with it was a fairly short notice wedding cake.  However it was not an official wedding cake as the couple it was for had already been married over seas & so the cake was ordered by their friends who couldn't be there at the time & were throwing them an after wedding party to celebrate.  This meant that they only required something fairly small & requested a simple yet elegant design.  With that in mind the fact that it was short notice was not too much of a problem so I went ahead & took the order, not giving the current warnings of the impending cyclone a second thought (in fact it didn't even cross my mind at the time).

The party was organised for Saturday night & the cake was due to be picked up that morning & so on Friday night the cake was all completed, safe & sound in my lovely air conditioned room & looking gorgeous.

Saturday morning arrived with the news that cyclone Ului was heading straight for us & would hit late that night or early Sunday morning so naturally the party was cancelled & they phoned to see if they could leave the cake with me as everyone was busy preparing for the cyclone & getting ready for lock down.  So the cake stayed with me until Sunday afternoon when the cyclone had passed & we were told we were allowed to venture outside again.

Everything was fine until the power went out on Saturday evening which meant no air conditioning & the ridiculous humidity that the cyclone had brought along with it began to take it's toll on the cake.  Thankfully the cake actually held up very well in the end with the only real effect being slightly shiny fondant & a somewhat  droopy sugar flower.

So anyway here is the cake I designed, sorry for the bad light in the photos but I still had no electricity, in fact I ended up not having any for almost 5 days!

The cake was 3 layers of 'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud) with chocolate ganache filling & coating, followed by a marshmallow fondant finish & was a 10" square cake (approx 50 desserts size serves).

The colour scheme for the cake comes from the brides dress which was this shade of purple & so I was asked for something to match that along with some white accents & a congratulations message.

As I said they had requested a fairly simple design so I went with a classic quilting pattern on the sides of the cake.  For the border I made a lace like band incorporating hearts & also added a string of sugar pearls which were all finished with a lustre dust.  The top of the cake featured a large sugar anemone that I made (which unfortunately did not fare well in the cyclones humidity) as well as some more sugar pearls.

This cake would also make a nice engagement cake I think.

Happy St Patrick's Day Cupcake Gift Box

A customer from Brisbane wanted to say Happy St Patrick's Day to her brother in law who lives here in Mackay & what better way than with a yummy cupcake gift box!

They were heaps of fun to make, I just love making specific themed cupcake toppers like this.

So this is what I designed & made, it features leprechauns hats, pots of gold on a rainbow, clovers, Irish flags & pints of Guinness all made out of marshmallow fondant.

The cake for the cupcakes was 'Midnight Delight' dark chocolate mud cake (I did suggest a Guinness & chocolate cake in keeping with the Irish theme but she thought that her sister would prefer straight chocolate) topped off with a generous amount of divine Baileys Irish Cream buttercream (which of course I had to tint a pale green colour).

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone!

Gothic Gift Box Cake

Another gift box cake but completely different this time.

The order was for a Gothic style version for a young ladies 18th birthday using her favourite colours which were black, purple, orange & pink (but her mum had requested not too much black, lol).

I wasn't to sure about how the design would all fit together at first but I really love the way it turned out.

The cake was 3 layers of 'Blondie' cake (vanilla butter sponge) with Italian meringue buttercream sandwiched in between which I tinted pink for one layer & orange for the other to tie into the overall design of the cake, & it was all then covered in yummy marshmallow fondant.  It was quite a large cake, 12" square (approx 72 dessert size serves).

This time I made two handmade sugar roses for on top of the box instead of a more traditional bow, which I think fitted theme much better & I thought it would also be good to have some stay rose petals on top too.

I was also going to put a spiders web design on the back left corner of the lid but I decided it would be too much & would start to look more like a Halloween cake & so I left it off.

A closer look at the full roses & rose petals.

Even though they took ages to do I just love these cute little girly skulls with their heart shaped eyes & nose, long eyelashes & little pink bow.

Apparently the birthday girl loved her cake "Hi there, well the cake was a hit she was so excited n fell in love with it straight away . thanks again it was a big hit n very yummy ....i have been letting every1 we know what u do n  they love u work so u may get more jobs . thanks again, all the best."  Janis

Sugar Flowers - Lilies

I was asked to make some sugar lilies for a lady that is making her own cake but wanted some beautiful sugar versions of her daughter's favourite flowers to decorate it with.

These type of flowers are very popular for weddings & look absolutely stunning on a wedding cake.

They sure are a LOT of work but the results are well & truly worth it I think!

Fabulous 50's Birthday Cake

I just love it when a client gives me a theme or colour scheme to work with but also allows me free reign on the design of their cake, which was exactly what happened with this cake.

I was given the theme of 50's & the colour scheme of black, white & a little colour so this is what I created & I was happy with the results.

The cake for both tiers was 3 layers of 'Blondie' (vanilla butter cake) with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream. However I tinted the buttercream to the same pink & blue colours as used on the decorations & had one layer of each colour in each tier which I thought would look effective.  The bottom tier was a 10" round & the top tier was a 6" round (approx 45 regular serves).

My inspiration was mainly the American 50's style diners & rock 'n' roll so firstly I made the cake board look like those classic checked diner floors you see in the movies which was one of my favourite touches I think.  Then on the top of the bottom tier I added piano keys to enhance the rock 'n' roll aspect.

I decided to go with a silhouette sort of theme for the decorations on the cake to tie in with the black & white & then just added small hints of colour here & there.  I choose these particular shades of pink & blue because it reminded me of the 50's diners & classic cars.

I called the diner 'Rosie's' as this was the birthday girls name.

For the birthday message cake topper I made a large record & had it sticking out of the top of the cake.  Finally I finished off the cake with some 'floating' musically notes.

The cake was apparently a huge success & I received a lovely email from the client, you can see what she had to say on my testimonials page.

Irukandji Jellyfish Thank You Cupcake Gift Boxes

This was quite an unusual but great fun order.

I had a phone call from a man that had unfortunately been stung by a deadly Irukandji marine stinger whilst on holiday up here on the Islands.  Luckily he was quickly flown to our local base hospital here in Mackay where he was rushed to ICU & received the care he needed to make a full recovery.

He was very happy with the treatment he received whilst at the hospital & thought the staff did a really excellent job of caring for him therefore he wanted to send them a special thank you gift & chose to send two of my cupcake gift boxes with a thank you message/card attached to each.

He thought it would be a fun & idea to include some jellyfish toppers on some of the cupcakes which I really loved the idea of, such fun.  So there were 12 jellyfish & 12 "many thanks" toppers.

He didn't mind what flavours they were so I chose these 3 flavours,

'Diablo Red Devil' (red velvet butter cake) with vanilla Italian meringue buttercream (tinted blue to represent the sea) & blue sugar sprinkles.

'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud cake) with cookies & cream Italian meringue buttercream & broken Oreo pieces. 

'Blondie' (vanilla butter cake) with caramel Italian meringue buttercream & butterscotch crunch bits.

All of the topper were completely edible & made using marshmallow fondant.

I decided to make the little Irukandji jellyfish giving a cheeky little wink as I thought it was quite a fun tongue in cheek order.

On behalf of the gentleman that placed this order along with everyone else that many require their services I would just like to say a big thanks again to all the staff of the Mackay Base Hospital ICU department who do a truly selfless & wonderful job. THANK YOU!