Princess Doll Birthday Cake

The classic doll cake a favourite of little girls all over the world I think.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact they get a cake & a present of a doll all rolled into one!

For this particular cake I had my orders from the birthday girl that it should be a pretty pink princess but the doll cake can also easily be made into any of the Disney princess's such as Cinderella or Snow White, a fairy such as Tinkerbell or even a beautiful mermaid or ballerina.  You can also use a different type of doll to go along with the changing trends such as the Bratz dolls.

For those a bit older it is also possible to not actually use a doll at all but instead replace it with a handmade fondant tailors dummy.  The dress can then be made to look like a specific formal, bridesmaid or wedding dress.

It was 3 layers of pink lemonade cake with raspberry jam & raspberry Swiss meringue buttercream in-between the layers, then a buttercream coating & covered in home made marshmallow fondant.  All decorations are made of fondant & edible. (approx 25 regular serves).

I kept the design of this dress fairly simple, I think they can look a bit too busy if you have too much going on.  I simply used some swagging around the bottom half with a tiny handmade sugar flower at the top of each section, a sash around the waist with a bow tied at the back, a single flower at the bust & a matching necklace.

In addition made a lovely tiny little silver tiara for the princess using wire (not edible).

I also used little sugar pearls down the back of the upper part of the dress to simulate buttons.

Nurse's Heart Bithday Cake

This heart shaped cake was a really fun cake & I very much enjoyed making it!

It was commissioned for ex nurse's 60th birthday by her daughter & family.  They had the idea of including something to do with her nursing & suggested maybe a kidney dish or something like that if I could make it so this is the design that I came up with.

They also wanted it to be a heart shape which you may think again made reference to her nursing but in actual fact it was meant as a very subtle & gentle reminder for her to look after herself as she had recently had a big scare with her heart.  I absolutely loved that idea & thought it was very clever.

This was a dark chocolate & raspberry mud cake which was a 12" heart shape (approx 40 regular serves) . The cake itself was another of my 'Midnight Delight' cakes which is a lovely rich, dark chocolate mud cake, however this time I also made a sweet raspberry syrup which I poured over the warm cake to absorb. There were 3 layers all filled with a special raspberry dark chocolate ganache & a generous amount of beautiful fresh raspberries. I used a plain chocolate ganache for the coating to achieve a nice smooth surface for covering as I didn't want to have any lumps & bumps from raspberry bits when I covered the cake with the final layer of raspberry marshmallow fondant.

It was quite a large cake, the heart itself was about 12" & about 4.5" deep.  I used a nice deep red for the fondant covering on the heart & everything was edible as all the toppers & decorations were also made of fondant.

Above you can see the stethoscope 'listening' to the side of the heart.

Next we have the nurses hat.

The kidney dish with syringe & medicine bottle, I thought it would be a really fun touch to write a little happy birthday message on the label of the bottle with edible maker.

The thermometer.

An unrolled bandage with the birthday girls name on it.

For the border around the bottom of the cake I came up with the idea of using a heart beat design which thought would tie in nicely with both the nurse theme & the gentle reminder to look after her heart.

I was told that the cake was a very big hit, that the lady it was for seriously did not want to cut into it & that everyone commented on how absolutely delicious it was which is always wonderful to hear as I am a big believer in the fact that a cake should taste great as well as look great.

Pink Heart Gift Box Cake

This cake was what they call a gift box cake & was commissioned my a loving mother for her daughters 21st birthday.

Gift box cakes sometime have an extra piece of fondant added on the top to simulate a lid however this time the client had sent me a picture of exactly what she wanted & that one did not feature a "lid" so I stuck to that.

The cake's theme was hearts with the classic colour combination of white & a really lovely hot pink colour (unfortunately the light in photos is not great, sorry about that).  The large bow & all other decorations I made using fondant sugarpaste, the number 21's & letters of the birthday girls name I finished with an edible silver paint & I added a silver sugar pearl to either side of each letter of her name.

This cake was my 'Citrus Zing' butter sponge cake & lemon was chosen for the citrus type.  It was accompanied by a vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream for the filling between all 3 layers, then coated in a rich white chocolate ganache before being covered in the final layer of marshmallow fondant.  The size was 8" square (approx 32 dessert size serves).

I am pleased to say that they were very happy with their cake, I received some lovely feedback & am looking forward to creating something else for a future special occasion for them.

Number 60 Birthday Cake

This order was for a special double birthday celebration, there was a large cake required for the father who was turning sixty & also a dozen cupcakes for the mother who was also celebrating her birthday at the same time.

I thought that it was really touching that they made a special effort to in effect have two separate orders so that neither the mother or father would have to have a shared cake.

So first the cake.  As you can see the customer wanted to have the cake actually in the shape of a 60 (I like doing number cakes, not sure why).  When I was enquiring as to what colours design etc they wanted the only thing they said was that it would be good if they could have some red & green incorporated because their father was a mad South Sydney Rabbitohs fan (it is funny really, I am always more than happy to use any design, theme or colours that people would like but they often seem reluctant to give to much direction, why is that I wonder).

Anyway I am not much of a NRL footy fan myself so I did a little research into the teams colours, shirts & logo & I decided it would be kind of fun to go with a design similar to their shirts if he was so much of a fan.  So I ended up using a bright green base & thick bright red stripes, I also needed another colour to break it up somewhat so I used white to cover the cake board as the rabbit on the logo & the collar on the shirt is white.

This cake was my 'Killer Chocolate' a moist milk chocolate sponge cake, it was teamed up with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream for the filling (there were 3 layers) & covered with dark chocolate ganache for the crumb coat.  Finally was the home made marshmallow fondant covering.

Next we have the cupcakes.  Again the client choose the flavours for the cake & buttercream but left the design & colours to me.  I wanted to achieve two things, firstly I wanted the cupcakes to be different to the cake & much more feminine to ensure they were more personal for the mother however I also wanted to tie them into the cake in some way.

I thought that hand made sugar roses would be just perfect, so nice & feminine so that is what I went with.  I made them in red to tie in with the main cake (much darker than the bright red on the cake though), I also used a few slightly different shades of red to make the roses appear more realistic.  To incorporate the green on the cake I decorated the cupcakes with tiny green sugar pearls & used green cupcake liners.

I also made some "happy birthday" message toppers, which I think I would add some small green leaves to next time.

The cake for the cupcakes was my 'Blondie' (vanilla butter sponge cake) & the frosting was a caramel Swiss meringue buttercream.

Here are some close ups of the roses I made....

Christmas Cookie Gift Bags

Seasons greetings everyone!

This selection of fun Christmas cookies were placed as an order to be cookie gift bags for the customer's two sons to hand out at school & day care at the end of term, what a lovely thoughtful idea.

I decided to stick to the classic Christmas colours of red, green & white & so the designs I created were poinsettias, holly, Christmas trees, Santa bellies, Christmas pudding, candy canes, presents, snowmen, snowflakes, crackers, stockings & wreaths.

They were vanilla sugar cookies with peppermint royal icing which I thought would suit a Christmas theme nicely (like peppermint candy canes).

I also incorporated some small marshmallow fondant touches on a few of the cookies such as the star on the top of the trees, snowman's buttons, hat & scarf, the holly on the Christmas puddings & the bows on the presents & wreaths.

The 3D effect of the white "fluff" on Santa's bellies & the top of the stockings I achieved by roughing up the semi dry royal icing & then finishing off with some sanding sugar on top.

The cookies were of course all placed into individual clear cellophane bags, tied with red & green ribbon & had a gift tag attached saying "Merry Christmas from ........." but unfortunately I didn't get a photo of them once bagged.

Here are a few close ups.....

Merry Christmas to all!