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!

Ben 10 Again

Here we have another great Ben 10 cake, the customer saw my previous Ben 10 birthday cake & her & her son fell in love with it so she asked if she could have the exact same one.

It was pretty short notice so unfortunately I had to advise her the I would have to limit the number of figurines on the cake to one plus the omnitricks watch this time as they take quite a while to make but she said that that was fine as they just loved the whole cake design & they decided to go with Ben 10 himself as the character figurine.

They wanted everything exactly the same as the previous cake so it was again a 10" square (approx 50 dessert size serves) 'Midnight Delight' cake which is lovely rich, dark chocolate mud cake which was paired with a chocolate ganache filling & frosting, all covered in yummy homemade marshmallow fondant.

As before the child's name & age was incorporated based on Ben 10 logo with a gradient colour effect which was achieved using different colour petal dusts & then finished off with some lustre dust to create a nice shimmer on it.

Here is my handmade figurine of the man himself Ben 10 complete with miniature omnitricks.

& finally the large omnitricks.

They were very pleased with the cake indeed & I received some wonderful feedback.

Year 12 Graduation Cupcake Toppers

Recently it was that very special time of the year for all year 12 students here in Australia, graduation which means lots of school formals & parties.

A customer was having a party for her daughter & her daughters boy friend for their year 12 graduation & wanted something special to mark the event.

They were making their own cupcakes but wanted them to really stand out so requested me to design some graduation cupcake toppers for them so this is what I created.

They wanted 1 dozen so I made 5 graduation caps, 5 scrolls & 2 message toppers.

All were made using home made marshmallow fondant sugarpaste & the lovely teal colour was chosen to match the colour of the young ladies formal dress.

I embossed all the caps with '2009' to signify that they were the class of 2009.  The message toppers I embossed with congrats & their names & finished them with little streamers & 'confetti' (which were sugar pearls).

As a little free extra I also made the customer up some matching teal sugar crystal sprinkles for her cupcakes just to really complete the look for them.