Pages

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Black & Gold Wedding Cupcake Tower

This beautiful wedding held at the Windmill Hotel, Mackay had a chic black & gold theme (so popular at the moment) & the couple decided to go for a cupcake tower & cutting cake for their cake.


There were 100 cupcakes in a mixture of 'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud) & 'Snow White' (white chocolate mud cake).  All were then covered with either dark chocolate or white chocolate ganache before being covered with marshmallow fondant.   


The bride already had a design in mind that she had seen elsewhere which she wanted me to replicate for her.

It featured a white royal icing scroll with gold cashous (sugar pearls) inlaid, a black sugarpaste heart & a tiny gold fabric bow, although the original design had silver cupcake cases, cashous & bows.


The cutting cake was a 6" round cake, it was 3 layers of 'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud) cake filled & coated with a dark chocolate ganache & covered with my yummy marshmallow fondant.


They chose a simple but elegant design for the cutting cake of a coordinating gold ribbon border & some fresh lilies (to match the brides bouquet)  for a topper.


Congratulations to you both guys!

Blues Clues Puppy Dog Birthday Cupcakes & Cookies

This order was very similar to another one I did for a little girls 1st birthday which had a butterflies & blossoms theme in fact this client was a guest at that particular party & later contacted me about having something along the same lines for her son's 1st birthday.

This time the theme for the party was going to be puppy dogs (Blues Clues in particular) with a colour scheme of blue & white so here is what I created for her little birthday boy.

First up we have the puppy faces.


I also made some paw prints.


& here you can see the 4 special toppers I made 3 with a happy birthday message on large paw print shapes & 1 special puppy for the birthday boy.


There were 5 dozen cupcakes all up & they were all 'Blondie' (vanilla butter cake) with a smooth & silky vanilla Italian Meringue buttercream.  I then added some blue sugar sprinkles before finishing each one with it's topper.  All of the toppers were completely edible & handmade by me using marshmallow fondant


Here's a close up of the special puppy for the birthday boy.


As with the other order this order also included lots of wonderful cookie gift/favour bags for the party guests to take as a really lovely & unique way to say thank you for celebrating our little boys birthday with us.  Each bag contained one large blue paw print shaped vanilla sugar cookie decorated with almond royal icing & marshmallow fondant.


Again they also hired one of my large cupcake stands to display the cupcakes in a lovely cupcake tower fashion which is a wonderful way to showcase them & makes a great impact.


You can just about see the cookie gift bags in the bottom left corner of these shots.



Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Simple Chocolate Buttercream Cake

Well this order was very, very short notice but luckily they only required a simple design & a buttercream finish so I managed to fit it in around my other orders.



It was an 8" round cake (approx 25 regular serves) consisting of 3 layers of my 'Killer Chocolate' cake with a rich chocolate buttercream filling & outside frosting (made with both melted chocolate & dark chocolate ganache).  It was a fairly simple design of interlocking circles & dots.



They also inquired as to if I were in the middle of making any cupcakes as they would like to have some cupcakes too but were happy to take the same as any other orders I was already doing due to the short notice.


Fortunately I was already making some 'Snow White' (white chocolate mud) cupcakes & had plenty for vanilla Italian meringue buttercream on hand so they ordered a dozen of those too.  I did however explain that I would not have time to make any toppers, but they didn't seem to mind that at all.

Custom Valentine's Day Cupcakes

I had the privilege of making a very special cupcake gift box for a lovely young lady to give to her other half this Valentine's Day.

She contacted me saying that she knew it was a bit of a strange request but could I possibly make some windmills for on top of cupcakes as they shared a private joke about them so I said I was sure I would be able to come up with something.  I also asked if she would like to have "I love you" on a couple of the cupcakes & she said yes but wondered if it could read "I blah you" instead (another inside joke) so this was the end result.


They were 'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud cake) cupcakes with a rich chocolate buttercream made with chocolate ganache.  All the toppers were edible & made from marshmallow fondant.

For the windmills & the "I blah you" I used large heart shapes that I embossed with a floral design & then finished with a light dusting of lustre dust.


For the remaining 2 cupcakes I made different size smaller hearts in shades of red & pink in the same way as the large ones (embossed & lustred) & also made some various size sugar pearls.



It was lovely to do this order, I just love it when you get to make something really personalised & special to the recipient.

She thought they were awesome & I was happy to receive an email saying that they "tasted delicious!!" & that her boyfriend "thought they were great".  This customer is now having some more cupcakes made for her upcoming birthday.

Golf Cake Decorations

For this project I was asked by a lady that has just begun to try her hand at cake decorating to make some decorations for her next cake which was to be a golf cake for her husband, I was of course happy to do this.

I was asked to make a man playing golf, a birthday greeting & some golf balls so this is what I created.


I thought it would be a nice touch to have the birthday age on the flag as the 'hole number' & I also decided to make the background for the birthday greeting into flags as well to bring it all together. 

I made sure I asked what the birthday boy usually wore went he went golfing so that I could make the topper as personal as possible.  Everything was made from fondant & is edible except for the flagpole & the shaft of the golf club.


The golf balls (or half golf balls actually) were to be used for the cake border.


The great thing about toppers such as this golfer is although edible it can also be kept as a bit of a keepsake instead if you wish.

She was very happy with how they turned out & has asked me to make some more toppers for the next cake she is doing.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Beach, Shells & Frangipani Cake & Cupcakes

An elegant & pretty beach themed cake with matching cupcakes was chosen by this customer for her 2st birthday celebration.

She was having an all white theme to her party I think this cake & the cupcake will have complemented it very well.


It was a 10" round cake (approx 35 regular serves), & was 3 layers of 'Midnight Delight' (dark chocolate mud cake) with a rich chocolate ganache filling.  It was also coated in the same ganache followed by a very thin coating of white chocolate ganache (this is done when the fondant covering will be such a light colour so that the dark chocolate colour is not visible though the fondant therefore distorting the colour).  The final finish was an ivory marshmallow fondant.


I hand made all of the shells, frangipanis & other decorations using sugar modelling paste & finished them with edible petal & lustre dusts.

As you can see I added a 21 inside the pearl shell instead of a pearl & you can't really see what they are in the photo but there are lots of little 21's lying in the bottom of the shell.


I continued this idea of the pearl shells for the young ladies name & because of this naturally I went with a pearl border for the cake.  You can also see here the edible fake sand I made to place on the cake board.


For the accompanying 3 dozen cupcakes she chose 'Killer Chocolate' (chocolate butter sponge) cake with a silky cookies & cream flavoured Italian meringue buttercream.


She wanted all frangipanis for the toppers for the cupcakes & asked for the pink coloured ones not pure white & yellow type.  As always I handmade all of these but it was a real challenge at the moment as is hitting 100% humidity at times for days on end as we are in the wet season here now & sugar flowers do not like humidity!


I used some more of the edible fake sand as sprinkles for the cupcakes to further tie them I with the cake.