Cake: Babushka Birthday in Brisbane

This is my third long distance cake. Well, fourth if Newcastle counts as long distance. This one had to survive a flight up to Brisbane and surprisingly, she got there safe and sound.

 

The construction was pretty simple. Two round chocolate mud cakes, slathered in ganache and trimmed to make a neat little doll shape. She was then covered in light blue fondant, given a green shroud and accented with flowers that were made using pop-out cutters. The stamens for the yellow flowers in the centre were purchased online. I must say, they are fiddly little things and definitely require a little more time. The pop-out cutters however are a quick and easy way of brightening up a cake.

To make the face, my dear friend Isabel shaped some rather pouty lips. The doll got blonde hair (like the birthday girl) and the eyes were drawn on with decorating pen. To colour the cheeks I used petal dust for a more subtle finish.

Whilst the cake was meant to be a surprise, the birthday girl actually found it sitting on the washing machine whilst looking for the spare loo-paper (in the middle of her party!). Needless to say, she still acted the part when the cake cake out, and it was a success!

 

Cake Love

My cake decorating love affair was not a sudden thing. My first cake memories are decorating continental cakes with my cousin Danusha and Babcia (Polish for Grandma).

Years later in 2009 my Mum and I went to a cupcake decorating workshop at An Iced Affair in Camperdown. Under the fun guidance of Evan, we spent the day glittering, moulding and rolling until we had decorated a colourful box of cakes. As you can see some were more successful than others. The allure of cake glitter and fluoro spray paint was irresistible. Needless to say I’ve been hooked ever since.

 

 

Octopus

On Friday I was overzealous when purchasing seafood at the Fishmarkets. The baby octopus waited happily until today in the fridge marinating in a combination of chilli-garlic sauce, kecap manis, coriander, lime juice, chopped garlic and olive oil. It made a perfect Saturday lunch with some baby beetroot leaf and radish salad. 

Cake: Something for Kate

Kate was leaving. She also loves bike riding. So naturally, I made bike and road cupcakes (vegan chocolate to satisfy the ethical workplace).

Cake: Rosie Wedding Cake

When Sarah asked me to make her wedding cake I was so excited, but similarly petrified. I wanted it to be perfect! Luckily, Sarah let me dictate what would and wouldn’t be within the scope of my capabilities and we sketched up a design. Three tiers; round; top and bottom tier chocolate mud and the middle lemon madeira cake with lemon buttercream filling; roses in pinks and deep purples; pearls; navy ribbon and ivory fondant.

I started the roses 12 weeks out and aimed to make 2 per week. Unfortunately this was the wettest summer and autumn in a gazillion years, so I had to borrow my Mum’s dehumidifier so that the gum paste would dry. I’ve usually used Cake Art: Flower Modelling Paste, however it just wasn’t handling the humidity and moisture. This led to much re-sculpting and also needing to move the flowers around the house until I found the driest location for them.

Each bud was moulded on a wire then left to dry before countless petal were cut, frilled, embossed and powdered to create natural textures and colours.

These two were my favourite, so they got an individual portrait:

I must say that by the end of this exercise I was like the Scrooge of all things rose-related. Luckily for GD, on Valentines Day whilst I was in the midst of flower making he gave me a dozen baby fish instead of flowers. Roses would have been a bad choice. In hindsight though, I’m pleased with how they turned out.

As for the end result?

Having known the bride for 20 years I was eager to make the cake of her dreams – she was so happy. Mission accomplished!

Gingerbread House

I love Christmas. A lot. So when I first decided to make a gingerbread house a few years ago, I wanted it to be perfect. It wasn’t, but I was still overjoyed with the gingery smell wafting through the house. It immediately put me in the mood for Christmas. What I wasn’t expecting was the numerous construction challenges. Hence, the key lessons of gingerbread house building:

1. Turns out, that extra centimetre on your roof will make your house structurally unsound and it will collapse. So follow your patterns to the T and you should be ok.

2. Royal icing is your friend.

3. More is more with the lollies. They hide all forms of errors.

We never actually got around to eating our house. By Easter it had started to house a colony of exotic bugs and it was thrown out with the chocolate egg wrappers.

Cake: Day of the Dead

For David’s 21st I knew an ordinary cake would not suffice. He loves his New Mexican heritage so I decided to do ‘The Cake of the Dead’ based on the Mexican festival of paying homage to those who have died. Though it seemed macabre, the Mexicans see the occasion as a celebration so I didn’t think it was inappropriate. The cake was greatly appreciated!

 

Cake: Dirty Thirty Naughty Nipples

For GD’s surprise 30th I went for the dirty thirty theme and made naughty nipple cakes. I did not expect to be embarrassed in the process. But when GD’s Mum joined me at An Iced Affair and I told Dimity my idea, I was horrified when Dimity asked me “what sort of nipples are you making? Asian or caucasian?” You see, I had not told GD’s Mum what I was making. I bought beige, pink and flesh toned colouring so that I could contemplate this rather personal decision at home. I mixed up a bit of this and a bit of that and this was the end result.

Preserves: Home Grown Green Tomato Relish

When I moved to our terrace in Surry Hills I became gardening obsessed. I bought a $50 raised garden bed from Aldi and became a square foot gardening follower. I even had a hipster gnome called Chomsky.

I had numerous pots, climbing frames, crawlers and creepers. However I have a brown thumb. Two of them actually. The bulk of my harvest was made up of snails and slugs. I also harvested a heap of tiny, rock hard, green tomatoes. And one red one. And two very small, very anaemic eggplants:

The only solution to my gardening failures was to take up preserving. I didn’t have any jars, so I emptied 5 perfectly good jars of mustard, mint jelly and green tomato relish (what a great idea!). Again, not one of my more economically sound decisions. After sterlising them by boiling them in water I was good to go.

I obtained 2 different recipes. One was the faithful Country Women’s Association for relish that called for:

6lbs ripe tomatoes
2lbs onions
2lbs sugar
2 tablespoons curry
Small handful salt
Half a teaspoon cayenne
2 and a half tablespoons mustard
Vinegar to barely cover

The other was for Green Tomato Pickles. I do not know what the difference is.

Green Tomato Pickles:

1 kg green tomatoes
225gr brown onions, peeled and sliced
225gr Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped
300ml cider vinegar
100gr sultanas (optional)
1 teasp salt
1/2 teasp cayenne pepper
1/2 teasp dry mustard
225gr light brown sugar (demerara)

As it was rainy and I didn’t want to leave the house I improvised and made a blend of both recipes. And then added numerous changes:

1. I chopped up my tomatoes and covered them in brown sugar and some salt and refridgerated them overnight.

2. Instead of apples, I used the mangoes that we had overzealously bought to make daquiris with before discovering we had no blender.

3. I used mustard powder, wholegrain mustard and white wine vinegar, no sultanas and a couple of brown onions. A touch of mixed spice, banged everything together with the drained tomatoes in a pot and let it stew away for a few hours.

The result was a tasty one.

Cake: A fishy engagement

For S & M’s engagement my first thought was not to make anything to wedding-y, given that they would eventually have a wedding cake. Given their love of the beach I came up with a sea/fish themed cake – two tiers, round and chocolate mud. The sand was made from crushed biscuit and the shells and fish were made by pressing modelling paste into silicon moulds, popping them in the freezer for 20 minutes and then pressing them out of the moulds. After they were dry I painted them. The only decoration I cannot claim credit for is the thongs, that were painstakingly made by Alex (thank you).