Christmas Bear Cupcakes

I made these a few years ago now for a Relief Society christmas activity.  These almost didn't make it as we didn't have an air-conditioner and it was sooo hot, heat and ganache don't go together.  I had to make the ganache twice!  I was told that some took the cupcakes home just for the bears and didn't eat the cupcakes.  I know one lady kept the bear on top of her tv, haha.

In  love.  This guy bear is holding mistletoe and is wearing his heart on his sleeve.  He just loves the little girlie bear with the cherries in her hair.

Christmas Pudding

Those pink things are supposed to be earmuffs

Wrapped in lights

Ribbon around the cake board

Birthday Cakes

 

Birthday cakes for my kids last year were very simple.  I didn't have much time considering the twins were 1 month old when I made my son's cake and 2 months old when I made these cupcakes for my daughter.  But, either way they turned out nicely and the kids loved their cakes (what kid wouldn't!)

  

May Clee-Cadman (Maisie Fantasie) inspired cupcakes

Butterflies with luster dust to make them all sparkly and pretty

  

A simple cake.  Two ring cakes cut and carved and shaped into a 3. Covered in buttercream with licorice outline around the cake, fondant road and tic tacs as the white markers - too easy!.  New cars for the top of the cake act as a second present.  Did you notice the flag right in front of the white ice-cream van?  My darling boy did that.  I told him he could stick a flag on the cake wherever he liked haha:)

Fondant Clown and Bow Cupcakes

Early last year we hosted a family gathering (we have them every month) so that gave me reason to make something.  I had seen fondant clowns on flickr so decided i'd give them ago. Unfortunately I can't find the original flickr clowns but they were absolutely fantastic, I think there were about 5 clowns doing different things.  I'll keep looking for them but if you happen to come across them please let me know so i can give credit.        

How could anyone be scared of this playful clown, he's too cute!

Not a very good pic but I think you get the idea - this cake was HUGE. It had five layers, all different colours, covered with a sourcream chocolate icing. 

My second attempt at the Planet Cake bow cupcakes.  They turned out really well despite 'glazing' the bows with water which made the fondant a bit soggy and didn't harden up, don't know what I was thinking!  Don't worry, I'm now the proud owner of proper glaze and for my next attempt I think I'll try a different colour scheme

Labyrinth Cake

One of my nephews asked me if I could make a cake for him for his Labyrinth themed party.  I was excitied that someone actually wanted me to make a cake for them - my first request - yay! Labyrinth is one of his favourite movies, it's the weird 80's movie with David Bowie in it.  I remember seeing this movie after my first daughter was born and it was just horrible. It wasn't a good movie for me to watch just after having a baby.  I cried and went and sat next to her for ages while she slept.  

  

 The book on the cake board had lines from 'You Remind Me Of The Babe' which David Bowie sings in the movie

  

Hoggle climbing out of the Oubliette  



This is Sarah or as I call her Singing Sarah.  Doesn't she look like she's singing!  Sarah is supposed to be looking like she's realised there's only one hour left to rescue her baby brother.



The Worm

Door Knockers

Baby Cupcakes and Flower Cupcakes

When the twins where around 3 months old we had their baby blessings.  There were three baby blessing that day and I still chuckle when I think two of those were mine!  Ahhh,  I promise the whole talking about twins will stop (eventually) lol.   After church we headed over to my in-laws for dinner and of course I couldn't resist the opportunity to make these adorable baby cupcakes.  They're not my own brain child unfortunately, these came out of the Planet Cake book which btw has funny crying baby cupcakes too!


Aren't they just cute



You know, i've only just realised one baby is missing a nose.



Flower Cupcakes
A few months ago the youth in our ward held a massive ward garage sale to raise money so they can go to EFY next year.  I contributed to the cake stall and made yummy lemon cupcakes with white chocolate ganache and orange cupcakes with dark chocolate ganache. Each cupcake was topped with white sugarpaste and decorated with an edible flower dusted with snowflake luster dust. They were so pretty.



Packaged and ready for delivery

Shhh, she's sleeping!

Sleeping Beauty birthday cake for my daughter. LC went through all my cake books picking out ones she liked the best, then it was a process of elimination to see which one she really liked the best and this was it. This Sleeping Beauty is from Debbie Brown's Enchanting Magical Cakes. I changed the hair colour so it would match LCs.

Please excuse the mess in some of these photos. I pulled an all nighter and only remembered to take photos just before the cake was due for it's entrance. I tell you, i'll never pull an all nighter again. I had a major headache at the party (i wasn't able to enjoy it very much) and to top it off I couldn't bring myself to eat the cake until 3 days after - that's really sad!


Uh oh, where's your feet? Her legs (and waist) look a little weird:)

The colours of the fondant were almost the same as the ones in the book. I had to mix colours to get the results and I relied heavily on this colour mixing chart. I wouldn't have been able to do it without it - thank you colour chart:)

There are templates for the candleabra, bed heads and side bed things and as you can see I made the cake a little too long but put roses next to the bed to try and disguise it, anyway LC wanted roses on the cake so it all worked out well.

The bed head, footer and side things are made from Pastillage. I love that stuff. It dries really hard and I'm not kidding when I say that everyone wanted to taste it. Some even thought it was real wood - hmmm, maybe they were joking!

In the book Debbie uses this stand to place roses, but I thought it would be a good place to put the candles.

This design is so simple but effective. All you do is get a toothpick and mark groups of three dots - instant medieval!

This was another of my husbands wonderful ideas. He did this the next morning (after the party) to surprise me. He's a sweety:)


The end of the dress. You can't see it but i used a shimmer dust to make the dress sparkle.

Below is the pastillage recipe that I used. The recipe in the book calls for egg albumen which I couldn't find anywhere on the net, but luckily I found this recipe just in time. You need to make the decorations in advance so that they can dry. When it does dry it dries really really hard. Like I mentioned earlier, the bed heads were a very big hit and everyone wanted to try it. My nephew was walking around eating the bed head - ewww. I wouldn't recommend eating it though. Although it's mostly all sugar it does have raw egg and seriously I couldn't imagine it tasting very nice.

Pastillage

makes 350g (12oz)

1 egg white
300g (11oz) icing sugar, sifted
10ml (2tsp) gum tragacanth (I used tylose powder instead)

1. Put the egg white into a large mixing bowl, you don't beat the egg just add enough icing sugar until the mixture combines together into a ball. Mix in the gum tragacanth or tylose, and then turn the paste out onto a work surface and knead the pastillage well.

2. Incorporate the remaining icing sugar into the remainder of pastillage to give a stiff paste.

3. Store pastillage in a polythene bag placed in an airtight container in a refrigerator for up to one month.

Notes: Pastallage dries quickly so work fast. If it does become hard you just need to keep kneading it till it comes together and becomes smooth again.

Cookie Monster and Caterpillar Cupcakes

The end of May was busy with birthdays (me, my dad and my daughter ) and this was my excuse to go crazy and try cupcakes and cakes that i've always wanted to try and of course I had a burnout and that's why I haven't posted in 2 weeks. I don't think I could bake for a living. I couldn't eat cake for a few days - ahh!

Lets get the ball rolling and start with the cupcakes I made for my daughter to take to school for her birthday. I thought of making just pretty caterpillar cupcakes but I just couldn't imagine the real boy boys in the class being overjoyed so I made some Cookie Monsters for the boys.

Check-out the Cookie Monster on the bottom, second from the right. Don't know how I missed him but he makes me laugh.

Hmm, looks like someone needs to brush up on their food colouring technique.

I made the eyes out of about 4g of sugarpaste and used black food colouring but if you don't want to use sugarpaste, mint cool fruits would be a good substitute.

I have made caterpillar cupcakes before, they were fun and easy to make not to mention extremely cute so I thought the girls would love them.


Those little tufts of grass were my husbands idea, and a pretty good one at that.

I thought I'd try something new and put some shimmer powder down their packs but unfortunetly it didn't really work out.

Well, the cupcakes went down a treat with the kids, i'm glad they enjoyed them, althought my husband was extremly (and i mean extremly) upset to hear the kids enjoyed them. He thought I had made them for our daughters family birthday party we were having the following day, he was looking forward to eating the Cookie Monsters.

Happy Birthday To...

Happy Birthday to......ME!
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday dear Meeee
Happy Birthday to Me

Gimme a few hip hip hoorays. Awww, thanks.

I love presents, I love attention (but only on my birthday) and I love birthday cake! One year when I was young (maybe 10 years old) I asked my mum if was going to have a birthday cake. She grumbled a bit and said she'd pick one up after work. It was a honey and ginger swiss roll (the cheap ones from the shopping centre) and I was soooo disappointed, it just didn't feel like a birthday. From that day on I told myself that it wasn't going to be a good birthday unless there was good cake!


Now i'd call that a good 30th birthday cake, even if I did make it myself - hehe. My daughter and husband made me a mothers day cake (i should post that up sometime soon) but i gave them strick orders to NOT make me a birthday cake (you'll see when I post the pics) because I wanted to make one myself.


The cake was originally going to have flowers on it but they didn't turn out, then I was going to have ruffles on it but my Dad said 'those carnations look nice' so i scraped that idea, then I remembered my Maisie Fantaisie book Sweet and Simple Party Cakes that hada polka dots cake and voila - here it is. I must say this polka dot cake is fantastic for beginners, not only does it look good but you can hide any imperfections with the dots - yay.


A cool little trick, hiding the bottom with some rolled fondant, it made it look kinda professional.


Whooa, I made the chocolate fudge cake in the book and boy was it sweet. I love sweet things but it was a little hard to eat. I'll definitely cut out some of the sugar next time (it has 4 cups!).

The original Dotty About You by Maisie Fantaisie.

Apparently the 30's are the new 20's (whatever that means!) so it's good to be young again!