Themed Baking

It's quite fun to do baking around a theme. I started with reindeer biscuits for a christmas lunch at Chloe's school I saw these on the Griffins Facebook page and they were really very easy. The noses were M&M's and I drew the eyes and antlers on with chocolate icing in a little bag. 

I also saw these in a Facebook post and had to make them. My husband is a wookie fan and these were also very easy. The kids made regular gingerbread men while I added fur to a couple before cooking with a fork. Then I just had to ice on a face a bandolier with icing. Super cute!

 

Finally, I was presented with a challenge. We were about to watch Wizard of Oz (original of course) and my mother-in-law said we need wizard of oz snacks, to which Alex quickly said Oz cupcakes!! I went for yellow brick road and witches hats. The bottom of the hats were chocolate buttons and I used a large round tip, holding it in place to build up the bottom and then releasing pressure as I pulled up. The kids had a go with the grass tip too and they are getting quite good at it. 

Cakes

I have a few cakes to catch up on here. The first is from over a year ago with my daughters 6th birthday cake. I hired a tin from a cake shop called The Girl on the Swing. I used the star tip for the top and went for a ribbon effect on the sides. the green was left over from my sons dinosaur cake so was a bit more vivid than I would have like.

Edible glitter upped the girly factor

The next was for my mums 60th birthday. I had to make 2 to trial it first as it was my first time doing a layer cake. The top layer was white chocolate, the middle was caramel and the bottom milk chocolate. I chose to mirror this with ganache on the outside. The trial one went to husbands work to some surprised workmates, the second one went just as well and the cake was really quite yummy.

This was the trial cake

Finally we have the birthday cakes from 2015. Chloe wanted a pool cake and Alex finally settled on spiderman. I made a few swimmers and pool items from fondant. The fence was large blocks of  KitKat (which does not break up or cut up well). Chloe made a couple of things to add to the pool too. Her cake was a white chocolate mud cake.

swimmers, beach balls and a towel

Chloe made the flowers and butterflies for around the outside. The white balls were bubbles.

Alex's spiderman cake wasn't too tricky. I purchased the red icing to get a good colour, but I didn't really like the consistency. The web was done with a tube of black icing that I could draw straight onto the cake with. The spider was chocolate melted into a teaspoon and a dessert spoon for the body, and the legs were done freehand onto baking paper. His cake was a dark chocolate cake.

Leftovers!

Wedding cake - Moose toppers

When we got back to NZ I was asked to make a wedding cake for my brother-in-law. He and his now wife live in Canada at the moment and since they moved moose have been a bit of a thing. So I decided to do a simple cake with a cute fondant topper. Trouble is I have never done a real fondant topper before, and this one was going to have to be transported by plane and car from one end of NZ to the other.
I started with some trial runs to make sure I could get the right shapes, then I started making them about a month out.

The pieces - body, legs and head

The brides head sitting on a vinegar bottle to dry so it doesn't loose it's shape (I didn't have any foam)

Body with legs attached

Head in place

All put together and drying. Heads resting on silicone cupcake moulds. Flowers are just resting on top at this stage and her bouquet is drying too. The bride got a veil which the flowers were attached to with some more white fondant.

2 hat options for groom and bow tie

On the cake. I had them all made but the antlers came off in transit so I had to make new ones the day before. Thankfully I had made lots of each colour fondant and taken it all with me. I made the cakes at the location - a white chocolate mud cake and a sour cream lemon cake. I also make a dark choc mud cake as the cake was dessert and I wanted to make sure there would be enough.

Rainbow Bread

Thank you Pinterest! Another great idea that I could do with my girl. I made rolls instead of a loaf and had to adjust my bread recipe as I had a different kind of yeast, but it still worked great. She took the sandwich to kindy today and I can't wait to hear what the reaction was.

Before cooking. I made a log and cut it into 8 pieces. I then rolled each piece a bit so it looked a little more like a bread roll.

Just out of the oven.

Inside!

Kindy lunch. I sliced the top and bottom off to show off the rainbow.

Polka Dot Cake

I just love Pinterest. I am getting so many ideas there and its so easy to find them again! This one from Once Upon a Pedestal caught my interest and I thought it would work great for hubby's upcoming birthday. Of course I had to try it out so it won't really be the surprise I had hoped. Oh well.

I had to make a couple of adjustments as the blog calls for a cake pop pan and I wasn't going to spend $30 on one for just one cake. So after a bit of internet searching I found a post that says you can just crumble up a cake and squish them into balls. Now, I should have trimmed off the browned edges first, but this was just a trial anyway. It took some pretty firm squishing but it worked. 

 The balls are butter cake and I decided to put them in an easy choc cake to change the flavour a bit. The result was very tasty! The coloured balls were a lot denser giving the cake an interesting twist.

The cake balls are hidden in the middle

Not too bad for a test cake

Next time I will put a bit more cake mix in the bottom of the pan before putting the cake balls in.

Butter Cream Icing and CAKES!

Milly's Kitchen run cake decorating courses and I have been interested in doing one for a while so when I got some vouchers I decided now was the time. I chose to do the decorating basics as I haven't done any fondant work and this course was just for butter cream.

The first surprise was we didn't use butter - it was all done with vegetable shortening which, when made with icing sugar and water, can be kept in the cupboard. The other new addition to the recipe was meringue powder which firms everything up. 

First week was being told and shown all the basics. Second week was doing them all. The train cake was my first attempt. It's amazing how long you can spend trying to get the first layer of buttercream smooth on the cake. the train design was transferred to the cake using piping gel so the rest was kinda like colouring in.

Cake number 1

 Week 3 was cupcakes and practicing using different tips in our piping bags. Week 4 was the last one where we learnt to do roses and then were let loose to do what we wanted on our last cake.

Cake number 2

A couple of weeks later, after a trip to the zoo, Chloe and I decided to make a zebra cake. She told me I had to put a zebra on the top so I used the piping gel transfer technique.

And then the big ta-da for the inside! I'm really happy with how well this worked. You put 3 Tbsp of mix in the middle of the tin, then 3 Tbsp of the contrast colour in the middle of that and keep alternating until you run out of mix. Chloe made her own which was eaten before I got a pic but it worked really well too.

TA-DA!!

Rainbow cupcakes

So, I haven't put any baking on here yet, but I had to share these as they are so cool!!


I have found numerous pictures of rainbow cakes and cupcakes on the internet and decided to give them a go. I have an idea to use them in the kids birthday cake and didn't want to be trying them for the first time the day before the party. I used a basic cupcake recipe (butter, eggs, sugar, flour, milk) and did a half batch to save time (and my waistline).

Spoon the coloured mixtures on top of each other. This was them just before going in the oven.

Straight out of the oven.

Side view.

THE MIDDLE!!

They look very effective with plain white icing on top, but Chloe and I just had to eat one straight away. Next time I'll be careful to put the same amount in each layer, or maybe a bit more in the bottom layers. YUM!