Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! I just got my little skeleton off to sleep and thought I'd share this years Halloween treats. First up is a (deep breath) purple and orange topsy turvy white chocolate mud cake that I made for a halloween party, featuring mini jack-o-lanterns and skulls, black roses, a cemetery style fence and a spiderwebbed cake board!

For something a little less spooky but just as tasty, I also made some pumpkin cupcakes with purple cream cheese icing and candy corn decorations. If these may look a little familiar it's because I made some similar cupcakes last year, as well as some with spiderwebs on top, but they were too yummy to not make again when my fella was in need of a treat to bring for a work morning tea. (Side note: I love this flavour and I'm always asking him if he'd like me to make some, but he always wants something chocolate instead. He finally caved for Halloween and is now of course a pumpkin cupcake convert - success!)

I also realised that I somehow didn't have a proper photo up of one of my favourite flavours so I made some regular looking pumpkin cupcakes with the extra cake batter and icing. 

Anyway I hope everyone had a great night and got into the spirit of things - yes it's not a traditional Australian holiday but if you think about it not much is. So I'm all for bringing it to our shores and having a fun holiday for my son to grow up celebrating!

Rainbow Engagement Cake + More

My best friend recently got engaged to her wonderful fella and over the weekend they threw an engagement party to celebrate. It was such a lovely evening and it made me even more excited for their nuptials! Pictured above is the dessert buffets for the party, featured their four tiered engagement cake as the centrepiece. The cake's tiers not only alternated between blue and green (with rainbow stripes and polka dots respectively) but they also alternated flavours between devil's chocolate (triple layered) and vanilla bean so there was something for everyone. Atop the cake was a purple entwined N and S which are the happy couple's first initials, and the whole cake was so fun and vibrant that it really reflected their personalities.

To compliment the cake topper I also made a batch of white chocolate Tim Tam pops which were coated in purple candy melts and tied with thin purple ribbons.

The dessert table also featured vanilla sugar cookies decorated with blue icing and a green N + S, as well as an array of candy jars filled with lollies such as strawberry clouds, mandarins, lollipops, gum balls, jelly beans and gummy frogs.

Ferrero Rocher Cake

I had so many ideas for my mum's birthday cake that I was having trouble choosing between them. So in order to prevent her cake ending up a jumbled mess of ideas I decided to keep it simple and delicious. This cake is almost like a large version of my Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes - chocolate cake with Nutella filling, Nutella icing and topped with Ferrero Rochers - and since my mum loves dark chocolate I also poured dark chocolate ganache over the top of each tier. The result was of course a deliciously indulgent cake which was so rich that it probably could have served a whole room full of people! 

Purple Floral Wedding Cake

October is a popular month for weddings and last weekend I had the pleasure of making this beautiful floral wedding cake! The chocolate mud cake was covered in plain white fondant, bordered with two inch wide purple ribbon, and then decorated with various shades of purple sugar roses.

If you ask me, this cake appears larger than the Silver Wedding Cake that I made recently, but it may just be because of the monogrammed cake topper. When cutting the cake into 1x2" pieces, this 6, 9 and 12 inch tiered cake serves 100 people, whereas the previous cake allowed for 118 servings.

Puppy Cake

It's always fantastic to get return customers and last week I had the pleasure of making a first birthday cake for the boy whose christening cake was my very first order! There really is something so uplifting about being entrusted with one of the main details of such important milestones. For this cake, the 1.5 tier white chocolate mud cake was designed to resemble the birthday boy's favourite blanket which was a great idea since he was able to recognise the cake straight away!

Elliott's 2nd Birthday (Part 2)

When planning for my son's second birthday party the theme of the party was a no-brainer - Giggle & Hoot. Of course Elliott waited until just after the invitations had been sent out to develop a mild aeroplane obsession, so that is currently the front runner for next years theme. I use the word theme loosely however, as it only really applies to the invitations, cake, and a few other treats. That way the rest of the decorations can be saved and used each year.

Elliott's cake was of course Hoot the owl, which he was very excited about. He even recognised Hoot from the moment the caramel mud cake was covered in blue fondant! We only required a small cake since the guests were kept to close friends and family, but I chose to have his cake sit atop a larger "dummy" cake, which is a cake made from styrofoam and decorated as usual (and can be reused indefinitely). This was to make the cake larger and stand out as the centrepiece of the dessert buffet. The dummy cake was covered in seafoam green fondant and decorated with colourful buttons as a reference to the Giggle & Hoot house. It also had a large E in the centre, with a background made to look like corrugated cardboard - what the Giggle & Hoot house is made of.

As well as the jars of various lollies on the desserts table, there was also a plate of sugar cookies which were made to look like Hoot's heart with a blue 2 in the middle. The candy jars were filled with snakes, sour worms, rock candy sticks, Skittles, mandarin lollies (Elliott's favourite), gum balls, bananas, and gummy bears. The jars themselves were decorated with blue and orange ribbons, and had bows tied with large brightly coloured buttons.

The other plates of treats had Oreo pops coated with blue candy melts, strawberry cake pops coated in purple (both tied with thin orange ribbons), and fruit kebabs with strawberry, kiwi, orange and pineapple pieces. Finally, the last things necessary for the dessert buffet were the bags to put the lollies in, and the candy scoops.

Silver Wedding Cake

I made this three tiered wedding cake, which is pictured without the cake topper, in the days leading up to my son's second birthday party. I knew I would be  busy planning for his birthday but I was too excited to make such a gorgeous cake to say no, and thankfully there didn't end up being too much party prep to get done. 

The eight, ten and twelve inch tiers were all dark and white chocolate marble flavoured, and were covered in white fondant. The centre tier was bordered with a silver ribbon, with the remaining two tiers lined with a band of various sized silver cachous. It was such a beautiful design to get to make, and I especially loved the resemblance that the cake had to an elegant wedding dress.

Elliott's 2nd Birthday (Part 1)

My son Elliott's second birthday celebration was held with a small gathering of friends yesterday afternoon, but we also wanted to do something special for him on his actual birthday, so last Wednesday we went for a tasty lunch with family at the Queens Park Cafe, followed by a walk around the Nature Centre. The nature centre has to be one of the best things about raising a child in Ipswich, and I find it so sweet that he is always fascinated by all of the animals no matter how many times we visit.

As for his actual cake, I chose to make it into a big lower case E, since he has one on his bedroom door and he recognises that letter as his own, and to cover the whole thing in M&Ms to make it really fun and colourful. Since I knew the M&Ms would have to be refrigerated, I was able to make the chocolate cake extra yummy by using components that I can't usually use in fondant cakes (which need to remain at room temperature), such as the chocolate cream cheese icing and the cookie dough filling. Needless to say he loved his cake, and had a great time picking off all of the M&Ms!

Pink Anemone Cake & Cupcakes

Anemones are in my opinion one of the best choices of flowers to have on a cake. The thin ruffly petals make them such gorgeous flowers and there are so many different variations of anemones that you can find a colour to go with any theme. So I was of course very excited when asked to make this elegant yet modern birthday cake.

To go with the white chocolate mud cake, I also made a dozen matching red velvet cupcakes with mini anemone flowers on them. Perfect for a Spring celebration!