Last Christmas

As much as I love the Wham! song of the same name (and Jimmy Eat World cover), this is just a collection of photos of last year's holiday treats, and well as ones made throughout the year which would be great at Christmas time, such as this present cake. Unfortunately I haven't been able to take any orders over Christmas, but hopefully this will give you some ideas if you're looking to make a festive dessert.

Santa hat cupcakes - so cute and homey and a fun cupcake that I'd love to make again with Elliott when he gets a little older. If memory serves, these were white chocolate cupcakes with a small amount of chocolate icing, topped with a strawberry with white chocolate ganache trim.

Mint chocolate cupcakes - I made a batch of these cupcakes last year with mint flavoured white buttercream that was streaked with red food colouring to look like candy canes, and I'm kicking myself for not taking a photo of them! (Pictured are a similar version, only with green icing and a chocolate mint leaf)

Snowflake sugar cookies - bite sized vanilla sugar cookies decorated with silver cachous.

Mint Slice truffles - I made these for the first time last Christmas and they were a big hit (I've also done a Christmas-y update on them which will be in the post to follow)

Caramel fudge cupcakes - something about fudge just says 'Christmas' to me, so these are the first of three cupcake flavours made this past year that would be fantastic during the holidays. 

Ferrero Rocher cupcakes - Ferrero Rochers are once again a popular holiday treat, and are even more decadent in cupcake form.

Vanilla butterscotch cupcakes - these cupcakes made a butterscotch fan out of me and with the toffee shards on top would be especially great for a New Years Eve celebration.

Hello Kitty Cake (+ Cake Pops!)

In the lead up to my friend's birthday get together recently, we had so many ideas for different cakes to make, all of which were really fun and playful (such as her and her fiance's engagement cake). Since she was in the process of moving house and it was only going to be an intimate party we decided to go with something relatively small but still reflective of her personality, hence the idea for a 3D Hello Kitty cake! The cake was carved from a two tiered (6 and 7 inch) chocolate mud, with additional cupcakes made for the ears, feet, and fondant-covered cupcake, and it was such a joy to make that I couldn't resist also making some Hello Kitty cake pops!

This was the first time I've made cake pops that weren't round and they were surprisingly simple to make! They were technically Oreo pops since I had them on hand, and were coated in white cooking chocolate (which I find is paler than regular eating chocolate for some reason), with yellow confetti sprinkles added for the noses, pink hearts and a dab of royal icing for the bows, and the eyes and whiskers drawn on with a food colouring pen.

So Many Cakes!

Here is a quick round up of cakes that I've made recently, starting with a boy's baby shower cake with a newborn boy on top, resting in the clouds.

The next cake I made was for a 21st birthday party and was a black and ivory lace-piped cake with a few purple butterflies.

What I especially love about this 60th birthday quilt cake is that it doesn't just say 'grandma', but also includes the words mum, daughter, wide, friend, aunty, sister and ma-ma.

My son was so excited when I made this soccer ball cake and it was so sweet to see the birthday boy's reaction when he came to pick it up. I wouldn't be surprised if Elliott wants one just like it next year.

Last but not least is an extra large present cake in pink and white for a baby girl's christening, which featured edible sparkly pink ribbon.

Twix & Caramel Cookie Cupcakes

With lots of posts to catch up on, I figured I'd jump right in with two equally delectable creations that I've made in the past few weeks. If you've been on the JSTC Facebook page then you would have already seen these Twix cupcakes, which consist of chocolate cupcakes filled with caramel and crushed biscuits, iced with chocolate ganache and a layer of caramel buttercream and then garnished with a fun-sized Twix and a biscuit piece. I should admit that these cupcakes were actually made with leftover batter from a chocolate mud flavoured fondant cake that I was making, although if I were to make them again the flavours would go much better with a devil's chocolate base.

Going back to one of the first flavours I made, Cookie Dough Cupcakes, and then proceeding to the modern classic Oreo Cupcakes, and more recently Chocolate Cookie Dough Cupcakes, I think it's safe to say that I do love a cookie cupcake. Since I'm also a big fan of caramel, caramel cookie cupcakes were the next logical flavour to try making! In order to keep the caramel and cookie dough elements balanced, I started with vanilla cupcakes as opposed to a caramel base, and opted for caramel filling. They were of course iced in one of my very favourite flavours, cookie dough icing, and then topped with a chewy caramel cookie and a caramel drizzle.

Pink Damask Engagement Cake

This chocolate engagement cake was the first cake on which I got to try stencilling, so it was something I was looking forward to for a while. There are a few different ways that it can be done, including airbrushing or using buttercream, but I chose to use royal icing as it dries hard. I then added a thin ribbon to the bottom on each tier and finished it off with a dark pink monogrammed cake topper. A cake like this is very modern, but yet romantic, and to better showcase the damask pattern I made the 6, 8 and 10 inch tiers an extra 50% taller.

Blush Engagement Cake

This engagement cake was made last week for a lovely couple who were after a cake that would tie in with their engagement party invitations, which featured strings of lights and lanterns and two little birds. It was a great jumping off point for the cake and I'm so happy with the end result. 

I started with a two tiered blush cake, with the bottom tier slightly darker and bordered it with a simple white trim. I then added lanterns all around the bottom tier in the invitations colour scheme of blush, white, and grey, as well as the couple's initials on the top tier. My favourite part of the cake was the wire cake topper with the two inward-facing birds, which I feel complimented the rest of the cake without distracting from the other elements, and reminded me of the popular bunting cake topper.

Banana Cupcakes

Making the pumpkin cupcakes for Halloween got me thinking about classic, tasty flavours that I have overlooked. Banana cake was always my very favourite flavour growing up, so when I had some free time and realised I had all the ingredients on hand I whipped up a little batch of mini banana cupcakes with vanilla bean icing. For other banana flavours, check out my Caramel Banana Cupcakes and Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes.