Eggshell Green

Cameron 24 months

Happy Birthday my little man.

Blowing the candles

You’re a silly little goose, a dare-devil, a performer, Mr Athletic, a cheeky monkey, a very determined little soul.

You love you big sister. She’s your idol. You copy her – everything she does and says.

“Hiding” with Abby while mummy and daddy were seeking.

You’re a parrot. You have been talking so much. You can count to fifteen, say ‘Please’ and ‘Nank you’. You can ask to be excused from the table with “May I be excuse me please?”

You are so smart. You are great at shape-sorting and can name the hard shapes like hexagon and trapezoid. You can recite your alphabet (close enough). You love singing, even if it comes out “Murray had a little lamb”. Boys can have lambs. Boys can also demand hair ties and sometimes a fairy is better than a pirate. As long as it’s a loud stompy fairy.

Shape sorting and rocking his hair style

After all the havoc, you still love a cuddle. Not any cuddle – it has to be a ‘big cuddle’ that involves heaving you off the ground and squeezing you close. You may be tough-and-rumble, but you’re mummy’s boy at heart.

What a tiring but lovely two years it’s been my son. Love you lots.

Tags: birthday, cake, toddler

My amazing two year old

My two year-old (29 months) never ceases to amaze me.

When I let her play with the cake after her brother’s first birthday, she rearranged the wheels onto the rabbit and said “Four wheels on rabbit!”

It's like a whole new mini cake

Here’s the cake before we cut into it (I modelled it from a soft toy):

Cameron's Carrot Car Cake

She’s currently into painting. Today she drew lots of cute little circles. Inevitably her paintings end up looking like grey slush (I really must stop her from going too far!)

The pretty painting before everything got smudged together

The other day while I was hanging out the washing, Abby stole one of the pegs, and next thing piped “See! An ‘A’ for you!” And sure  enough, she had constructed the letter A out of two cabbage tree leaves and the peg. I know I am biased, but, wow – I think that’s pretty smart for a two year old!

A is for Amazing Abby

Tags: cake, children, play

Wedding cake dramas

Oh the dramas with this wedding cake!

I was asked to make a simple elegant cake, with a bunch of flowers on top. Sounded like fun – I was looking for an excuse to practice making sugar flowers so was quite excited.

Sugar hydrangea in the making

The cake was three tiers: the bottom was a 12 inch chocolate cake, and the 10 inch and 8 inch tiers were a very delicious fruit cake speckled with dark chocolate bits.

Assembled hydrangea and rose

First drama: Burnt fruit cakes

The last time I made fruit cake was for my own wedding. From that I learnt that the ‘classic bake’ function on our previous oven is a very handy thing. It means that only the bottom element is turned on and when baking for 3 hours it helps prevent the tops from burning. Our new oven doesn’t have this function so alas the tops needed a bit of ‘levelling’. Tasted fine in the end though.

Sugar bouquet version 1

Second drama: Broken bouquet

After hours of labourious intricacies, the hubby accidentally knocked over my completed sugar bouquet, smashing half of the flowers. Luckily I had enough time, and experience by then, to whip up the replacements without too much bother. Luckily for him he was helping me roll fondant and it was indeed an accident. (My husband tells me that I have to mention that “In hindsight I should’ve put them in a better place and not teetering on the edge of the bench”. Who’s writing this post huh!? :D )

Third drama: Squished cake

Well bad things seem to come in threes. During transportation to the venue, a friend’s hands moulded into the sides of the top tier while he held it in the car. We got there and the round cake looked more like an hour glass. NooOoooOO – why now!?! Not now!!! I kept my cool, which is surprising for a pregnant lady, and luckily (yes, luck was the saving grace for this cake) the icing was thick and soft enough to mould back into shape. It wasn’t perfect but it at least it was round (mostly) again!

The finished cake, repaired and displaying the second version bouquet

Plenty of lessons learnt from my first commissioned cake and it was worth it all in the end to see how happy the bride was.

You can view the gallery of my cakes on the Cakes page.

Tags: baking, cake, decorating

Domo-kun keeki

I asked the husband what cake he wanted for his birthday, and we went through the usual “Ummm, I dunno… uhhh”. (It’s kind of like trying to get him to choose baby names, or make any decisions that require creative thought actually. He says that’s my forté.) He’s a geek, so we thought about doing a robot, ipad, motherboard, and other various typical geek things. He had bought me some Ninjabread men cutters because he wanted them at the party, and I said if he wasn’t going to choose something then I’d make a harpooned whale with ninjas doing scientific research on it.

He must’ve had an epiphany or something, and said “Ooh! I know what we could have – you know that furry monster thing on the motivational poster about God killing kittens whenever someone masturbates?” – ok, maybe not an epiphany but he decided that’s what he wanted (because of the Internet meme association, not because of the fate of kittens). We’re talking about Domo-kun (we weren’t geeky enough and had to Google for that).

The Domo cake

He also wanted a red velvet cake and ended up baking the cake himself (yay) and I decorated. Things worked out really well because the cross section of the cake looked as if we had given Domo an autopsy.

Mmmm meaty

And the cake was delicious. I hadn’t tried red velvet before, only heard about it, usually in the form of cupcakes. We tried the Waldorf Astoria Red Velvet recipe – it’s a perfect density for decorating and the bonus is that it tastes good and isn’t dry (and pretty easy to make).

Will definitely make red velvet cake again – just got to remember to get lots of red food colouring each time!

Tags: baking, birthday, cake, decorating, geek

Abby’s First Birthday Party

And what a grumpy little Miss she was! She would not let other people hold her, and would cry if mum or dad wasn’t there. That made it very difficult to get party things sorted. The grandparents were supposed to be there to take her off our hands while we prepared, but they got a little sidetracked with sight-seeing and went on a cruise around the harbour, not returning until after 1 (the party began at 12 and they also thought it wasn’t until later in the afternoon).

Abby with mum

For some reason Abby’s been extremely clingy these last few days, and will cry at things that normally don’t bother her (like leaving her to play). I’m guessing her chest infection, combined with teething and the large number of people around have something to do with it.

Cupcake cake, of course

Anyway, at least mum got the party she wanted for her baby and caught up with people she hadn’t seen for ages (I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted with everyone, so apologies).

Abby enjoyed her presents, and loved the cheerios and chippies. The cake was yummy, even Abby got to have some.

Mmm cake

Thankfully the weather was summery enough for people to be outside – even too hot for most of the day, but the main point is that it didn’t rain. Abby wore a cute gingham dress that grandpa picked out while in Sydney.

Lots of work, but lots of fun. Maybe next year she’ll be a bit more social! And I’ll be able to drink!!

Oooh presents

Tags: baby, baking, cake, first birthday, party

A Slice of Wonderland

I was asked to make a cake that could be raffled off for the Greenacres School gala. I wanted something whimsical and not too boyish or too girly and it had to appeal to school kids, or at least kids at heart. I chose Alice in Wonderland – oh the options!

In the end I decided I wanted a cake shaped like the Mad Hatter’s hat, with a tea party happening on top. This is the result:

My Mad Hatter cake in all its glory

This beast is made of three 8 inch chocolate cakes split into six layers to make the hat, then a smaller madeira cake to make the table and pedestal, also layered. I used lemon buttercream as the filling because it’s easy and delicious.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures but it’s quite a large cake, and damn heavy! Should feed around 60 I say, depending on how big you like your slices.

Some details close up

Our good camera is being fixed which annoys me because I couldn’t take proper photos showing the details. The flash on our backup seems to bring out some of the shine and smaller details, but ruins the colour.

Stitching and some shine

The hat has stitching details around it, some fan patterns pressed into it, and painted with golden lustre for a shine. The ribbon’s also got some pink lustre on it but it’s quite subtle.

Topsy table caused the tea to spill

I created some pastillage mushrooms, teacups and miniature roses to decorate the table tier. I still hate working with pastillage in that it dries so quickly and cracks. The mushrooms were easy but the others were hard. My teacups ended up looking rustic, but hey, anything goes in Wonderland!

Tea and cake anyone?

I tried quite a few things on this cake, including piping patterns with royal icing. That was fun, but I really need more practice with piping on vertical surfaces – the numbers on the hat ticket were a bit squiggly as I didn’t know how to keep my hands stable at that angle.

Anyway, it was great practice for Abby’s first birthday cake – something that I haven’t decided on yet and the party’s next week!!

By the way, the gala’s on tomorrow Saturday 20 November 2011, 11am to 2pm at the Greenacres School at 60 Raroa Terrace, Tawa. If you’re in Wellington, drop on by. You can buy raffle tickets to win this cake there :D

Tags: baking, cake, decorating

Birthday cakes

I mentioned a while ago that I was making a cake for a friend’s little boy – I’ve realised that I never posted about it even though I said I would. So here it is.

Baby Godzilla at it again

It’s a bigger stumpier vesrion of the baby Godzilla cake that I made for the Threadcakes competition earlier. This time I made its teeth match the birthday boy’s – a total of six baby teeth :)

I also made a cake last week for our Plunket group’s joint first birthday celebration. It’s a wonky Jack in the Box, but it was lots of fun and so delicious.

Jack in the Box cake

His face was made from a few chunks of cake that I squished into a ball – lol. Hence, he looks like he’s suffered from severe acne.

Got to test my cutters, tools and lustre

I finally got to try out my edible lustre to make the handle look metallic, and then played around with the shapes on the sides to see how terrible I was at painting on sparkliness.

Playing with shapes

And yes, Jack’s body was also cake. Pieces of cake stacked on top of each other and skewered in place as he began to sag – I didn’t stack them perfectly because I didn’t want him to look “stiff”…

Jack has acne and a bad hair cut

We had the celebration at the Hataitai Community Centre play room. I had not been there before and only vaguely knew where to go. Luckily the hunch was right. Someone said it was where the Plunket was, and I found that ok. Problem was, when I went inside to investigate I disturbed a hypnotherapy birthing class. The instructor was not impressed. I explained what I was looking for and the group was nice enough to tell me I had to go down the stairs to the play room. I thanked and apologised. Whoops! (And because my previous phone broke, I found that all the contacts I needed that day weren’t in my new phone so I couldn’t call them!)

I have a cake to make every week this month. In three weeks it’ll be for Abby’s first birthday – yikes!

Tags: baking, cake, decorating

Mmm, cake

I’ve been up to my eyes in cake this last week!

First was an entry into the Threadcakes competition. I’ve been wanting to make this baby Godzilla dinosaur cake, based on a Threadless shirt design, for a while and finally found the motivation (and time) to do it.

Cute and delicious

I baked a couple of test cakes and found a delicious madeira recipe (which I tweaked to make it an orange madeira cake) that was perfect – delicious, moist and something I could carve into. It was a lot of work, but I think I did well for my first sculpted cake. More details and photos can be found on my Threadcakes entry.

The other cake was for a friend’s grandaughter’s third birthday party. The wee girl wanted a yellow castle cake and I decided to add Rapunzel into the mix.

Yellow castle cake

Waiting for her prince

The main cake was a dense banana cake (I think I’ll use another recipe next time), and the skinny tower was a chocolate roll. Both are filled with a delicious butter cream. The skinny tower gave me troubles as it started leaning and sagging a bit – oh dear. The top tower was also a challenge to cover.

Just a bit of practice to better my cake decorating skills. I have lots to learn still!

Tags: baking, cake, decorating