I'm ba-ack...!

Yes, I know, it's been a very long time since my last post - almost three months in fact! No good excuses really - I've been very busy of course, what with flying East to visit my husband's family (complete with a very odd and embarrassing cupcake-baking episode, in which I managed to break my mother-in-law's mixer, much to her amusement - thank goodness - and then had to finish making my vanilla cupcakes AND make buttercream from scratch, using only a wooden spoon and muscle-power!! This is not a method I recommend, either for its rather heavy end product or for the fact that I nearly had a cardiac from the unaccustomed exercise...), as well as having just come unscathed through my own family's busiest birthday season of the year (what goes on nine months previous to May every year, anyway??), and having been ill, and the fact that I'm going to be a bridesmaid in July, and the preparations for the wedding are now in full swing... Phew...! Really though, I guess I just haven't posted out of laziness really. Sometimes it's just too damn appealing to park myself on the lounge in front of Grey's Anatomy or House with a cup of tea. But speaking of the idiot box, the current season of Masterchef Australia has got me all excited about cooking again, and naturally specifically baking...

So okay, I have done a bit of baking over the last few months - I have been on a mission to find a mudcake recipe that actually tastes (and feels, and looks) like mudcake, as opposed to just rich chocolate cake. Not an easy task, I can tell you. Some taste really good, but just aren't that really dense texture. Anyway, I finally found one that is, and it's at Planet Cake. To be honest it's not quite my all-time favourite tasting chocolate cake (although it is pretty damn good), but the texture is awesome. Real mud cake, finally. I recommend it, and I also think it's jolly nice of the amazing craftspeople at Planet Cake to put their recipe online. Anyone who decides to buy me their book will be extremely popular...

For my own birthday cake I went a bit different this year - no elaborate decorations, not a piping bag in sight. I made a Japonaise cake, which I found at Taste.com.au - and it was fantastic. For those who are unfamiliar with this little beauty (as indeed I was), it's a French creation, consisting of an ultra-silky, sexy coffee buttercream sandwiched between several very thin layers of almond meringue. Yum. There were no leftovers, people went back for seconds.

If you do give this one a bash, keep in mind that this is very unusual buttercream - it takes quite a bit of time and patience (and a splatter-guard would have been quite good too) to get the butter to take up the coffee - but it is totally worth it.


Oh and the other kind of fun thing I did recently was for my friend's son's birthday - he is mad-keen on Ben10 at the moment, which I had never heard of (The Muffin being a girl, and only two). So he says he fancies a Humungosaur cake. So I say "sure, no worries." Anyway he was thrilled with the end result, his mum was happy, I was happy, so it was all good. (And be kind - I would like to point out that his eyebrow ridges got smushed against the top of the box before this photo was taken, and he had also been sitting in said box in a park for a couple of hours)


Anyway, I'm done, it's midnight, I'm off to bed. This ended up being kind of a long post - making up for lost time, I guess - so sorry about that, and congrats if you got this far....!

In the Night Garden...

My little girl has been madly in love with the television show In The Night Garden (and all the characters therein) for some time now. So when we were deciding on a theme for her second birthday party, the choice was obvious.

I decided that whilst I didn't mind spending a lot of time on the decorations for her cake in advance, I really wanted the cake itself to be pretty quick to sort out on the day. So I decided to ice it just with buttercream, rather than messing about with sugarpaste - plus I figured the buttercream is what people really want to eat anyway. And it turned out pretty well, the only problem being that some of the figures (all handmade a couple of weeks in advance from sugarpaste) had to be shoved down quite hard onto the buttercream so that they would stand up (I nearly had a cardiac - twice - when Iggle Piggle decided to do a backflip off the side of the cake onto the table. Luckily he was unharmed). Next time I do figures this top-heavy, I shall be inserting a wooden skewer or something up their... um... bottoms, so that they are more stable and less stress-inducing.

Anyway, the Muffin loved her cake, a good time was had by all at the Night Garden party, and she was thoroughly spoilt with all the lovely presents she received (thank you everyone who came!)

I can't wait for next year! : )

Exterminate... exterminate...!

Aaah, yes. The Dalek cake. This was made for a friend's birthday last September - she is, as you may have guessed, a Doctor Who fan of tragic proportions. This cake is the current undisputed titleholder of "my most time-consuming cake ever" - it took fourteen hours to decorate. All the panels, knobs, switches, iris, "ears" and weird bath plunger thing (which I've never been able to see a use for, by the way. I do watch the new Doctor Who, and I must say I've never seen a Dalek try to unclog a toilet), were individually handmade from sugarpaste, then dusted with bronze shimmer dust (where appropriate). The only non-edible parts of this cake were the rod supporting the iris (wooden dowel), the rod supporting the bath plunger thing (slightly thinner wooden dowel), and the laser, which my darling husband manufactured for me in his shed using a soldering iron (and yes, it was cleaned thoroughly before insertion!).

If I did this again, it might not take quite as long, as there was some experimentation involved. But it was definitely a labour of love - I had such fun making this, it was so exciting and different! Anyway, I'm sure there are some bits of it that aren't absolutely perfect, but I was really happy with the end result. And so, I think, was "Astrid".

Hello, and welcome to my brand-spanking-new blog, where I will come to show off all my latest forays into the world of baking (or at least I will when I have time)...

A bit about me: I have been cooking (including but not limited to baking) since the age of two, thanks to my mother, who I hold responsible for my love of the kitchen. She also made me beautiful birthday cakes, although technically they were carved out of icecream, not cake at all... But I am a relative newbie to cake decorating - around two years ago, quite by chance, I picked up and leafed through a copy of Peggy Porschen's amazing "Pretty Party Cakes" book, and it was like a whole new lobe opened up in my brain - I had to buy it, and start trying things out! It was so much fun that I haven't stopped since, and have now done everything from very basic cupcakes for my daughter's playgroup, to my friends' engagement cake. And this year I have two weddings to make the cakes for, which is a bit scary, but very exciting!

Anyway, I don't pretend I'm going to be the most eloquent blogger, nor the best photographer, but I hope you enjoy my pictures, and wish you all good luck with your own culinary efforts!