Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Hello Kitty cake topper

Here is another figurine I made today.  I love trying to make new figurines and am rather pleased with how this turned out.  Hello Kitty is sitting on a 4 inch cake base so it is quite small but would be perfect for a small cake.  I am also very pleased with my new flower cutters and love using them!  :)

Mermaid cake

I did another cake for my friend's 4-year-old daughter (lucky girl!) for a second party she had today.  She wanted a mermaid cake and I thought I'd take it to the next level by making matching cupcakes and setting it all up in a cupcake tower.  I was so excited to set up the whole dessert table - though the background was not quite ideal for a photo shot, the birthday girl absolutely loved her cakes!

Here are some more close ups.

Rows of cupcakes on the tray.  The cupcake toppers were made by me.  I was quite pleased with how they turned out.  :)

  I love the whales!

The crab and octopus are pretty cute too!

And here is a close up of the cake.

And the back of it.

It was sooo much fun to do!  I can't wait for my next cake! :)

Pink castle

This pink castle cake was made for my friend's 4-year-old daughter.  She wanted it pink like a princess' castle and it was also eggless, as some of the kids at her party had egg allergies.  Very easy to do as I used a ready made castle cake pan and then piped buttercream in stars all over it.  A very girly cake!  :)

Message in a cupcake? C-mail!

How nice is it to have a pretty cupcake given to you any day? That would put a smile on my face anytime! :)

But how great would it be if your lovely little cupcake was also holding a secret message especially for you?  You've heard of message in a bottle - well here's message in a cupcake!

 Here's the little cupcake topper - ordinary looking, you say.  But when you turn it around ....

....a hidden message awaits!  Pull it out of it's holder and what have you got......

Isn't that sweet?

Or how about...

Or even...

What would yours say? :)

Hearts and roses

I made another batch of cupcakes this week and decided to play around with the fondant and buttercream.  I guess, with decorating cupcakes, the ideas are endless but here are three of the cupcakes I did with two different types of roses and a heart.  :)

Hydrangeas

I love hydrangeas and I saw this idea on how to pipe them onto cupcakes from Glorious Treats.  It is very easy to do.  All you need is a Wilton 2D tip and two colours of icing.  (I went with teal and violet.)  When filling the icing bag, put each colour down side by side in the bag.  (As in, each colour takes up half the bag down to the tip.  I will remember to take photos next time!)  Squeeze the icing bag until you see a mixture of the two colours coming out of it.  Then pipe star shapes around the edge of the cupcake and work your way towards the centre.  Fun and easy to do!  And they look pretty too!

Pink elephant

This is another figurine I made out of fondant.  I think it would have been better to use gumpaste as it sets better and is harder too but I only had fondant to work with. I followed a video on You Tube for instructions on how to make it.

If you want to learn how to make this cutie, check out this other video by yourstrulytx.  Have fun! :)

my lil pony

After the success of making little Harry Potter for the Castle cake, I decided to try making some other figurines.  Having no experience on where to begin, I started looking through the Net and You Tube to get some ideas.  Thank goodness for kind people out there who share stuff with you.  I watched this video by yourstrulytx on how to make this cute lil pony and thought I'd share it with you.

Isn't he adorable?! :)

Let me know if you make one too!

Castle cake

My friend's daughter wanted a Harry Potter castle cake for her birthday.  I have never attempted making sugar figurines, let alone a 3D castle!  I was up for the challenge though and with my friend's help, we came up with this cake.  We were quite pleased with it, and my friend's daughter was happy too!

Here is my version of a wizard made out of fondant.  It took 4 hours to make and was the first one I have attempted.  I am quite pleased with it and I must say it has made me want to make more figurines!

Flower power

I've wanted to do a flower pot cake for a while now and the opportunity came up to make the cake as a surprise for my good friend's birthday. There are so many pictures on the Net for flower pot cakes and I had a good browse to decide exactly what I wanted to do.  My friend's daughters and sister helped to arrange the flowers on the cake as well as do the grass icing on the cupcakes.  Lots of potential cake decorators there! :)  It took a while to get the colour of the pot right and if I had more time, I would have made it a little neater, I think.  But all in all, a very nice surprise indeed!  Happy Birthday Priya!

Star Wars Fan

For my husband Brian's birthday this year, I decided to bake him an R2D2 cake as he is a big Star Wars fan.  I had to buy the pan specifically for it.  It was a lot of fun decorating the cake as it was very easy using the star tip.  The only thing was it took a lot longer than I had expected - a couple of hours just to pipe in all the icing neatly.  So if you ever attempt a cake this size, make sure you leave lots of time for icing!

Thank you

I baked this cake as a 'Thank You" for my lovely neighbour, Geeta.  She is a fantastic cook and every time she makes a new dish, she always sends some over for Brian and me.  Unfortunately, I put the cake in the fridge (I know, I know, it's fondant!) and was horrified when the fondant started melting or condensing when I took the cake out.  It really was a shame.   But I gave it to Geeta anyway as I did not have time to bake another cake.  I am going to miss having her next door since we are moving.  So this is for you, Geeta, I hope you enjoy it.  :)

Pièce de résistance

Today was the finale for Wilton course 3.  We had to prepare a two-tier cake and I spent the entire week making the roses out of fondant.  It took absolutely ages to make and I now have a greater understanding and appreciation for all the wedding cake makers out there!  It was all worth the effort once we put everything together and I'm really pleased with how it turned out :)

Surprise package!

Today I learnt how to cover a cake with fondant.  This is from Wilton course 3 and we had a lot of fun decorating the cake with all the bows and flowers made of fondant.  It was very easy to work with and I am looking forward to my next class.

Valentine pops

My sister's friend wanted some Valentine cookies to give away to her friends so I decided to make some cookie pops.  I used a simple shortbread recipe I got from the Net and I learned how to make cookie pops from this fabulous website called Cake Journal.  There are also tutorials on this website that show you how to flood the cookies with royal icing and I tried it out.  Very simple and easy to do! (Thank you Louise!)  I used royal icing flowers I learned from Course 2 to top each cookie and voila!

Eleanor's cupcakes

These cupcakes were done for my sister's friend,  who wanted to surprise her cousin Eleanor for her birthday.  She wanted pink, purple and orange frosting with loads of flowers and sprinkles.  The letters were made of royal icing as well.  Lots of fun!

Baskets, birds and beautiful flowers

After the excitement of course 1, my friend and I couldn't wait to get started on Wilton course 2.  It's all about royal icing in this course and you learn how to pipe royal icing flowers, which dry hard and can be stored for later use.  Very exciting and here is the final cake after 4 lessons.  It was soooo pretty I couldn't bare to eat it!

Oh baby!

I did this cake for my neighbour, Geeta, who wanted to surprise her relative who was having a baby shower.  I used the Wilton baby bottle pan to make the cake, followed the instructions on it and the cake came out easily.  Then I followed the shape of the cake with icing.  It took absolutely ages to ice as I was very nervous about getting it neat and nice.  But well worth the effort and patience I think.  My neighbour was very pleased with it, as was her relative :)