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!

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 :)

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!

Roses

This is the second cake in Wilton course 1.  So another excuse to use buttercream icing.  This time we learnt how to use the icing to pipe roses.  Not an easy task!  But loads of fun!  Especially when you get to eat what you made. YUM!