Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Jarra's 1st birthday




Jarra's 1st birthdayJarra's 1st birthdayJarra's 1st birthday

I had grand plans of spending the week leading up to the day making the cake. Unfortunately, work got in the way. I made the cakes Thursday, then covered and decorated them Friday night. I went to bed at 8am. I didn't want my only niece to have just any birthday cake.




Lily's 4th birthday cake

Lily's 4th birthday cake - sketch


Lily's 4th birthday cake
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

Making the cake (sorry not the figurine)

I did this just for a bit of fun. Don't get your hopes up. I didn't film the making of the figurine. It was too late and there was not enough time. Plus ignore the messy crumb coating.

Lily's birthday cake for Kinder


Lily's birthday cake for Kinder
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

irthdays should be renamed Birthweeks for kids. This is the first of 3 cakes that I am making my daughter. Maybe I am going overboard but its for my little girl ;-). This is the Kindy one.
(From one of Debbie Brown's books)

Kindy cake


Kindy cake
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

One of the carers at my daughter's kindy was leaving. My job was to make the cake. For those wondering about the writing. It's supposed to look like the little girl in the red and white dress painted it...... oh, as a few people have pointed out to me the paint on the girls hand doesn't match the print. If it wasn't 3am in the morning when I realised this then I would have fixed. The hand print is actually the logo used by the childcare centre. The cake is chocolate mud cake.

Sonny's valentine cake


Sonny's valentine cake
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

I forgot to post the valentine's day cake from last year.
I can't take credit for the design. It's from one of Debbie Brown's books. I probably could have picked a better cake stand too :-)

Lily's painted cake


Lily's painted cake
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

My daughter wanted to decorate a cake for Mummy. So I covered a small cake and let her at it with a paint brush and food colouring. I think she did an excellent job.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A valentine's cake for my wife


Sonny's valentine's day cake 2009
Originally uploaded by CakeMyDay

White chocolate mud cake with white chocolate fondant. I wanted to try out a stripy design. The tricky part is keeping them all straight. The white heart is inlaid into the top of the fondant. Mr Heart was sharing the love :-)

Piping chocolate


Piping chocolate, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

My first attempt at piping chocolate. This is from the Whimsical bakery book. As you can probably tell the blue colouring didn't quite mix properly. Also I should use wax paper and not freezer plastic. The freezer plastic created ripples in the surface.

Gerbera


Gerbera, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

No fancy pants multi-petal cutter used for this one. Each petal is individually hand made petals. I could have done a better job at chalking it but that wasn't really the point of making it.

Diamonds?


Manufacturing Ice, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

I wish, or more to the point, my wife wishes. It's large sugar crystal that I grew over the last few weeks. I thought htey would come in handy for decorating a cake with jewels.

Anniversary cake - 8 years


Anniversary cake - 8 years, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

I don't make cakes for a living so I look for any excuse to make one. This was for our 8th wedding anniversary. It is a mud cake covered in white chocolate fondant. The piping is royal icing.

A blossom or two


Sugar art blossom, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

I am planning on making quite a few of these for a permanent display. I will conceal the wires with brown florist tape
You can see the old red ones(real) in the background.

Jarra's Christening cake


Jarra imprints, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Guess who these cupcakes are for:-)

Take those cupcakse and add some of these
Daisies and butterflies

and a large fruit cake
Jarra's Christening Cake
position on a home made stand and hey presto you get this
Jarra's Christening Cake

Trial cupcake


Trial cupcake, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

I was given the task of making cakes for my niece's christening. This was a trial cake.

Cupcakes


Cupcakes, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Vanilla butter cake with marshmallow icing.
I had never tried the swirl before but it was pretty easy. Try it if you don't believe me.

Cupcakes

Asiatic Lily's


Lily's made from sugar, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Frangipanis, Lily of the Valley and some piping work

This is the first floral arrangement that I have made. I think I did ok, even if I do say so myself :-) The piping was just for practice.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Lily's 3rd birthday cake - number two


Lily's 3rd Birthday cake - Front view

Cheeky monkey #1Lily's 3rd Birthday
Lily's 3rd BirthdayOne Toucan

I went for the big time. I saw a cake online that I really liked and had to try it myself. At times I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew but it came through in the end.

I didn't want to make tonnes of cake so I opted for polystyrene balls for the leaves.  It also has the added advantage of being light.  Covering them was easier said than done.  Polystyrene doesn't taste very good, a bit chewy for some peoples liking :-).  So, I made sure I covered them away from the main preparation area.  The branches are also polystyrene.  I normally would like to make everything edible, especially for a kids cake, but time was short and this was less hassle.


Trees in the making

The trunk was built from 3 mud cakes.  All the icing is fondant, including the figurines.  Making the figurines is the most enjoyable part for me but seeing the whole cake come together comes in at a close second.

Cheeky monkey #2Lily's 3rd Birthday

Lily's 3rd birthday cake(s) for kindy

Each birthday for my daughter has been more like a birth week. These cakes were made for her to take to kindy. I had to make something plain with little to no icing. So the cupcakes are vanilla cake with a dab apricot jam and sprinkles. The mud cake is for the teachers.

It was a hit, but then anything with sugar in it usually is with 3-4 yo's.

Graduation cake


Graduation cake, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Finally, after a few hard years of work, I finished my PhD. Sure, I could have got someone else to make a cake but this would also be the first cake where I didn't have a voice in my head telling me that I should be studying :-)

The toughest part to this cake was the pattern on the side of the top 2 tiers. Trying to press hard enough for the pattern but not so much that the fondant would stick.

The biggest compliment I got was unintentional. Before I stacked the tiers I had the bottom one sitting on the bench. My mum came along and placed another real book on top of it thinking that she'd put them away later.

The top and bottom books are mud cake. The middle cake is a sponge soaked in vanilla sugar syrup.

Being an engineer, and according to my wife, a nerd, I made a scale model of it before I started construction of the real cake. This is about 3-4cm high (1.5").

Book stack - mini version

The bottom two tiers and the mini-cake.
Two of the tiers for the book cake

Nan's 80th Birthday


Nan's 80th Birthday, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Another big day deserves another cake. My Nans 80th birthday meant something traditional. Maybe not for all Nan's but for mine it does :-)

This was my first attempt at roses. I'm not too disappointed with the overall result. I have to say, covering the cake in fondant has to be the most stressful part of cake making. For the detail to stand out the large flat areas need to be flawless, or as close as possible. I notice my wife leaves the room when I start rolling out fondant... coincidence maybe?

You might notice that I positioned the writing on the cake board. I did this tor two reasons. One, I didn't want to risk ruining my good fondant work, and two, I think it looks better.

Julia's 30th Birthday Cake


Julia's 30th Birthday Cake, originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

This fondant covered mud cake was quite simple. I'd have to say the most difficult part of it's construction was the writing on the side. Not just because those cutters are a pain in the backside, but the difficulty in trying to get those letters to stick to the side in the right place without sugar glue smearing everywhere.
Anyway, I was happy with the finished result, and more importantly so was the recipient :-)

Lily's 2nd Birthday Cake


IMGP3291 (1), originally uploaded by CakeMyDay.

Well it took a year for me to make another cake but I decided to go for fondant figurines this time, In hindsight I should have made the cake tiers a little more interesting by carving and shading but hey, practice makes perfect.
Both cakes were mud cake and the figurines were made with fondant + gum trag.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Lily's 1st Birthday cake (& my first fondant cake)

Lily's 1st Birthday cake (& my first fondant cake)

This is the cake that started me off. The cake it's self was nothing too ambitious but the butterflies, well they were quite challenging. Particularly as I had never done piping before.  I should thank Peggy Porschen for the butterfly templates in her book.

A piped butterfly

Makin ' and Bakin'

I initially started out, like other cake fanatics, wanting to make a special cake for my daughter's first birthday.  It has developed into a hobby and now I am thinking of starting a business here in Melbourne.  I wdon't make cakes as often as I would liek but bheck back every now and then to see  my latest creations.