HOME-MADE

Hello Kitty Cake

2012-10-14T09:23:00.003-07:00

So, I had no Hello Kitty cake pans and didn't want to invest in one either. What did I do? Put my 'artistic' skills to the test.

Drew something that looked like Hello Kitty:

Then baked the cake and carved it with this drawn template:

Cutout and crumb coated

All done! Covered and decorated to look like Hello Kitty:

A Mother's Day Cake!

2012-10-14T09:10:00.002-07:00

My First Wedding Cake for a real bride!

2012-10-14T09:07:00.002-07:00

Basketball Court Cake

2012-10-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

Basketball court cake

The hoops that didn't dry in time for th cake!

5 years old!

2012-10-14T09:04:00.002-07:00

My son turned 5 years and this is his birthday cake! The centerpiece to his birthday party. Chocolate cake covered in fondat with car candles.

Number 5 race track cake

More goodies from his little party:

Carrot cake squares, decorated by by 5 yr old son for his birthday party!

Coconut cake truffles

Marshmallow covered chocolate

iPod Cake!

2012-10-14T08:57:00.003-07:00

My niece had her 13th birthday coming up and I was asked to make her cake. She loved music so I thought the best cake to make her was an iPod cake. This is the cake I came up with, it's unfinished as I forgot to take a photo of the finished product!

iPod Cake

Haloween '11

2012-05-11T15:04:00.001-07:00

My little cupcakes for Halloween!

Pumpkin

Frankenstein

Could it be, the itsy bitsy spider?

Boooooooo

What I came up with to teach a 12 yr old about fondant

Cakes Galore!

2012-05-11T14:51:00.001-07:00

Cakes Galore

The beginning of my first hangbag cake!

The finished bit of the handbag cake---I think the icing sugar was a big too hard but it's a learnign experience

White chocolate cake covered in white chocolate ....yummy

Random cake covered in icing sugar

My first teacup cake----chocoalate cake with chocolate ganache topped with mini marhmallows covered in fondant

Coffee cake covered with icing sugar for granny's birthday


Coconut Cake with that 7-minute frosting----ñom--ñom

Coffee cake

Spring Cake

Ganache covered cake with silver balls

How To Make Fondant Class

2012-05-11T14:18:00.004-07:00

How to make fondant---hmm.
I found someone who gave courses on cake decorating and although what was taught, I already knew from my hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of research online and my late night video watching, it was good to know that I was on the right track all along and apparently ALL the ingredients are sold in Spain!!!

Ingredients for making fondant

1/2 cup cold water
2 tbsp gelatine
3 tbsp glycerine
2 tbsp crisco (I've never used crisco when making my fondant)
3 lbs icing sugar
3/4 cups glucose
1 tsp essence (the clear one)

Directions:
* Dissolve gelatine in cold water for one minute.
* Place in baño de mari which is literally a pot placed in another pot of boiling water.
*Using a whisk mix in wet ingredients (glucose, glycerine and essence)
*Mix well.
*Take off heat and slowly add in sifted icing sugar little at a time until you can't use the whisk anymore.
* Place on the counter and mix well, gradually adding the icing sugar until you have a consistency like dough.
*Let it sit for at least 6 hours before using.

Now I've done this fondant a few times and what I learned was:

- NEVER put fondant in the fridge, because when you take the fondant out of the fridge, it creates condensation and that extra liquid is NOT needed. It makes your fondant runny!
- It's better to use the clear vanilla essence to dark because the fondant takes the colour!!
- I also found it to be cheaper to make my own than buying it, the only problem with that is I only use about half of the fondant and the other half is wrapped in cling film and placed in an air tight bag. I've yet to learn the proper way and my fondant ends up getting very hard and impossible to mix after that.
- Always cover your fondant, when working otherwise it gets hard!

So I learned how to cut out the top of a cake and what to do with the left overs as well as how to accurately cut the cake into layers...interesting stuff, that.

And then comes the part I never did properly. Crumb coating the cake before covering it with fondant. the trick is to not use too much buttercream! I used to use so much buttercream and then when I covered it with fondant, it just spilled out from every which way!

This my cake after doing my first course. My fondant still dried up a bit but hey, it was and still is a learning experience!

My First Doll Cake

2012-05-11T13:42:00.004-07:00

I think I'm getting better at using the MMF!
I've attempted to make a doll cake---it's my first attempt and I think it came out looking okay.
The only thing I found with this is that the MMF shrunk--

Mother's Day '11

2012-05-11T13:36:00.003-07:00

So I've decided that I love MMF more than fondant!
It's easy to make, easy to work with and just easy!
I haven't had any training or gone to any classes to learn to make and decorate these cakes, I learn as I go along!
For Mothers Day, I've made a flower pot cake for my Mother-In.Law!
I made a chocolate cake and crumb up the left over cake to make it look like dirt.

The hardest thing I've had to try to learn to make are roses but I think those roses are good enough AND she loved her cake didn't want to cut it!

Second Attempt

2012-05-11T13:29:00.003-07:00

After my first disaster with my first fondant cake, I decided to have another go at making a fondant cake!
Towards the end of April I decided to make my son's 4th birthday cake!
This time, I had enough time to read up on decorating cake and how I NEED to level the cakes before covering it with Fondant and found out there was fondant called MMF (MarshMallow Fondant). I decided I would use the marshmallow as this cake would now be for my son and what child doesn't like marshmallows?
I made the cake and trimmed the top, doing not a good job at that and then turned my attention to the MMF. It was the easiest icing I had ever done, while I was mixing I was a bit worried because it didn't seem to be getting to the consistency as the fondant...it was all sticky and gooey and the more icing sugar I added, it just didn't change!
After a WHOLE bag of icing sugar, I finally got my fondant to the consistency I thought it should be.
I stretched it out and covered my cake and it looked amazing! Well, I thought it did anyway. My son loved his Buzz Lightyear themed cake---hahaha---yes his Buzz Lightyear themed cake!

I was so happy with the way this cake came out I decided to make another one for his class, so they can celebrate with him on that day. This time, I make a windmill themed cake---and everyone had a windmill to take home with them.
The kids at the school was happy enough with the cake and the windmill---which I bet they thought was the better of the two...hehehehe

The Begining

2012-05-11T13:13:00.002-07:00

It all began the first week of February when I realized that getting my husband a present for his birthday was out of the question, because I couldn't afford it.
I thought the best present to get him would be something I made and I came up with baking him a cake. I thought for a few days on what kind of cake to bake and decided on a plain vanilla cake.
And then a thought came to me. Why not cover the cake with icing or even better yet use that smooth icing (I didn't know what fondant was).
So I did a Google search for "smooth covered cake" and the photos were amazing, that's where I understood that they were covered in fondant. I made another search on how to make fondant. And then looked at so many videos and read so many websites on how to cover cakes and how to decorate cakes and how to make fondant and how to handle fondant and how to...
I then went out shopping for these ingredients to make fondant. I looked EVERYWHERE but I couldn't find most of these ingredients in Spain and there was no one who could help me. I asked around and no one knew! I even asked a friend who used to work in a cake shop and she said they never used these ingredients in their shop!
Now, I really wanted to make this smooth cake for my husbands' birthday so, I decided to substitute these ingredients I couldn't find.
So - I made my "fondant" and it seemed to be looking good enough and it tasted good too.
The next day I baked my cake, let it cool and rolled out the fondant to cover my cake.
I thought it was a disaster! I spent hours---from 10 am until 2 pm trying to get this icing rolled out right and cover the cake. Every time I lifted this fondant to place on the cake it broke!
I didn't read anywhere that the fondant would dry if you added too much icing sugar to it - or that it would crack and get hard quickly if you don't cover it!
But I covered my cake with my dry, cracked fondant! I wrote Happy Birthday on it! And I placed the candles on the cake!

I had family come over to celebrate and eat cake---at the end of all that, they liked the cake!