Pretty Temptations

Winter Wonderland

2013-12-02T22:10:00.001+13:00

Christmas cupcakes! Really? Already?

I received an email about a month ago from Operation Sugar - a charitable organisation which provides sick children with free birthday cakes to create cupcakes for the Child Cancer Foundation Christmas function. I put my hand up to do 50 cupcakes - I would have done more but now that I have a little one running about I don't have enough hours in the day.

The theme was 'winter wonderland'. I had lots of ideas flowing through my head but I could only make these ideas come to life after my little one has gone down for the night so it had to be a simple winter wonderland.

I hope the children and their families enjoyed the strawberry and honey cupcakes.

Enjoy!

Iron Man

2013-08-18T15:10:00.000+12:00

Iron Man, how I loathe thee.

I had to forgo the details which you would see on an Iron Man figurine as I only had 1 night to make him - not 24 hours, only the Thursday night after I put my daughter to bed. I have not done Iron Man any justice - I am sorry Marvel Comics.

Terrence's dad rang on Tuesday afternoon saying that they needed the cake on Friday morning. 3 days earlier than planned, I had planned on making the figurine over the weekend when my husband could help me keep our little princess busy.

Terrence had requested for a chocolate birthday cake for his 4th birthday so I thought I would try out an eggless chocolate cake recipe which turned out quite moist and fill it with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.

Enjoy!

Pastel Rainbow and Clouds

2013-07-27T21:10:00.004+12:00

Bird's eye view of the cake

Over the rainbow

It has been such a long time since I last posted. My excuse? I had a little baby girl sometime in September last year so she has been keeping me on my toes and no time for caking. Well, I lie. I do have a bit of time but that is to tidy up the house after her and whatever else that needs done. I don't know how my mum did it with us and now I know that I've got my own wee little one I really appreciate all the things my mum has done for me - not that I didn't before.

Anyway, before I fill you in on my life story for the last year I better start on the cake I made this week for Anya's 5th birthday.

Anya's mum requested a simple cake and had given me all the freedom to design something for Anya. Do you know what this does to me?! I had so many ideas going through my head I ended up with doing something 'plain' so it would be a safe design. *Sigghhhh*

I only found out this morning that Anya was having a pirate themed party at Chipmunks!! *Kicking myself in the leg* If I had known, I could have done a pirate ship cake or a treasure chest or even a treasure map cake...the list goes on.

I did know that I would like to put the tutorials from Lesley at The Royal Bakery to some use so I incorporated the clouds and '5' into the design of the cake. I hope I did her tutorials some justice!

This is my first attempt at painting on fondant, it was a little nerve wrecking as I was worried I would make a mistake and that would be the end of it for me. Can you imagine how time consuming it would be to rip the fondant off the cake and re do it all?

There is a slither of hope that I can bake a bit more after my little one starts at daycare but I will also be back at work part time so maybe not. We'll see how it goes.

Enjoy!

Gumpaste Roses II

2012-08-01T23:21:00.001+12:00

Greta's Birthday Cake

My new sets of flower cutters - roses, ranunculus & peonies arrived not too long ago so I've been busy playing with my new toys.

I've tested out the ranunculus and rose set and really love the cutters! My next exercise is to try out the peony cutters with another gumpaste recipe I found. It's a really good gumpaste recipe - well, it works well for me. When I'm done using up all the gumpaste from this batch I have made I will try the next batch of gumpaste with egg white powder instead of fresh egg whites - I always have a dilemma with what I will do with the egg yolks and really hate wasting. I have tried making creme brulee with the egg yolks but it hasn't turned out well so I've decided to just pay the experts to make it for me to enjoy.

I made the cake for Greta's birthday today and used the roses I had made. The cake turned out to be almost a disaster as I had mixed vodka into the shimmer to paint onto the cake. The only problem was that the lustre was not the shade I thought it would be AND it was uneven all over the cake. I tried to save the cake in vain by using a puffer brush to dust the cake with just the lustre after the 'paint' had dried but it did not save the cake. I have another cake on 'standby' so guess what I'll be doing this weekend?!

Enjoy!

Buttercream Ruffles

2012-08-01T23:21:00.000+12:00

I made this cake for my friend Jean since it was her birthday last weekend. I have to be honest and say that I didn't want to make a cake covered in fondant for her since she does them so beautifully herself anyway.

I got the idea of using the petal tip to create the ruffle look on the cake from Google Images. It's a really simple technique and it's so quick to do! Here is a video tutorial I found on YouTube if you would like to give it a go.

The cake is caramel mud and covered in salted caramel buttercream. It was a tiny 4" cake but by the time I had added the ruffles on . I don't know if she liked salted caramel but it was a recipe I had come across and thought it would be worth a try. The only thing I'd change would be the cake - I would make it a lighter cake rather than a mud cake.

This is getting me all hungry now.

Enjoy!

Gumpaste Roses

2012-06-08T21:21:00.000+12:00

Jumbo Rose No. 1

Jumbo Rose No. 2

Side by side

Who would have thought! Another post on gumpaste flowers.

I'm on this little mission now to practice or have a go at making different types of gumpaste flowers. How I wish I could pack my bags and hop across the ditch to learn from Greg Cleary or fly all the way to California to learn from Jacqueline Butler. Then there's also Paddi Clark in the UK. Ok - I know, the list can go on and I know that I will not be travelling anywhere so I'll just be doing some self-teaching.

After dusting off the tools, I made 2 jumbo gumpaste roses this week. They are about 11 cm wide and fits nicely into the teacups I have at home. The first one I made should have been thrown into the bin but I thought I'd take some pictures first. The second jumbo rose looked better but I know there is still a fair way to go before it's pretty enough for me. I've got plenty of homemade gumpaste left so I'll just have another go at making another jumbo rose before I move onto my next flower.

My next flower - a magnolia or perhaps a poppy?

I'm now craving for a sweet little something...more specifically - a sticky toffee cupcake!

Enjoy!

Pink Gumpaste Peony

2012-05-31T21:33:00.000+12:00

My first attempt at making a peony after my class at PC almost 4 months ago. Goes to show how much you can forget in the 4 months when you don't practice! I'd better get onto practising my roses soon before I really forget.

I made the flower paste from scratch - it's really not that hard or time consuming to make. The only thing I did find is that I was ripping the edges off my petals so I may have to add something else to my flower paste to give it a bit more elasticity. This will be my little research project for the next little while. There are lots of recipes out there for making flower paste (or gumpaste) so I will be on a mission to find the 'perfect' texture for me.

The usual flower paste I use would cost me about $40 for a 1kg bucket (cheap compared to the Wilton gumpaste) and I love using it but at $40 a bucket I think I should start experimenting.

Do you see any veins in the petals? I don't!!! I should really invest in a good veiner - I couldn't get any texture out of the one I have and it was pretty frustrating when I tried to create texture by using the veining tool and ended up ripping my petals!

Now, I just have to wait until the weekend before I can bring home my 'sick' Kitchen Aid from the repair shop and bake a cake to go with the peony. My next dilemma would obviously be what cake to make - I've been thinking white chocolate with passionfruit filling and white chocolate buttercream but we'll see what takes my fancy when I have the time to bake.

Enjoy!

Jojo & Leroy's Wedding

2012-05-27T18:17:00.000+12:00

Jojo & Leroy

Some of the cupcakes

I wrote a few sentences to this post and forgot about it until someone reminded me that I have not yet posted pictures up of what I had made for Jojo & Leroy's wedding!

The wedding was on 5th May and it has taken me this long to remember and finish the post! How slack of me.

I baked over 300 of these mini red velvet cupcakes for the church reception - I still can't believe I actually baked over 300 of these mini morsels. I was lucky my mum & sister came over to help me assemble the cupcakes and put them into boxes for delivery. The flowers were done a few nights before after a late decision to make the flowers all one design and just have 2 colours. As usual, I had other grand plans of making roses to go with the cupcakes but I had only made 30 or so by the Tuesday so I knew there was no way I would be able to make it all in time unless I took a whole week off work and just made roses all day. This only highlights that I need to work on my time management skills - hehehe. I'm sure my husband couldn't agree more with this admission!

Enjoy!!

The Last Minute Rush...

2012-04-22T21:13:00.000+12:00

I had to work a full day yesterday and had about 1 hour to decorate mum's birthday before dinner! Talk about rushing it. With limited time, I decided to cut out blossom flowers and left them to dry while I did the basketweave on the cake. It has been almost 2 years since I last did the basketweave (if my memory is right) and was amazed I had even remembered how to do it. Not the best looking cake but it was definitely YUM!

I couldn't cover the cake in fondant because the cake was a coffee cloud cake - a nice light sponge cake the way mum likes it, the fondant would have flattened the cake. This is my second attempt making this cake and it's not as difficult as I had anticipated it to be. The first attempt was successful and I decided to give the guinea pigs at work a treat.

Enjoy!

Caramelicious

2012-04-15T22:14:00.000+12:00

I finally decided to try out a new caramel cupcake recipe this weekend. I made most of it in the mini size and some in the regular size.

The caramel didn't quite go 'wow' with this recipe - back to the drawing board to look for another caramel cupcake recipe. Perhaps I could add a few drops of caramel extract to add more flavour to it - make mental note to get some of the extract.

I was also going through my cupboards in the kitchen and decided to use up 'leftover' cupcake liners so I ended up with these orange coloured ones - I really don't like the colour, hence why they were the 'leftovers'. Wish I had photoshop to change the colour of those cupcake liners. The colour of the flowers are new to my lil' collection, as you can see I have a thing for pastels. I was thinking perhaps a blue rose - I'll get onto that as soon as I have coloured my freshly made flower paste from a recipe given to me by Miss J.

Enjoy!

A Beach Party

2012-03-17T17:08:00.000+13:00

I know I know! I've been slow with updating of any sort.

Truth be told that I have not baked much in the month since I have been back. When I finally had an order for some Hawaiian beach theme cupcakes my beloved Kitchen Aid decided to throw a tanty. The paddle attachment was stuck and I couldn't get it out to wash and make the cream cheese icing to go with the red velvet cupcakes. I tried with all my might for about 30 minutes, cursing my bad luck. I gave up and my Kitchen Aid is now at the local Kitchen Aid Hospital awaiting surgery. I ended up borrowing mum's trusty Kenwood - 22 years old I might add.

It's got me thinking, maybe I should get a Kenwood to replace my Kitchen Aid. 22 years and mum has never had to take it in for repairs. 3 years with my Kitchen Aid and it's packed a sad.

All this drama was a little too much for lil' old me.

Anyway, back to the original story of these cupcakes. Miss M ordered these cupcakes for a Hawaiian Beach theme party for Ms K's 29th. Her actual birthday is tomorrow but they're having the party today. I hope the weather holds up for their BBQ. I made a sunbed and added a cocktail umbrella to one of my designs, the next is a stylised hibiscus flower and you can't go without a surfboard at the beach, so that was my third design.

Enjoy!

A busy week in the world of Planet Cake

2012-02-19T20:44:00.000+13:00

Front of cake

Back of cake

What came back with me to Auckland

I took a week off from life in Auckland and headed across the ditch to Sydney, Australia to do a week long course in cake decorating at Planet Cake with 2 brilliant teachers - Jessica and Luigi.

This course was a birthday present from my husband - I'm so spoilt! So, I bought the top tier back to share with him :)

It was 'hard work' but I enjoyed every single minute of it my time in class and have learnt so much from the 2 very talented teachers I had. I had Jessica teach me in the beginners course and was secretly hoping she'd be teaching me again in the intermediate course - luck was on my side and I did get her again :)

I designed the cake in the pictures and had a bit of help from the teacher with putting it all together. It took 3 full days from design to completion and I enjoyed every part of it - except of course for the back pain from standing most of the day. This cake is made out of 5 cakes. All the flowers are hand made with love!

This course has given me so much more confidence in designing cakes and putting it all together. I hope to be doing more cakes like this in the future. I would love to just sit in the kitchen and practice making more of those jumbo roses and peonies!

Enjoy!!

Dora - The Explorer

2012-01-30T13:51:00.001+13:00

A work colleague came up to me late last week and asked if I could make her daughter's birthday cake for preschool. It was a chocolate cake - I omitted the coffee to make it a bit friendlier on the wee lil' toddlers. I don't think the day care is going to appreciate any cakes which gets the kiddies zooming around for the rest of the day.

I made a 2D Dora to go with the cake - as requested by my colleague. My attempt at making the 3D version of Dora failed miserably so I made a last minute decision to make a 2D Dora. If that failed, I would have been driving out to the shops to get a plastic figurine of Dora to stick onto the cake. I think it's about time I practiced making more figurines or perhaps take a course on making figurines so I don't get myself into these dilemmas!

It took me a good 2 hours of cutting bits of fondant out to put Dora together...I'm not 110% satisfied with it but I hope Anushriya is happy with it. She is after all, THE customer.

Next project on the list? Vegan mango cupcakes! I'm going to try with gluten free flour too!! Cross my fingers this will work.

Enjoy!

Present Box Cake

2012-01-27T07:53:00.002+13:00

Chantelle's celebrating her 40th this year - it's been and past but she's going away with some of her closest friends and family to celebrate over the long weekend.

The colour of this cake is no doubt one of her favourite colours and what more fitting than a cake as a present.

The cake is a moist chocolate mud cake covered in a rich layer of dark chocolate ganache. I'm getting hungry just thinking of the cake - yum! I know she would have loved the red velvet but the cream cheese icing will definitely not last until Saturday unrefrigerated. Notice it's a 'red' cake she was originally after!

Happy 40th Chantelle!

Happy Chinese New Year! 恭喜發財!

2012-01-24T18:55:00.000+13:00

Happy Chinese New Year to all my family & friends! May the year of the water dragon bring you an abundance of luck, wealth and good health!

恭喜發財！龍年快樂。祝各位身體建康，心想事成，萬事如意。

Less reading and more gawking. Here I present my Chinese New Year cupcakes.

I'm about to head back to my parents place for dinner tonight so I thought i'd squeeze in this little post first before I run out the door.

Enjoy!

Fire, Fire, Fire

2012-01-19T14:39:00.001+13:00

It's little Jack's 4th birthday today and his mum had asked me to make some fire engine themed toppers.

Jack is right into his fire trucks and police cars. For his dad's birthday last year, Jack got him a police car toy to share. How cute!

My first attempt at the fire truck looked more like a caravan! I'm not brave enough to put those pictures up - I'd be mortified if it ended up on Cakewrecks.

As you can see, I got a little side tracked by this project and my Chinese New Year cupcakes have yet to make an appearance. Don't fret - I will get them done this weekend as it is Chinese New Year on Monday 23rd January.

Enjoy!

Sweet Beginnings

2012-01-08T23:48:00.000+13:00

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Raspberry Icing on the Red Velvet Cupcake

Honey Icing on the Red Velvet Cupcake

Salted Peanut Macaron

Cream Cheese Icing with Red Velvet Cupcake

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has had some time off to unwind & relax and spend some time with family & friends before the year kicks off. I am hoping this year will be the year of many great things to come...from my kitchen. :)

We had some friends come over this afternoon for lunch and desserts. I kept to my department of baking & decorating while my better half made all sorts of yummy pizzas to serve up - We've still got lots of ingredients leftover so guess what is for dinner tomorrow night?! YUMMMM

I baked a batch of red velvet cupcakes and made 3 different flavour of icing to go with it - Honey, raspberry and plain ol' cream cheese. I didn't end up serving the cupcakes with honey or raspberry as I had some 'unwanted guests' flying around the house and taste testing it before I could serve it to my friends. Just as well I had not yet pulled out the salted peanut macarons I made as well or there would only be red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing! Thank goodness for Miss B's fruit platter - I needed the fruits more than the sweets after all the over indulgence over Christmas.

Here are the pictures of the red velvet cupcakes I took before they went down the gurglers.

I'm in the middle of designing cupcakes for the Chinese New Year which falls on 23 January 2012 - watch this space for more news!

Enjoy!!

Santa and Polar Bears

2011-12-26T18:45:00.000+13:00

Christmas Cupcakes

Christmas Day came by, we stuffed ourselves silly with all the yummy food then groaned about how our tummies have expanded. And that was just the mains. Dessert - there will always be space for that one wee bit of sweetness. I'm glad I packed my expandable pants in my luggage - I definitely needed it.

My bit for the Christmas lunch was to bake & dress up some cupcakes!

I was supposed to have halved the recipes so I would only yield 24 cupcakes in total but in my daze I made 48. 24 red velvet cupcakes and 24 honey cupcakes. All decorated in Christmas themes. Some cupcakes were dressed up as Santa, some as polar bears and I threw in snowflake, candy cane & mistletoe as I had run out of time to do Rudolph & Santa's elves.

I couldn't pack a cake stand into our luggage, so I just used a cake board instead. Looks rather good if I must say so myself.

What shall I bake for New Year's??

Enjoy!

Christmas Tree Cake Pop

2011-12-21T18:40:00.001+13:00

Christmas Tree Cake Pops

I finally made my first ever cake pop. I was always lead to believe that it was very messy and time consuming to create these little cuties but they did not take me too long to make. The part which was most time consuming was colouring the chocolate green and my kitchen did not turn out as messy as I originally thought it would be.

There is only 1 left in the kitchen now - first in first served. I really shouldn't be greedy as I was given a reindeer cake pop at work by a colleague but I'm so tempted to have the tree too!

Have a safe holiday and I hope you enjoy your Christmas break!

Enjoy!

A weekend of birthdays...

2011-12-18T23:37:00.000+13:00

Chocolate Mud Cake with Chocolate Ganache

Tiramisu

It has been a busy weekend with 3 birthdays!

I made a simple tiramisu for my sister - nothing fancy here as you can see. For my brother, I made him a chocolate mud cake coated in a rich layer of silky smooth chocolate ganache before I finished it off by making it into a present for him. I'm trying to practice getting the sharp edges on a square cake...I think i'm getting better with each cake.

The first cake of the weekend was supposed to be an iPad 2 cake. I have everything done except the edible image of the iPad screen has gone missing. I've been looking for it everywhere around the kitchen and I can't find it! I hope it didn't accidentally get thrown out with the recycling pile. :( I'm feeling really disappointed I can't find the image to finish the cake off. So now, I have an unfinished cake which needs to eaten by Tuesday.

To make up for the disappointment, I think I should bake some gingerbread and shortbread cookies then decorate them.

Enjoy!

Tiramisu Trial

2011-12-15T20:36:00.000+13:00

Tiramisu

I have a busy weekend coming up! A tiramisu for a 21st. Since I've never made a tiramisu before, my mission was to have a trial run of it first. I wouldn't want to ruin this for a 21st birthday.

My colleague shared her recipe with me and it was an easy recipe to follow. My problem was finding the sponge fingers - I know I can make it myself but I wanted to follow the recipe to the letter so I went in search of the elusive sponge fingers. After going through 3 supermarkets, I finally found it!

I didn't think the recipe would result in me using up 3 different containers! I took one to work, had one at home and will give the last container away.

Enjoy!

Pirate Cake

2011-11-26T20:29:00.001+13:00

Before

After

It's been a while now since I last posted an entry but i'm back!!

I made this cake here for Miss S's cousin, Alec. I hope they enjoyed the cake last night after dinner.

This is my first cake after my week at PC. I was still waiting for my tools to arrive so I had to make do with whatever tools I had in my kitchen and it turned out better than I had hoped for. I've finally got my tools today - yippeedeedoodah so you can pretty much guess what i'll be up to for the next wee while.

I've put a before and after picture of the chocolate mud cake I had made for Alec's birthday. The ganached cake was a result of 2 hours of hard labour which included extra time to 'fix' the dent I had made by accident. That was the hard part, the fun part was covering the cake!! Then only to forget to sharpen the edges and cover the bottom edges of the cake.

Enjoy!

Project Macaron #3

2011-10-29T01:56:00.000+13:00

Finally! Here it is - the purple shade I was after for so long.

The photo does not do it any justice but I did it, I finally managed to work out how much colouring I had to add in and let's just leave it at that.

Today's macarons have a blackberry jam filling. Yes - I know, I cheated a little. I ran out of time but I really wanted to make purple macarons for Nish's morning tea. It was either that or raspberry brownies.

I think I've finally worked out the 'right' consistency so the piped out macarons don't spread on the tray while it is drying.

I did have another go at using the silicone mat Nish had lent me but this time the macarons look deformed! You know what happens to deformed macarons? - they get chomped up by the resident cookie monster (me!)

Project Macaron #2

2011-10-17T00:48:00.002+13:00

If it's one thing that I can't seem to get right, it is colouring the macarons! I've tried the method of adding the gel colour to the sugar syrup. Judging by the amount I had used and the shade it was I thought I would at least get a light orange shade but no I was wrong. It came out more light caramel than orange.

Back to the drawing board.

Before I forget to introduce the macaron - it's supposed to be an orange coloured macaron with chocolate passionfruit ganache in the middle. The ganache is a keeper although this won't be something I would be making too often as the passionfruit cost me $14!

I managed to work out the consistency of the batter so my macarons turned out 'perfect' rounds.

My colleague lent me her macaron sheet and so I just had to try it out. Conclusion - Easy to use!

Lets' Celebrate Fiona's Birthday!

2011-10-16T02:01:00.000+13:00

This second cake is for Fiona, it was her birthday earlier in the week.

I wanted to make a cake which was light and fluffy so I settled on making a red velvet cake covered with cream cheese icing.

Do you like the quilted look?! I do. I made the quilted look with the help of my new 'diamond design' tool and am so impressed by it.