Mississippi Mud Cake and Gumpaste Peonies

I put aside the supermarket brand rolled fondant and went to a proper cake decorating shop for the goods recently. It was time to step up the cake decorating game, and I decided I'd give the whole thing one last whirl with more professional ingredients and see if it made a difference. I was sick of the frustration that came with tearing fondant, modeled creations that wouldn't dry and had no flexibility and no ability to hold up when rolled thinly. I was at the point where I was considering giving up cake decorating all together-it was one mess after another. Every youtube tutorial I watched, I saw the ingredients being so roughly handled and they still held their shape. I was missing something.
Then I bought gum paste. My whole view on decorating changed, as I discovered most of my struggles were due to inferior products. Yes, you can use rolled fondant instead of gum paste, but the difference in results is sizable. I also used CMC powder with these large peony creations, which reduced the drying time significantly (I highly recommend this stuff if you live in a humid climate like I do!) To make the peonies lighter, I also used small round foam balls for the centre. I highly recommend using a foam mat, rolling tool and the easy peony cutters for beautiful, gum paste creations that could grace any special occasion cake.
As usual, I made Mississippi mud cakes with premium bourbon whiskey. The peonies were made with the easy peony cutters which made for quicker creations without all the wiring involved. The cake also has decorations of edible lace sugar veil, and was covered with aqua fondant. The peonies were dusted with pink petal dust. I love this contrast! What is your favourite colour combination?

Rose Petal Princess Doll Cake

After the arrival of my new son, I found myself doing what I might have considered unthinkable years ago. My daughter turned 2 just weeks after his birth, and I found myself cakeless the day before and thinking her birthday was a few days away. What a cloudy fog that is the first weeks after a baby is born! I found myself buying Woolworth's sponge cakes, whipping cream for the middle and decorating it with strawberry jam,vanilla icing, strawberries and marshmallows. Her eyes were wide and excited as she gazed at it, and I was delighted to realise that the little people don't mind if you can't give them the Minnie Mouse or Toy Story cake you thought you were going to attempt creating.
However, she had asked for a Dolly cake, and I found myself making one for the weekend of her party. It was a fairy themed party, and although I didn't have time to affix wings to the Barbie decked out in a pink ombre rose petal cake dress, Cece didn't notice. She kept saying "Princess! It's a princess cake! It's so beautiful."

I used a packet cake mix for convenience and speed. The dress was made by cooking the cake in two separate oven-proof bowls. One was a bit smaller than the other, and stacked to create the A-line skirt of the doll. Once stacked, I cut a hole in the centre of the cake stack for Barbie's legs to slide into, and wrapped those legs in plastic wrap to avoid toy and cake from meeting.
A thin crumb coat was applied to the cake. Then I divided the fondant (or gumpaste) and used liquid rose coloured food dye to shade them from light to dark pink.

Starting with the darkest pink and the smallest petal cutter, I rolled the fondant thinly and cut out a multitude of petals. I shaped the edges slightly for variation and applied them layer-style with Wilton Dab and Hold Edible adhesive. (You don't have to use expensive edible glues if you don't have them. You can dampen the parts of the petal you apply with a touch of water to make it adhere, or use a tiny dab of icing as a glue).

Once I had completed the doll's bodice, I used the next darkest pink and continued on in a larger  petal cutter size. I continued in this fashion, working downwards and sliding the next row of petals slightly underneath the previous row. Allow to dry, and voila! Cake done.

Blue Cushion Christening Cake with Sugar Veil Lace

I'm sitting in the silence of my home with a forbidden late night coffee and naughty chocolate biscuits from the stash no one knows about. I can hear the low rumble of my dessert stomach asking for more chocolate and caramel, and who am I to deny it?
I deserve it-finally the kitchen and living room have recovered from the last cake explosion-to my husband's delight it is tidy and clean again. It's not the kind of interesting explosion where the oven flies open and spurts of semi-cooked chocolatey lava-like cake batter comes blurting out. Its the two day cake mess, and then days of aftermath. First of all, there are three small people under the age of five that abide in my home. They all like to get very involved whenever anything edible comes out and it's a recipe for sticky disaster. The rolling pins are dug out and they need their share of fondant and cutters-a quick and easy trade for 10 uninterrupted minutes. Moments later there are sticky footprints on the wall and lumps of sucked fondant through my daughter's hair. And if you have seen my Vienna Rose, that's a discovery worth crying over. She has the curliest cloud of hair and it's like to removing bubble gum when anything makes its way into that glorious bird nest.
I love cake decorating. But attempting it with kids make it awfully, awfully hard to do successfully, and hence, world war three zone becomes a reality. Every time.
I am certain my cake decorating interest is a burden for my husband. It comes with a load-or should I say loads.That is mountains of bowls and pots and sticky things in our tiny kitchen. And those fondant foot prints up the wall, I mean, how on earth?
It takes me about a week of dish washing o finally have a cleared kitchen again. Time to get a dishwasher. But here's the cake that came of the mayhem. A gorgeous pale blue cushion with bows at each corner, featuring sugar veil lace trims and a we fondant baby under a crochet rug. It was for my Godson's christening-and worth the trouble.

It was my first time using the sugar veil and mats to create the lace. I live in a subtropical climate, so this stuff can be the substance of nightmares, and a sticky one to boot. It is quite unstable in humid climates, and I baked it rather than leaving it to set for hours (which I wasn't sure it would do any way considering where I live.) The oven was effective for the most part, with significant trial and error. I was thrilled with the lace it created, as it added a very elegant and delicate touch to the cake. You can fix this lace with water, and I also added small pearl cashous to the top of the swags for a finished look. The cake itself was a 20x20cm square Mississippi mud cake, cooked in a square pyrex dish with rounded edges. The centre sunk a little after cooling but it gave the impression of softness when covered, especially as the baby lay in the middle of the cake. I lightly carved down to the corners of the cake and curved the sides inwards to create the pillow cake look I was going for. Before laying the fondant, I did a thorough crumb coat with coffee flavoured butter cream icing, refrigerated it, and went over it again for a final and smoother coat of butter cream icing.
The baby is less than perfect, as it was my back up baby which I never thought I'd have to use. Silly me left the cake on the table, and came back to find the cake intact in every way but the baby was carefully removed by little fingers. I found it in my daughter's mouth moments later, and she was hiding behind the door. While impressed by her delicate removal system, and grateful I didn't have to remake the whole cake, baby two had to be inserted under that crochet cover, and he happened to have a bit of a scarred face. Don't look too closely!
So-ever wonder why cakes are so expensive to have made? So much work and detail goes into them, even the simple looking ones-It's too hard to put a price on the hours and hours of work that creating a cake entails. If I was paid by the hour for this I'd be charging an arm and a leg! So cakes will be few and far between..for personal eating only and for very select VIP like my new Godson Raffie. When the babies are grown, I'd like to make cakes for everyone. When the time and the environment is right. Bring it on!

3D "Me to You" Teddy Bear Cake

Yesterday at the Woolie's self serve checkout, I was alerted to staff members with flashing red lights and was unable to pay without assistance. After 5 minutes of waiting, I found out it was because I was buying plastic knives for a catering job I had. They presumably had to check how unhinged I looked I suppose...just in case I was about to go on a plastic cutlery stabbing spree through Oxley. Mustn't look as crazy as I am, because they let me buy them after all. 
The following day I was out with my husband couch shopping, and on finding a glorious leather looking Chesterfield, I inquired to the assistant concerning its material. "It's sympathetic leather" She replied. I looked at her incredulously. Sympathetic?
Not synthetic, sympathetic. Turns out there's such a thing. Oh my. Good for the cow though, some one took heart and it didn't get the chop to make that couch. 
It appears I have been living under a rock. During this time of hermit like behaviour, the world has stopped selling plastic knives freely, and has turned plastic into faux leather with emotions. Who would have known!
And just what have I been doing with my time? Not blogging, obviously.
In fact, I hardly have been cooking anything imaginative or exciting at all. The year has gone in a heartbeat, and my baby girl has just turned one. Was that not the fastest year in the history of mankind? 
Anyway, without further ado, here is my daughter's first birthday cake, modelled on the famous "Me to You" teddy bear. (my husband gave me one of these when we were dating, so it holds a very special place in my heart.)
I had never made a 3d cake before but took the plunge, and it was simpler than I expected...except for the icing. I thought that would be the easy bit, then I discovered, in that moment when I was ready to ice, that I did not possess the required piping nozzle...the grass nozzle. I turned the house upside down in a cake-induced frenzy. My husband and my kids hate when I make special cakes, it sort of makes a mad woman out of me and the house goes to seed. It takes a week to recover from the havoc wreaked on the kitchen. (At this moment visualise a scene from the epicentre of world war three).
So the cat ate my homework, or more to the point (no pun intended) my piping nozzle. So I went shopping, and found that piping sets from cheap shops and regular supermarkets come with everything BUT the grass nozzle.
I came home with a garlic crusher, determined to pipe that darned fur!
Necessity is the mother of invention. It was not pretty. The icing bag burst every 3 minutes. I couldn't pipe in the crevices and joints. It was the stuff nightmares are made of. But standing back, once eyes and patches and the nose was on, I totally loved the outcome. It was shabby but cute, and perfect for a 1st birthday party. As long as no one looked too closely! So I highly recommend, not going the garlic crusher route. Buy a good, metal grass nozzle, you will have greater control over where that fur is going and how shaggy your teddy becomes.
The cake it self was a Mississippi Mud cake-This is a great recipe for working with with cakes like this. It's special enough to be used as a wedding cake, and keeps moist and delicious for at least a week. Best of all, other than the flavour, it is very easy to carve and shape after a rest in the refrigerator. I used a double mix of this recipe and had a bit of cake left over. The teddy was made up of two 5"x3" cakes for the body and a 4"x2" cake  (approximately) for the head. I also made a few more cakes with that double batter, most of which got used in the modeling of the arms, ears, nose and the legs. (The cake was crushed into crumbs, and then mixed with a generous amount of butter cream icing to make a moldable cake mixture.) The head and the nose were secured with the help of some wooden skewers. The nose and smooth accessories on this 3D teddy cake were made from rolled fondant.
I hope these pictures help you on your cake journey! I apologise for not taking pictures when I was in the thick of piping that icing, everything was so sticky and frustrating, I didn't even think of it. Shoot me any questions you may have, I am always more than happy to help where I can! Good luck!

Mississippi Mud Cake Recipe can be found here. I doubled this recipe for this cake.


3D TEDDY CAKE TUTORIAL:

 There are five cakes involved here (only a double of the recipe) The two taller ones are for the bady, and the top small one was the head. The other two (sorry one cut out of picture a bit) were for limb molding.

I cut off the top off one of the 5x3 cakes and stacked it with the other 5x3. Using the electric knife I carved the top layer to make it rounded. These cakes had been in the refrigerator, and that makes it much easier to carve.

Using wooden skewers, the head cake was placed on top of the two 5x3 cakes. I trimmed a little off the head cake because it had a few rough edges.

The cake board was prepared with a covering of rolled fondant, and the uniced cake placed upon it. The remaining cake and the cut-offs were combined with butter cream icing to make a moist mixture which is able to be molded into the arms, the legs and feet, as well as the ears and nose.

The arms and legs and feet as well as the ears have been attached. Only the ears needed skewers, the rest just sat there and looked stable, but feel free to use more skewers. I then did a generous crumb coat, before piping the fur like butter cream icing all over the bear. (use the grass piping nozzle) The snout was covered in fondant and skewered into place after icing, as well as the patches, eyes and insides of the ears.

The unglamourous innards of my kitchen after the job was done! Told you it was like a bomb had hit the kitchen.

The infamous garlic crusher-turned-grass-nozzle. Yes that's a hair tie. Never again. Do yourself a favour and buy a real one!

A few pictures of the birthday and the cake cutting. Yep, that's me and my loves!

Christening Cake for a Baby Boy

Last weekend I had the pleasure of making a christening cake for a baby boy. The recipient was very happy with the cake, and part of me felt like I had cheated a bit-using molds to form the fondant baby and texture mats to achieve a lace look to the fondant. I felt there was little skill involved and yet, somehow, still an impressive effect at the end. I you would like to know how to make a fondant baby, here's a tutorial.

How to Make a Baby from Fondant or Gumpaste

 Making this gum paste or fondant newborn baby is easier than pie. With the use of a silicone baby mold, you will have a perfect miniature, edible baby within minutes--and it makes you look like a pro without being one. You can make this little bubba lifelike with a little pink petal dust to highlight the cheeks and bottom and a tan or light brown petal dust for definition in the creases and to give a more realistic skin tone. Being a very fair person myself, I instantly started creating a Caucasian newborn, but you can darken the skin as desired.
These adorable babies are perfect  for baby shower cakes, cupcakes and Christenings and can be left as is or decorated with bonnets bows and frills, or popped into a little fondant cradle or pram as a cake topper. I am going to use the babies in Anne Geddes inspired baby shower cakes atop large open fondant roses. Pictures to follow!


How to Make a Baby from Fondant or Gum paste

You will need:

Silicone baby mold
Quantity of flesh/ light coloured fondant or gum paste (about the size of a golf ball per baby)
Knife
Greaseproof paper
One or two small paint brushes
Tan or light brown petal dust
Dark brown matte petal dust
Pink matte petal dust


1. Colour fondant as desired. Make sure it is dry to the touch, not tacky. (You may want to add some icing sugar or corn flour at this stage. Tacky fondant can prove problematic.) Take a piece about the size of a golf ball and roll it into a smooth ball. Elongate this ball between the palms of your hand.

 2. Gently but firmly press this fondant into your dry mold, paying special attention to the head and feet areas. (Do not powder or grease these particular silicone molds, as it may take away the definition of the baby.)

 3. Gently cut away any excess overhanging fondant until the fondant of the baby is level with the top of the mold. Brush away any left over excess and smooth the top with your fingers.

 4. Place the mold in the freezer for 10 minutes to firm. To remove the baby, gently ease it out from the mold head first, holding the mold at the front with both thumbs, pushing from the back of the mold with your fingers.

5. Place the baby gently on some greaseproof paper. Because it has been in the freezer, it may get a damp look to it--allow it to dry.

6. Take a small brush with a little tan or light brown petal dust on it. work into the creases and over the baby's body. Build up the colour a little more under the chin, in the arm and leg creases and the sides and underneath of the tummy. If you have a darker brown petal dust, brush this over the crown for soft baby hair.

7.With a smaller brush, use the pink petal dust to touch on the cheeks, bottom, elbows, knees and hands. You can also colour the lips with the pink, or use a stronger colour such as a watered down red food colouring to carefully stain this area.

Finished.