Piping

Why do I always seem to do two or three updates at once? Anyway, piping! I like piping. More than cake in fact. Which is easy because I don't really like cake.

So these I made for Jen's birthday which was a retro theme.
And I wrapped her present to match. Yes. I am a dork.



But how did I get two colours to swirl together I hear you ask? Put. Two colours. In the bag. Simple enough... It actually is that simple and it works just as you see above. I put them next to each other in the bag (okay, not that easy) but it works. The first few were blue, but then the pink showed up and demanded equal rights and the blue grudgingly moved over and gave some cupcakey room. I like it as a look personally.

Valentine's Day

Lol, so keeping up to date seems to be a bit of an issue.In recent news, St. Valentine's Day! Hmm... Anyway, I was inspired by Bakerella to make a choc-box cake with fondant and some fondant dipped cupcakes. Dis. Aster. But funny. First of all, dyeing fondant red is just about impossible. I got a dark pink (no photos, too embarrassing) which I then made into a pink/white marble because I was getting fed up with trying to add colour. Black is also a crap option. Grey fondant does not look appetising.

So after cobbling a box together (I should have known from the gingerbread house that building and I are not cut out for each other) with soft, floppy fondant I decided that topping it with dipped fondant cupcakes would at least hide the hideous box. I googled "dipped fondant" and it seemed simple enough: microwave fondant on low, fondant melts, dip cake. I like a 3-step process.

Sadly disaster and I are intimately acquainted and it felt the need to up the ante in our relationship. Firstly, hot fondant burns. Which hurts. Any chef can tell you that sugar melts at a pretty high temperature and then does this lovely sticking-to-you thing that we all love. Hot and sticky. Owies. Secondly while it's keen to stick to you, it's not that enamoured by cake. Cake it can take or leave. Or just leave. Sans icing. Ice, you bastards! Eventually I managed to cajole some icing to stay on some cupcakes and even managed a bit of decorating before they dried rock hard. Oh well.

A slightly more successful story was these weird hearts that I made. In a moment of insanity I decided that Bakerella's cake-pop recipe was really just a basic concept that could be applied to any cakey type design. Little did I know this was the step over the safety barrier while waving madly at oblivion. But I managed. I think.
So the process is to make a cake. Then mush cake with icing. Mold and decorate at whim. 3 Steps. Sounds simple enough. (mwahahaha says evil basement-cake in the distance)

So crumbling a cooked cake:


Mixing cake with icing...

Here's where it gets messy. Cake with icing is gloriously, dangerously soft.


Thank goodness part of the gig is to freeze the shapes so that they become a bit more workable. Which it did, until I started pouring fondant on top. Hmmm. In the end I used writing icing to outline the heart shape and then poured into the shape and it seemed to hold the fondant onto the heart quite well. It all got very sticky and messy. They look kinda cute here though...



And they were all the way in the car with the fondant box from hell. One of these is probably enough to induce immediate diabetic comas however. I might stick to biscuits and leave cake as cake.

Random adventures with fondant

Mmm bright colours. Some colours take really well to fondant. So I got a bit excited and want ed to put shapes on cakes straightaway!


Not these guys though. I made these because soft fondant is a bit like play dough. So I played...

Here are the shapes that I actually made. Round shapes are hard because as soon as you pick them up they turn into Dali-esque melting discs. But for a first go I thought they looked good.


I had enough cupcakes though, and too much icing. What do you do with leftover icing? I made rainbows...
Note to self: Rainbows actually look pretty cool.


If I'd had my time again maybe I would have just made rainbow cakes. Or not. who knows.

PS - I did find that you can't transport fondant cakes in an air tight container. Particularly on a warm day. Dali cakes...

Making a mess

Sometimes my house looks rather like a creative graveyard. Bits of felt here, some discarded ribbon that the cats have claimed, chocolate biscuits that really should have been eaten last week...

Work seems a good place to dump creative baking because staff rooms are food black holes. No one says no to proffered cupcakes in a staff room. Or they go home to people's children. I hope I am not responsible for the next generation of obese kinder kids.

Today my kitchen looks like a graveyard because I was making chocolate biscuits with Mel. Having both had bad/exhausting weeks the baking got a bit hysterical. I therefore discovered that baking is a good outlet for overtired energy, but don't expect good food out of this. While they were chocolate biscuits in basic definition, they lacked a certain 'je ne sais qua'. Taste, I think it's called. They don't look too bad though:


Working around the strewn chocolate I am making cupcakes (from scratch this time) for Jen's birthday tomorrow. Pics to come. :)

Chocolate & Squeak!

So I've decided that I am going to blog my sporadic creative outbursts. As a child I learnt a lot about craft and every now and then I feel the compulsion to make felty shapes NOW. Or button jewellery. Or bake cupcakes, buscuits and decorate them. I'm not quite sure where the urges come from, particularly for baking as I'm not actually 'into' food. But I like decorating things, so I think that's what works for me.
So I'll start with some of my 'old work'.

Craft:

I became quite obsessed with button jewellery so I was experimenting with wire and buttons. Here are some earrings I made. Then I got distracted by felt shapes.

This was an owl I made for a friend who was going interstate for a while, as her 'travelling companion'.

Baking:This was one of my first attempts at royal icing. I quite like the really gross colours that turned out for Halloween and the gloss made the pumpkins look great. At the time I think I used a clean paintbrush, but having scoured Bakerella I think I have found a better way for next time.

After this attempt it was decided that I should not be permitted to gain a building license. It was one of the creations that looks so simple until you actually try it! I'm not sure if I have a photo of the complete

This was a cake that I made for Tom's birthday. I had just bought a huge bucket of cookie cutters and used them as a template to make dino outlines with which to direct icing sugar. I'd also found dino sprinkles at the supermarket which made rather nice prehistoric grass.