French North Sydney Markets

Hello Everyone!!! Hope everyone had a lovely weekend!!! I know I did :) Not only because there was beautiful weather but because I also had my French themed North Sydney market stall on. That was probably the most fun and lively market stall I've had to date. There were so many people and the weather was just perfect!! There were blue, white and red balloons up and live French music was playing, the whole day was just so great!

To get into the whole French theme I decided to make cupcakes with typical French icons on them. Naturally I had the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, French poodle and an "ooohh la la!" hahaa I also did a special cupcake with a pate a choux on it as well.

She was my favourite - Frenchy Poodle!

 

Pate a Choux

I made a display Croquembouche... cant get more Frenchy than that!

Lemon Meringue Tarts

Creme Brulee - these were gone within the first hour!

I had quite a selection of macaron flavours this time: Raspberry and cream, Lemon Lime, Double Choc, Lychee, White Chocolate, Hazelnut (Gianduja) and Lavender and Honey.

My cute little easel card holder!

We were right next to the fountain :) 

Mini cupcakes - so many times there were crying kids and as soon as the parents gave them one of these they instantly shut up, it was quite cute and hilarious to watch.

The most awesome thing was we sold out within 3 hours so that meant a well deserved early mark for The Dainty Crew!! :)

Buttercream Wedding Cakes

Love weddings! Such a joyous and happy occasion! I remember the first time I made a wedding cake... it was quite a feat. The reception was for 300 ppl so it had to be a pretty big cake, it was my cousins wedding so I decided to give it a shot as their wedding gift. Now that was a solid 5 tier mamma made out of chocolate mud and buttercream.

The topper was from the florist... which I thought was going to be a simple rose bouquet but you work with what you get, so it was a little more old fashioned than I had hoped for. Now, I baked and decorated it in time for the wedding... phew, it delivered in one piece... phew phewwww... but when I came to stacking it... the dowels were cut with a stupid garden clipper thing, where you had to have Arnie sized guns to operate... so they werent all uniform... leading to the problem of the night. The cake started to tilt and sink toward the back. In a panic attack I ordered them to cut the cake immediately, thereby avoiding disaster! :) ...but I've since been dubbed... the 'leaning tower of pisa cake maker!' :S lol

So when we had the wedding cake class I was very excited because I love wedding cakes and I wanted to learn to do it properly! Here begins my series of things that I've learnt in the wedding cake classes, I have to do it in a series of posts coz I think blogger will explode from the amount of pics I want to put up! lol

The first thing we learnt was how to pipe... shells, reverse shells, rosettes etc etc... but we also learnt how to pipe buttercream roses... now these were HARD!

Mine look more like little cabbages lol... I blame the heat from the ovens, it kept melting my buttercream!! However, after a little airbrushing and some supporting piping around it, it didnt look too bad! lol

Personally, I dont really like this type of wedding cake. I think it looks very old fashioned to me. This is typically an American style wedding cake, where the cake itself is covered/finished with buttercream icing and decorations.

A tip for torting (cutting the cake into layers) so you get even layers is, 1. Use a SHARP knife. 2. Use the part of the knife closest to the handle. That way you are controlling where you are cutting as you twist the turn table to move the cake around.

Also when filling the layers with icing you can also create a "dam" by piping a tube of buttercream icing along the circumference of the cake before filling the middle, so that it doesnt run out the sides.

Most of the wedding cakes that you see made out of buttercream icing have completely smooth sides... now the trick to getting the buttercream icing perfectly smooth around the cake is to use a bit of hot water. As with most cakes you will need to do a crumb coat, let that chill, then after add another coat of buttercream icing over the top of this chilled crumb coat. You can go an additional layer but it isnt really necessary if you do the crumb coat properly. When the cake is cooled with the crumb coat, as soon as you put the next layer on the buttercream should set pretty quickly. So by dipping your offset spatula into the hot water whilst icing, it'll result in a smooth final layer of icing. Hope this helps!

The rest of the class' buttercream cakes :)

♥ Keep tuned! ♥

Winnie the Pooh

About a half a year ago I was asked to be the God Mother of a beautiful baby girl - Chelsea. I remember I felt very honored and touched that out of all people, my dearest cousin asked me. Thrilled and excited I accepted :) She is a bright shining light in my life and I absolutely love her to bits! :D

So cometh her 1st birthday, I wanted only the biggest and best cake there ever was… thus begins my ultimate journey to make a 3D Winnie the Pooh cake hehehe

Initially I was a little overwhelmed, true to my nature (Queen of Procrastination) I left everything to the last minute…. But to my defence I had another cake order for the same Sat and life always calls at the most inconvenient time.. so what free time I did have was spent on this behemoth project.

The WHOLE of Pooh bear was edible, the head, legs, belly, ears - the lot! I was originally going to carve the head out of Styrofoam (like many other sane cake makers would do), however I couldn’t find a styrofoam ball big enough to fit properly so about 2 days before the cake was due I decided to make the head out of cake too!

My choice for the type of cake recipe used was limited because it had to be dense and firm enough to stand upright and be able to withstand my hacking and sculpting away at it. I opted for a pound cake recipe because when you cut it, it still holds its shape, is firm enough not to collapse yet it is still fluffy and tastes awesome! Buttercream was also used for its dense, shape holding properties.

I made 3 x 10 inch round cakes and 2 x 8 inch round cakes for the base/body. In hindsight I should’ve probably used all 10 inch round cakes.

Pound Cake (1 portion is enough for 2 x 10 inch round tins)
2 cups sugar
2 cups plain flour
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup (225g) unsalted butter, softened
5 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
1 ½ tsp lemon extract

Preheat oven to 165⁰C, line 2 x 10 inch round cake tins (or you can use a Bundt cake pan).

Whip butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add all dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda). Then incorporate eggs one at a time. Mix in the extracts.

Bake for 60 minutes or until it springs back to the touch.

Strawberry Buttercream Frosting (I made like 3kgs of this stuff – Ohhh sooo damn good!)
3 cups icing sugar
225g butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp strawberry essence
1 drop red food colouring (optional – I didn’t use this because mostly kids would be eating it and I didn’t want them eating artificial colourings, lol that was my bit of ‘health’ awareness)

Beat the butter until light and fluffy.

Gradually add the sugar and whip until smooth. Add essences and colouring (if using).

NOM NOM NOM

First assembly, I sandwiched the body and cut out the legs from a 20 cmx 20 cm square tin.

This was originally how I was going to do the head and arms - i.e. cover the styrofoam with fondant and shape it into features.

After contemplation that the styrofoam head would be too small I decided to bake some extra cake for the head. If you are wondering how I managed to structurally keep the head up ... I didn't. If you notice from the earlier photos Pooh actually slumps forward. This is because his head got a little too heavy and having the cake at room temp softened the base causing the top part to become as my cousin adptly calls Rhonda's leaning Tower of Pisa effect (I made his wedding cake about a year ago, it was a whoopping 5 tiers .. that started to lean forward too :S lol) But I did try... I put skewers in the base and stuck the head on top. If I were to attempt to do this cake again I would definately invest in using 2-3 mm dowels and a board underneath the head. That would solve the problem of the head falling forward.

This is how the cake looked after I carved out the features.

First crumb coat.

Managed to cover the body with fondant. I did this in 2 stages. I covered the belly first by wrapping the fondant around the cake and patching it together at the back. Then I drapped a second lot of fondant over the top of the head (as if it were a normal cake) and smoothed it down.

Used extra fondant to create features like the arms, ears and I built on the face by adding extra fondant where the cheeks and nose were. It was pretty thin where the eyes were so I also added extra fondant there and pushed it back to create hollows like Pooh bear has.


I covered the legs in fondant separately then I stuck it to the body.

So this was what a naked Pooh bear on the day before the party looked like. He was standing up so proud and tall and was just 'perfect'!


The next day when I came back to dress him and add the proper features he had already begun to get 'lazy' and his head was slumping. I was pretty crushed that my cake had done this but I altered my design to suit what was happening. Lucky for me, Pooh is quite lazy and he usually nods off so I thought at least it looks like I 'meant' to do that and if I put a cake infront of him it'll just look like he is leaning forward to eat his cake! lol



The delivery of the cake almost gave me a heart attack. It was a miserably humid yet rainy day. I had the cake on my lap and the destination was about 1 hour away... but wait for it ... we got pulled over by the cops and it turned out that the Log's (brand new) car rego had expired. As a result... I had to wait in the car with the cake whilst he went back to get the other car. I had the aircon on full blast to stop the cake from melting anymore than it had to but as the minutes ticked by, temptation of the strawberry cake was too much for Pooh and he just kept inching closer and closer :S


Alas, we made it in one piece, Pooh got a taste of his cake before the birthday song was sung though lol!


The cake was a hefty 12-15 kgs and approx 35 cm tall.... it was bigger and heavier than Chelsea!!


hahaha look at her face... "mummy I dont want to cut Pooh bear!"

Yes my heart sorta broken when I had to cut up the cake... oh but ah wells... tasted yummy!!

Look at that perfect layer!!!

BRAINS!!!


Poor Pooh!

Phew, what a feat!! There was enough cake to feed a 200 guest wedding! But I'm glad I attempted it, lets just hope next time I wont take short cuts on the structural stability of my cakes LOL!

♥ HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY CHELSEA! ♥
xox