What a week it's been...

Phooooeee what a week it's been! Last week I reckon I made just about 10 kilos of cake in various shapes and forms - cupcakes, cakepops, round cakes, mistakes, you name it! I think I've gone through about 5 kilos of flour, 15 eggs,  3 kilos each of butter, sugar & icing sugar. Phew!

I made an anniversary/birthday cake, products for the North Melbourne market, a hundred Babycups for a wedding, cake pops for another birthday, yet more cakepops and a mini RV cake (the size of my palm) for a friend, and Buttercups for the weekly Guava Bean order.

Have a look:

By Wednesday, I'd made the RV cake, and then promptly realised that it was burnt on the outside because the inside took so long to cook. SIGH! Bake to the KitchenAid...

By Thursday...

 

 The letter 'i' fell out of alignment, but it worked perfectly with the heart below.

Just added a 'u' and I made lemonade!

 

 It was also the client's husband's birthday, so the placard on the other side held the other greeting.

 Friday...

Made the little blossom babycups you see above in peach, pink and cream as part of another client

And then Sunday was market day with Peek Sweets with about 100 babycups in assorted flavours, 20 cakepops, and about 70 gingerbread people (yes, we're pretty politically correct here at the Bakeshoppe. Why should men have all the fun of being dismembered and consumed limb by limb?!) Plus I also made a mini RV cake (silly me, forgot to take a photo!) and cakepops for my darling friend Wenona.

Celine, my partner-in-crime made whoopie pies, an Amish-American cross between a cake and a biscuit with marshmallow in between. Apparently, the story goes that kids cried "Whoopie!" whenever the cake was made because it tasted so good. I loved it - all dark chocolatey goodness with choccie chips, but I gave the marshmallow middle a miss - I've never been a fan of marshmallows.

All in all, a terrific week. And I'm COMPLETELY spent.

Rufus

Is it irrational to get attached to a pet you've created? I know I sound like a complete nutter, but just look at him!

Look at his BIG BLACK EYES and don't tell me you haven't fallen instantly in love with him!

Anyways, to put the whole lot into context, this was a cake I made over the weekend for a father-daughter celebration. The little one-year-old loves puppies, so I decided to try my hand at 'modelling'. Here's a very brief look at the steps I took:

1. Colour your fondant - you'll need brown for the puppy's body, black and white for his eyes, and a little dark pink for his tongue.

2. Take a large piece of brown fondant, and roll out his body in a slightly conical shape. Roll two smaller balls for his legs, with one end thicker than the other. Flatten the thicker end, fold the ends to meet, and attach to the sides of the dog's body. Use a knife to impress the "paws". Repeat with longer ends for the two middle legs.

3. Next, roll a small ball and flatten it for his collar. Then roll a large ball for his head, with a thinner end that you'll flatten onto itself for his snout. Use a small circle cutter and leaf veiner (or any other tool that has a dipped edge) to impress and indent his mouth.

4. Attach the head onto the body by spearing a small piece of spaghetti through the body and collar, and spearing (gulp!) his head at a slight angle to it - gives him some character!

5. Indent a small hole at the back of his body, and roll a piece of pointy fondant and attach as his tail. You can make it curly, or straight and pointy, which I did, it's up to you!

5. Next, make two small teardrop shape balls, flatten one end, attach the corner and let the ear flop over itself. Tweak so they have erm...personality?

6. Roll a tiny teardrop shape of pink fondant for his tongue, impress with leaf veiner and attach to his mouth.

 Arf! Arf!

 

 My work area

 The finished cake!

Since the cake was also for the father, I decided to use brown lettering for "Happy Birthday", and trimmed the base with tiny pink Scottish terriers. Although a friend of mine did say that from a distance, they looked like a row of pink porkies...HUMPH.

You can see the other Puppy-themed cakes I've done here.

By the way, it's MARKET WEEK!! See you this Sunday at the North Melbourne market!!

(Gah, I totally forgot to post about the Southside Market we were at, mostly because I forgot to take pictures, but here are some very lovely ones from their facebook page, do check them out!)

Eat your words

Living with a partner who loves design has its advantages. For example, I've been exposed to many areas of design - furniture, interior, industrial, typography - where I would not normally have tread. And I've been really excited about interweaving these areas with baking.

Anyhoos, I'm pretty stoked I got to try this out recently - melding typography with cake art. I don't really think it's been done before (correct me if I'm wrong), and I'm really happy with the results:

 The cake was stamped with individual tiny letters - took me about an hour, even with help!

Flavour: Chocolate mud cake with cookies n' cream buttercream

Exterior: Dark chocolate ganache and white fondant

To put the cake into context, it was an early celebration for my sister's birthday. She was here for a visit, and I wanted to make a special cake for her. Since she's a journalist, and words are her world, I thought a nice personal  letter would be extra special! (Of course, she did say afterwards that she'd expected a "newspaper" cake - psssshh, what, have I got no imagination?!)


This really takes custom-made cakes to a whole new level, no? It's great (I feel anyways) because it's really personalised, and you can put pretty much anything on it - thank you, happy birthday, even a marriage proposal! All to make a significant moment even more unique. Plus I love the fact that each cake has someone's personal journey etched into it. :))

PS. It was delicious to eat my words.