Gumpaste Roses

Last year I signed up to do Chef Nicholas Lodge's "Ultimate Sugar Rose" class on www.craftsy.com, but it was only earlier this year that I finally made time to watch and learn from it. Chef Nicholas is a wonderful teacher, with a wealth of knowledge and experience to share, and I would definitely recommend his Craftsy classes. He even inspired me to try making my own gumpaste, which was far less difficult that you might think.

With a new skill to try out, when Valentine's Day rolled around and when I got to celebrate my (gasp!) fortieth birthday, I had a great time making a whole lot of sugar roses. I have to confess, though, that I have yet to complete a rose with a calyx! *blush* Still, I was pretty happy with the results.

 For the Valentine cake I used Satin Ice Fondant, which I found pretty tasty and easy to work with, and much easier than trying to make a homemade red fondant (I inevitable find that enough gel coloring to make a good strong red leaves the fondant tasting really bitter):

        

For my birthday cake I tried making Swiss Meringue buttercream for the first time. All I can say is wow! So silky and rich, and not as sweet as regular buttercream. It is quite a lot of extra work to make it, so I will probably save it for special occasions. I also finally used my patterned buttercream scraper for the cake sides, which I've had for ages and never used before!

So even though I haven't been posting much here, I'm still experimenting, learning and making plenty of cakes!

A Fall Birthday

A super cute little girl I know turned one last fall, and I got to make her cake! We went with an apple cake with a touch of cinnamon, and lots of fall leaves.

I made the leaves a week ahead out of fondant, using leaf cutters and silicon molds to get the vein effect. I then laid them out on crumpled foil to dry so they would have a more natural look. The little apples and acorns I just hand shaped out of fondant mixed with a little gumpaste.

One thing I've discovered is that for black and red fondant I really like to use the premade Satin Ice. When I make homemade red fondant it tends to be sticky from the amount of coloring I have to add, whereas the Satin Ice has a great texture and flavor.

Spring cookies!

Here in the depths of winter, it's nice to think about spring arriving one day. I made these for our teachers in May last year, and I'm about ready for some signs of spring for this year!

I used royal icing on sugar cookies for all of these. For the butterflies and top flowers I used a toothpick dragged through the wet icing to get the patterns. For the 'thanks' cook I freehand wrote the letters--they were a little squished, but overall I thought they turned out ok. For the bunnies I mixed a little clear alcohol (vodka I think it was) with a very little red pearl dust, and then painted in the ear color. Once the alcohol evaporated, the ears were left as a delicate pink.

Check Mate!

My son celebrated another birthday, and much to my disbelief he's now a double-digit kid. This year he chose a chess cake, and so I experimented with chocolate molds. I researched chess cakes on the internet, and found someone who had the brilliant idea of making a game in progress, which meant making fewer pieces! Since we had just moved house I was a little pressed for time, and I gratefully used her idea. My husband took it a step further, and found a famous end game online, and before we ate the cake, our son got to figure out how to get to check mate!

Experimenting with the molds was interesting, I learned that tempering the chocolate was not that hard, especially since we have a very wonderful digital thermometer. I would definitely use the method again. The hardest part was that the heat of my fingers would take off the lovely shine as I fitted the two halves of the chess pieces together. In future I might experiment with using gloves, and see if that helps.

Dig In!

(I just realized I've had this draft saved since last year! So, have a bonus post for today :-) )


I was thrilled when a friend asked me to bake a cake for her little boy and his friend, who would be celebrating their 4th birthdays together. Not only do I *love* baking cakes for friends (especially their kids!), but this was a repeat request! That meant that I hadn't scared them off last time!

And so, I got to make a construction themed cake, and I had a blast. Plus, bonus, how can you do anything other than chocolate (my *favorite*!) when you have dirt as part of your theme?!

This was how it turned out:

I got to use that spiral cake technique I learned for the Oz cake, and this time I could use the pieces as part of the dump truck scene. yay, dirt! :-)

Celebrating the Ones You Love

When I was growing up in South Africa, celebrating Valentine's Day wasn't that big of a deal--I think the highlight of the celebrations in my school-going years was ordering roses that tenth graders sold as a fund-raiser. These were then delivered on the Big Day, and everyone would wait with bated breath for the knock at the classroom door that would signal the arrival of The Roses. A friend and I eventually learned that ordering a rose for each other meant we escaped the horrible embarrassment of having it look like no-one 'liked' us. 

Anyway, the point of this rather rambling post is that when I arrived in the USA I was a bit startled to realize what a big deal it was here. At first I was a little skeptical--after all, if you're celebrating your love and friendship for everyone, Hallmark sells a *lot* more cards, right? However, since having kids, I guess I've become a lot more sentimental :-). I've come to love the idea of just celebrating love, and if you're doing it with homemade cards and home-baked treats, all the better!

I found a lovely tutorial over at glorioustreats.com which you can find here. And then I went a bit nuts :-)

And I loved sharing the love at my daughter's school Valentine celebration, and the cake with my family for Valentine dessert. Life is sweet!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

Our school had a fundraising auction a few weeks ago, and the theme was "Wizard of Oz -- Dreams We Dare to Dream." So, of course, I had to donate a cake!! :-)

This is what I came up with:

I must give credit to Etsy seller CrumbyArt for the design of the toppers. I was searching for ideas on Google and found her listing: http://www.etsy.com/listing/102851434/wizard-of-oz-cake-toppers-wizard-of-oz

I had to make the figures and the 'emerald city' a few days ahead so they would have time to dry--and I learned the hard way that you can't freeze gumpaste/fondant to speed up the hardening process--it sweats and melts as I warms up, what a mess! I also learned that silver petal dust does a wonderful job making things look metallic if you lather enough of it on. I was pretty happy with them in the end:

I also learned how to carve a spiral cake in order to create to yellow brick road. It was all tremendous fun!