So starting with Nan’s cake.  We have always spoke of Nan being the “Queen Bee” of our family, with six children of her own plus grandchildren, great grandchildren and even her first great great grandchild on the way!! At family gatherings she will sit back and take it all in and appreciate the lovely big family she has created hence the name “Queen Bee”.  I thought it would be perfect to create a cake around this theme and decided on a beehive shaped cake with the Queen Bee on top and all her little bees around the hive.  I had initially planned to have this the traditional yellow beehive, bees etc however my Aunties informed me they were having a lilac, silver and black theme for her party.  OK so now I was thinking of scratching the whole beehive idea and thinking of going something totally different to fit in with their colour scheme until my mum suggested being a little creative, sticking with my theme and making small changes to fit in with the colour scheme.  So, a lilac beehive it is!!! on a silver board with little silver and black bees.  I decided to keep the Queen Bee yellow and black and gave her a silver crown and star wand.  The actual beehive cake was made from three tiers of round mud cakes, Cherry Ripe mud, caramel mud and white chocolate mud.  Each tier was separated with a thin board for ease of serving and allowing a choice of cake flavour for all guests.  I was happy with the end result and hope that Nan liked it too! Happy Birthday Nan, Love you xxxxx

My next project for the weekend was 16 mini Spongebob Square Pants cakes.  Someone had seen the Spongebob Cake I had made for my niece a few weeks earlier and had a nephew who was also Spongebob mad.  She thought a few mini Spongebob cakes would be the perfect gift for this little three year old and his little friends.  To make these, the cake was the easy part.  A vanilla slab cake which I devided into 16 mini rectangles.  The hard part was covering each of these little fellows with a thin layer of ganache then creating mini Spongebobs with coloured fondant.  This little excercise took HOURS!!! but was well worth the effort!  They looked a treat all set out on the board, the client was happy and hopefully her little nephew was too!

It’s Christmas time and the Christmas cards with candy cane gifts started rolling in from all the little ones at pre-school.  A great little gift for the little ones. My son decided he would like to give every child in his pre-school class a cupcake for Christmas.  He obviously shares his mother’s love of cakes

He chose vanilla flavour for the cakes.  I suggested the green buttercream to create Christmas trees, Jake was quite certain that the girls in his class would prefer to have pink or red icing as green is apparently a “boys colour”.  With my new Kitchen Aid mixer just waiting to be used, we got to work.  With the vanilla cakes cooked and cooled, the cakes were decorated with green and red butterc ream and cashous to make beautiful little Christmas trees.  We made a few bigger cupcakes decorated the same way for his teachers.  Cakes looked and tasted great and were a hit with pre-school!  What a lovely way to say Merry Christmas!

I experimented with marbelling mud cake.  I’ve wanted to do this for  a while and with my brother choosing this creation for his 40th Birthday Cake (pictures to follow in the next few weeks – end of October), I thought it best to test it out before the real thing.  I had my personal taste test team test it out and all responses were good.  The cake was beautifully moist and tasted devine even if I do say so myself!

Next I decided to do some modelling.  As I’m sure all other cake decorators would know, this is a very timely exercise and requires patience (something my five year old does not have a lot of and could not quite understand why it took so long to get the end result) I modelled a pink teddy bear and blocks and some blue booties.  I then moved on to create a black & white spotted dog (Jake’s personal favourite) with a special little red ball personally created by my little man Jake.  I then attempted Santa, well he was quite time consuming and still needs some work.  I found that he dried out too quickly (or possibly I was too slow ) and therefore didn’t hold together well and the final product looked dried out – not at all how I would have hoped.  Well definately be trying him again because he is extremly cute!!

With the modelling done, now to create a beautiful cake.  I thought Christening Cakes suited as designed both a girl’s and a boy’s.

Piping was next, using Royal Icing, I piped reindeer, ducks, rabbits and breast cancer ribbons.  All in all, I quite enjoyed myself and got some good results. See for yourself..

I decided my best option for this cake was to use a loaf tin and cut the car shape from this.  I also baked four cupcakes with the left over cake batter to use for the wheels. Using a picture of Maxi to copy from, I did a free-hand cut to get the car shape and using the cut pieces of cake to increase the height at the back.  The entire cake is covered with white chocolate ganache and a thin layer of coloured fondant.  Maxi’s hat and sunglasses are pure fondant. The rear spoiler I was unable to make from pure fondant as it just would not hold straight so I used a piece of cardboard and covered with fondant for that added strength.  The track is also made with black and white fondant.

The kids all seemed happy with the results and were all very keen to eat a wheel.

I had lots of family gatherings on the Anzac Day long weekend so thought what a fantastic reason to try a new cake!  I’m really enjoying my Crabapple Bakery Cupcakes book at the moment so tested out another recipe for this book, Banana & Macadamia with Chocolate Fudge frosting.

I had some bananas heading towards the over-ripe stage so thought this recipe to be very suitable.  Great little cakes!  The chocolate fudge frosting I varied a little, using more butter than the recipe stated and less icing sugar, I guess making it more like a buttercream.  It turned out lovely.  Using my favourite piping swirl to top each cake.  They were a hit with all the family!

 These cupcakes are just devine!! Very indulging!! One is definately enough of these little beauties.  I topped them with caramel frosting and “Celebration” balls.  As these cupcakes were to make easter gifts, I purchased a few plastic containers from my local cheap shop and my four year old Jake and I made some grass from tissue paper to place in each one.  We then placed a few cupcakes in each container and wrapped in cellophane in a bon bon shape.  I think these little cuppies make the perfect indulgent easter treat! Happy Easter everyone !