Orange Syrup Cake

This is a simple and quick cake and always delicious. Made a orange sponge cake and made up some orange syrup which is poured over the cake as soon as it comes out. Let it soak a little and then serve.

CWA Scones

Made some CWA scones for our day trip to Yarra Glen. Love these scones, they are quick and easy and the recipe has never faulted. Perfect every time. I use double acting baking powder which gives it that extra rise. The normal baking powder from the supermarket shelf just doesn't cut it.
As soon as they came out of the oven, straight into the car and to our destination. Kids went off yabbying at the dam and we sit back and enjoy the scones and tea (Devonshire Tea) and an afternoon in the countryside. How nice that?



Served with Strawberry Jam and a dollop of cream

Christmas is here!!

Christmas is here and for me it is a time for a break from work and time with family get togethers. It has been a long but thoroughly interesting year.
To celebrate the festive season I made a fruit cake and decorated it with inspiration from Su Yin. It is actually my first fruit cake. I am in general not a fan of fruit cake but it is a requirement as a celebratory cake standard as well as being a heavy cake required to build multi tiered cakes.
The christmas tree is actually a ice cream cone piped with royal icing. I wanted the cake to be playful and have an essence of what Christmas should be.
In one part of the cake I have my little friends working together decorating the tree. On the other side of the cake is two friends having a snow fight behind a snowman they had jsut made. The little one holding the ribbon near the tree was originally a naughty friend going for a number 1 next to the tree. I was going to add a few drops of yellow to the cake in that area but I canned this idea as it would not be appropriate but was on my mind when I was building the cake. Hehe..
I thought everyone enjoyed it. Merry Christmas.

Jonathan's 4yo Thomas the Tank Engine Cake

Thanks to Debbie Brown, this Thomas the Tank Engine cake was by far the most difficult and time consuming cake I have done so far. I am not critizing Debbie at all, her books are by far some of the best avaiable. It is more a comment for myself to take on such a big project whilst still an amateur. In the end it took way too much time for my liking and hope not needing to do another Thomas anytime soon.
The cake itself was a chocolate sponge, which was my bad move. I should have used a heavy cake like fruit or mud cake. Then I filled and coated with white chocolate ganache. As it was a biggish cake I made extra ganache which was fine but found it took so long to set I should had made it the night before and not the day of the build.
As I used sponge the cake had difficulty holding its shape and soon my Thomas was becoming funny looking.
At the end I finished it without the wheels, By that time I was tired and just had enough of spending any more time on it.
I presented it to the party and thankfully it was a hit.
I served the cake with a choc chip cupcake as my secondary backup if there was not enough cake for everyone.
I think as a comment for future cake desgin publishers to include an estimate time required to build a cake for novice or intermediate cake decorators so it helps guage and manage our time.
Only a thought, doubt anything will come of it.

Spray of Calle lilies

Unfortunately one of the tips broke off the lillies.
Thanks John, it has been a great year. I have learnt leaps and bounds with cake decorating and flower making.

Flowering gum nuts

Lillies

My first lillies. They were quite easy. Using flower paste to make the stems and the flower. The stamen is covered with polenta which made it look like the pollen of the flower.

Tare Panda Mud Cake

This time round, made a Tare Panda on a aeroplane with little rabbit waving goodbye and another rabbit guiding the plane off.
The cake is a straight mud cake but didn't turn out that nice. It was so frustrating to have the butter leak out of my tin. I used a spring form tin and half the butter leaked out. The cake turned out dry and crumbly. Learnt my lesson on this one.