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.

First Sugar roses

Have been attempting sugar roses. Not that good really. Actually pretty bad. The hard part is getting it into the shape and mould the petals to be the right thickness. Have been advised the petals shold be so thin I could read a newspaper with it. Well that is really thin!!
Will have to keep on working at it. Eventually will start adding some colour.

Out of flower paste and will need to make a whole new batch.
Where is that recipe I got..hmm

My first sugar flowers

These are my first sugar flowers. I tried to make them as thin as possible and added in the stamen. Effectively they are fantasy flowers as they are non descript of any specific species. Basically trying to get comfortable with sugar paste and how far it will go.
Overall I found the sugar paste is quite forgiving and found you can push it a lot before it would tear.
Got the recipe for the paste and will make up a batch for myself.

Orange poppy seed cupcakes

Found this recipe from the Crabapple cupcake book. Looked interesting and tasted good too. I modified it to be eggless and turned out perfect. This cupcake is filled with poppyseeds and orange rind. The frosting on top is filled with orange juice left over when I scrapped off the rind. The downside to this batch was the orange was not as sweet as it could have been. Bit to acidic which came through in the frosting.

Will also need to improve camera work. Shadows in the picture doesn't make it look too good. Need to also try and make my shots more professional too. Hmm..maybe a better camera.

Almond Biscotti

Whipped up some Almond Biscotti. Some people like callingit Almond Bread but they are much more thicker and taller. Almond Biscotti is much more thicker than mines. I like slicing it thinly which you tend to savour the flavour more. Should probably be called Almond wafers.

Almost got my macarons to perfection. Got the right mix and now trying to stablise the oven temperature. I think because my oven is fan forced it is over cooking the biscuits. Will try on 165 degrees which should be perfect.

Chocolate coated rumballs

I am still working on and perfecting my macarons. I have made several batches so far and not all successful. I have been reducing the sugar content and found the macarons are not holding up.
I made up some choc coated rumballs.

These rumballs I made up in the past with a standard rumball recipe and coating them with choc and striping with white chocolate.

I will be working on another batch of macarons and may add in almond biscottis as a face saver.
At least I know that recipe works.
I will have a mini project of making some choc treats soon.

Lemon cream Macaroons

Finally got the macaroons right. After several dismal failures, I got to know the eggwhites and balance needed to get the macaroons right.
One of the problems I found was the recipes I was using was the wrong mix for what I wanted. Some tricks involved but knew where I was going wrong.
Made a bunch of them and filled them with lemon buttercream.
Will try chocolate and other flavours next. Haha..I am so happy.

Blackforest cake

Made an eggless black forest cake. Three layers of sponge and filled with whipped cream and cherries. I dropped the kirsch as children were going to eat it but also it is hard to find..hehehe.

I think it turned out well, was not too sweet. Made it for the moon festival, though it has nothing to do with moon cakes or the festival. I just like making it.

Hmm let see what will be next.

Cinnamon Scrolls

Made up some cinnamon scrolls.

Green Tea Spiral Pastry

I made this spiral pastry which I thought looked so beautiful. The different layers turned out quite nice. It was not hard to make but from memory the outcome was a little bitter. I added a little too much green tea powder at the time. The pastry was filled with red bean paste.

Pipeworks with a mini cake

Had a light fruit and covered with RTR. After it had hardened, piped some icing.
I first attempted with a shell border and a grapevine design. The icing was too wet and couldn't control it. It didn't turn out the way I wanted,so wipe it off the cake and started again.

Second time round I piped a pearl border. The sides a decorated with a five pointed star and fleur de lis. The upper edge is with a herring bone and topped with hearts.
I feel it turned out much better than my grapevines.