Nicky's Nifty Fifty Cake!

This cake was commissioned by a very loving daughter for her mothers 50th birthday.

This is my biggest cake so far, and I think it came up well!
The brief was that it was to be fun and funky, brightly coloured, feature red and make a big deal of the fact that this was a 50th birthday! My favourite part of this cake is the red curly 50 on top... It was heaps of fun to make, and I think it achieved emphasising which birthday it was in celebration of! I also love the curly wires - it tied the cake together nicely and get it some dimension.

I did change the top tier decoration as I felt it didn't do the occasion justice... The pictures with the extra balls and sparkles and sprouting bits was the finished tier :)

Oh, and the last pic is Nicky's cake all dressed up and ready to go! Finally got my packaging sorted!

All three tiers of this cake were chocolate mud cake, iced with milk chocolate ganache - a deviation from the usual dark chocolate, but was very yummy.

I got an email from my client Kiera the day after...

"Hi Claire, the cake was a huge success!! Everyone loved it and it blew Mum away!! I still can't believe how beautiful it was!! .... Thanks again, I really appreciate it! -Kiera"

Mission accomplished! :)

Cheeky Monkeys!!

A couple of us friends have a long running saga about a stuffed monkey named, appropriately, Munky. Munky gets to go on many adventures as various members of the group travel, and has so far been to the Melbourne F1 Grand Prix (see below), Fiji, the UK, to name a few, and next week will be headed to Canada with me!

Munky's human, Toby, has been hassling me to create a Munky tribute for some time... So here it is!

Banana choc chip cupcakes with Vanilla Italian Butter Cream Icing. The monkeys, faces and bananas are all handmade from sugar paste.

My favourite bits are the flat monkey face, and the little guy holding his tail looking super happy :) Hope you like them T-man!!!!

Farewell Leo Old Chap!!

A dear friend of ours, Leo (cutting the cake below), has decided to head home to the UK to family and to pursue a new career path as an aircraft engineer. This is his farewell cake!

It was a carrot cake, filled with cream cheese butter cream, and iced with white chocolate ganache and fondant. Mmm!

The decoration is all handmade sugar paste, and the fondant was embossed with scrolls to look like wisps of wind. My favorite bits of this cake are the flags and the girls cute bum... I figured that a naked girl holding Leo's favourite football teams shield might be a winner :)

We'll miss you Leo the Lion!!

Welcome home girls... Hope it was a hoot :)

My baby sister Prue (bottom picture, centre) went on an 8 month world trip with her best friend (and my adopted little sister :) ) Lisa (bottom picture, left). Prue's farewell cake is the one featured in 'Humble Beginnings'.

This was the cake for their welcome home in July. I know I seem to have a preoccupation with birds on welcome home cakes, but I think it is a nice theme for a homecoming, and the girls love owls.

The bottom tier of this cake was white chocolate mud with white chocolate ganache, and the top tier was coconut cake with dark chocolate ganache... tasted like a bounty bar, yummy. The tree trunk and rolled roses were chocolate paste, and the rest of the decorations, including the owls were handmade out of fondant.

It was a hit, and the girls were well chuffed :)

Death by Chocolate

This is a chocolate sour cream cake,
filled and covered with chocolate ganache, and then
finished with a dark and white tempered chocolate collar.

The bow on top is also tempered dark chocolate, printed with a star cocoa powder pattern.

There were 2 versions of this cake; one that simply had some jaffas on to lend some colour, the other that was embellished with fresh gerberas.

Happy Birthday Nelli!!!

This was a birthday cake for a special girl who brings my family together every Wednesday night! Manelle (Nelli) is our local pub trivia hostess with the mostest, and it was her birthday in mid July.

This chocolate mud cake is covered in fondant, then wrapped up like a gift with a fondant ribbon and bow, and the cute girl figurine perched on the edge is sugar paste too. Check out her hair though - it's chocolate! Yummy!

Happy Toppers

These little guys are practice pieces that have been inspired by queries from people about cakes for specific events. Hopefully they will end up on a cake as some incarnation of these versions in the future!

The teddy (approx 10cm tall) was inspired by a request for a christening cake for a little girl, and
the martians were a result of a request for a science
themed cake... my little cute addition :)
They are entirely sugar paste!

Up, Up and Away!!

My boyfriend, Paul, and a friend of ours Nick are involved with a business called Flight Simulator 737, basically an aircraft simulator where the public can go to feel like they are getting a real life experience in an aircraft flight deck. This thing is amazing! In May this year they had a media day for the B105 morning crew, and requested some cupcakes for the morning tea.

This was the finished product of the flight themed, 42 strong cupcake tower. They were a mixture of fondant and butter cream cupcakes with handmade, sugar paste toppers of various types. There were planes, wings and clouds in lots of different combinations.

The cupcakes themselves were white chocolate; the fondant ones also had white choc ganache under the fondant, and the butter cream was vanilla.

They were a hit! That is, they were once people stopped feeling bad about actually eating them!

Elegant Cupcake Tower

This was the second part of cupcake boot camp; a tower of fondant iced cupcakes.

Each element was handmade from fondant and entirely edible. The cupcake stand itself was also iced in matching colours to compliment the overall finish.