"Cute"

I have to say that when I design something I often to gravitate towards cute.  It's difficult, I grew up exposed to the likes of Sanrio - the Japanese stationery, giftware company that gave the world Hello Kitty, My Melody and of course, my personal favourite...........Little twin stars.

Though, I like to think that my style isn't as saccharine, I do admit to having a love affair with the pastel colours! 

Strangely enough, for me this week, there was a bit of that sort of 'kawaii-ness' about a couple of orders.

A birthday cake for Kluay (who's nickname means banana) dreaming on her banana moon, and the cute as a button baby shower cake for Alicia (who is Spanish and hence the red and the hand fan).

It was only natural then, to allow the cuteness to take over and carry it onto classes, starting off with the very adorable Ted on a Pillow cake.

and even more cuteness in cupcake class

Heeehee.... what came first?  The chicken or the egg?  Just in time for Easter!  Enough of the cute already?

Ok, here are other sweet things from the week.  A wonderful dessert table graced by our macarons & mini cupcakes at the blu grill.

A novelty cake for Gary Roberts (MD of Nova 93.7).  Apparently Gary irons all of his own shirts and is very particular about the settings on his iron.  So instead of a fancy new one, we made him his first iron.  Something retro from the 1960s!

Looks like Gary got the joke.  Making novelty cakes is always so much fun!

Love,

Blue ribbon

When you were little, did the adults tell you that if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again?

A famous quote by William E. Hickson.  What would he know - he only wrote parts of the British national anthem.... ;)  Perhaps these days, it's more likely to be “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.” W. C. Fields

So, when the fabulous Glenda goaded me into entering the Royal show again....I was really not a happy little camper.  The idea of spending another weekend unable to lift my arms wasn't really high on my list of to dos.

 

 My arms felt like they no longer belonged to me after this marathon effort in 2009 when I covered these 3 cakes (plus a miniature not in the pic) all in one day for my then Royal show entries.  Definately not the most intelligent thing I've done.......and probably why I refused to enter last year.

Still, the voice of my Aunt pops up at times like this "if you don't compete, how will you know how good you are?"  Yes, Asian relatives are good that way...........

So, off to work.  This year I entered the Open section of the Celebration cake and was delighted with a win for the fantasy carousel cake.

At the start and the design process

Panels for the centre pole - these were stencilled before being joined together by royal icing

 A whole heap of Peggy Porschen inspired roses that never got used.

The beautiful silicon mold that kept giving me horses with broken legs.

 

Adding the fine details to the carousel horses

Painting the gold accents on the hand piped column details

Viola!!

And closer up:

And the blue ribbon!!

Glenda's amazing Peggy Porschen meets Ben Ron Israel wedding cake also came in with an award.  Such an gorgeous cake, with so many beautiful details!

 

The moral of the story: 

If at first you don't suceed, try again.  

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As part of exhibiting at the Royal show, I was also excited to be asked to run a demonstration on the first weekend.  Bright on a Sunday morning, I headed to the Cookery Pavilion and made a whole heap of bright coloured chickies and gave them to excited littlies who were interested enough to sit and watch.

I can just imagine the poor parents that had to hold onto a little sugar bird (so it didnt break) after the novelty had worn off, whilst these kids went off to enjoy the rest of the show.  I hope they all made the trip home safely!

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Exploring the cakelet

The Americans truly come up with the coolest stuff sometimes.

Joining the Flickr community (photo sharing site) a few years ago, I came across a really fantastic tag line of Amy Eilert who starting making cakes pretty much the same time that I did.  Amy calls her company - Cupcake Envy, and her tag line is "my cupcakes are better than your cupcakes".  Taking single serve cakes to a whole new level of creativity, her creations are now known in the cake world as cakelets.

Once upon a time, cupcakes were all I made, and I adored them.  But apart from the occasional foray into a pot of flowers, I haven't experimented much with cakelets.  Until this one.

A life sized cricket ball took care of that.  It was such fun to make and so enjoyable to see something recreated in sugar that looks remarkably like the real thing.

 Cakelet was 8cm in diameter and made from lemon cake and white chocolate ganache.

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Whilst on the topic of making cakes for fun, I also ticked off finally making something from my new book.

Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented

The Aunt Sassy cake really took my fancy.  The Americans have a palate that enjoys a lot of sweet/savoury combinations.  Like peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate coated pretzels to name a few as well as heavily spiced things like cinnamon chewing gum.   So in general, very different flavour combinations to what we are used to.  The Aunt Sassy cake is a pistachio cake paired with a honey buttercream.  The buttercream in the book has a base of a type of milk custard/roux which is then whipped into the butter.  The cake, was made with a combination of butter and shortening.  Another ingredient seldomly used in Australia.  All in all, it seemed like an interesting one to try.

The cake was easy enough to put together.  The buttercream came together in the end.  Does it look like the cake from the book?

Close enough.  (you can see it in the big picture along with the authors of the book)

Verdict?  Because we are not used to the taste of shortening, I found the cake had a slight 'stick to the roof of your mouth' aftertaste typical of shortening.  It was however, very light and had a lovely texture.  The buttercream was lovely fresh, but split after a couple of days in the fridge.  Delicious cold, but has a slight floury taste due to the large amount of flour in the custard.

Interesting to make, but I'll probably stick to baking with recipes by Warren Brown or Rose Levy Beranbaum.

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A short reminder that our Classic 101 - Buzzy Bees class and Designer cupcakes classes are running 11 & 12 June weekend from Epicurious in Subiaco.

A couple of spots are still available for Buzzy Bees, so we'd love to see you there!!

and a look at our new and improved Novelty 101 - Ted's Pillow

The new courses inlcuding French macaron classes will be listed on the Cake Love website in the next week or so!

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And I'll leave you with the pic of the first full rainbow of this season that I've seen.

Hope you all have a marvelous weekend!