A cake of Purple

I've had a pretty awful cold for the last week so I've mostly been out of action.  It is my mother in laws birthday and with only a small amount of notice I was asked to make a cake for after her birthday dinner.

It is a carrot cake with buttercream filling and icing.  This is a Confetti Cakes recipe for carrot cake.  It is made so differently from any carrot cake that I've ever had.  I put it down to regional differences.  I cant wait to taste it to see what it tastes like.

The 'buttercream' actually contains no butter! My father in law is dairy intolerant and quite by chance I decided to make this carrot cake and was about half the way through making it when I realised that it contained no dairy what so ever.  This was quite exciting because I always feel so rude making something he cant eat. I though oh help, I suppose I should try to make it completely dairy free as well.  As I didn't have a lot of time (you know 3 kids including 1 baby and all) I opted for a buttercream finish as I didn't have to time to plan and make decorations with enough time to dry sufficiently. Anyhow this buttercream is 1 part Olivani (here in NZ one of the few completely dairy free marg's) and 2 parts icing sugar.  I had looked around on chef google and had heard that if you beat margarine to much it can split, which presented a problem.  I wanted as whiter icing as possible. It's filled and partly crumb coated with the white (dont ask me why i crumb coated it with white as i'm not really sure... baby brain)  While mixing I was watching like a hawk for signs of splitting and I thought it was coming up just a bit dry - this is where I would normally reach for the milk. Right dairy free.... so had a bit of thought about it and realised I had some glucose syrup (corn syrup) and added some of that.  It must have had a stablising effect on it or something because I beat the living daylights out of that buttercream and it never split.  It is actually a beautifully firm icing.  I was concerned that because it was margarine that it wouldn't stand or it would droop and look like it was melting or something. But it's actually really good!  I flavoured this buttercream with lorann's flavouring oil in cheesecake flavour so the icing tastes very similar to a cream cheese icing.  Awesome right?!

This will be cut tonight after dinner tonight. I'm excited that I get to taste a new cake recipe and that it's completely dairy free so everyone at the table gets to have some.

My first decorated cake

This was my first ever decorated cake.  It was for my eldest's 3rd Birthday.









I enjoyed making this one so much that I thought i would continue to make pretty cakes.  That was my whole objective 'pretty cakes'  I am somewhat of a magpie when it comes to pretty things.  I think the hardest part of this cake for me (apart from the hand cramp!) was getting the colours right.  You can see that they aren't quite right but not too bad.  There is gaps between the piping but while they were there I promise that it didn't look that gappy in real life!  I think it was the flash from the camera.  This was also before i knew about crumb coating.  I have done a few of these flat style buttercreamed cakes.  But we'll catch up with that at some point.

There is a fundraiser for a local woman with breast cancer who has been off work now for 6 months so things are getting a bit tight in a couple of weeks that I thought i would do a cake for.  I am thinking about doing a ivory rolled fondant finish with the pink breast cancer ribbon on it.  I'm unsure of flavours as this is the perfect time to experiment.

Valentines Cake

So this cake was made because I was going through withdrawl after the birth of my 3rd baby.  It had been quite some months since I had made one.  There is a photo where you can see i had some real trouble getting my fondant cover to behave.  It was drying as I was putting it while trying to do homework with my eldest and ignoring a baby crying in order to get out the door for a parent teacher interview...  Recipe for disaster, yes? 

 The feet are my middle childs.

This cake was all kinds of wrong really. The ruffle heart - the discs were too thick, the cover was awful, I didn't paint the butterflies in any fashion, the balls around the base werent quite right either.  It was also the first time that I cranked up my cricut mini - learning curve. 

This is the photo.  See those terrible folds?!?

I also learnt that I'm not a particular fan of regalice fondant.  I'm sorry if you are but I'm not really.  The red and chocolate are both nice tasting but I dont like the way they behave.  Far too elastic and tear too easily - and if you are using it for modelling,  it never really dries properly even with copious amounts of Tylose added!  If you are in the mood you could scroll down to the duck shooting cake and see the maimai (shed that the men hide from ducks and shoot from) is made from the chocolate.  I made the pieces on the tuesday ready for use of friday with heaps of tylose in it.  The pieces still had a bit of give to them and I was very relieved that they didn't bend.  Rant over.  I still have a bit in the cupboard so I am learning how to deal with it a lot better than I did.

The cake went to my eldests class at school.  They actually made it stretch to the entire school. Its not a huge feat though - the school is 51 students. 

My favourite cake so far.

This is my favourite cake I've made so far.  It was based of a tutorial in a cake mag (can't remember which one) and was my first time making and using a Swiss Meringue Butter Cream (SMBC).  It was done using a petal tip, wilton 106? I can't remember off the top of my head. 

It was made for my Brother In Laws birthday.  The poor man will more than likely get my experimental cakes for the rest of my life as his birthday comes right after a very busy period where I do not get to make any cakes for a few months. So instead I spend that time thinking about cakes and what i might be able to make.

I probably make half and half of buttercream and fondant cakes, even though my preference is for buttercream.  I will one day be one of those clever people who make SMBC look like fondant. I like the versatility of it but most of all i like the taste!  

This cake was apple and cinnamon and the SMBC was a brown sugar SMBC.  It was delicious.  I did learn about the fact that I absolutely cannot use 'cool' cakes with SMBC I must use cold cakes.  As my oven is retarded and cant bake deep cakes (really anything deeper than a cupcake - i have to split normal cakes into two tins or they dont cook well) and I had tried to bake one deep one and even though it looked cooked and I had had it in there for a half hour longer and tested it with a skewer; when i released it from the tin complete outside cooked - and then....  It collapsed like a sink hole.  It was still raw on the inside - not cooked at all in the middle.  So I made another batter up and split it into my sandwich tins so the cakes were done in the middle of the day instead of the beginning so were not cold enough!

A Duck shooter's cake

 This blog is pretty much a visual diary for myself of some cakes that i make.  Over the next week or so I plan to catch up on most of the cakes that I have photographed, which i must admit is only a few of the one's I've made.  But for today I will upload some photo's of a birthday cake for tomorrow. 

One day when i figure the photo thing better I will relocate these things to my satisfaction. 




As tomorrow is the beginning of duckshooting this cake is duck hunting themed.  The ducks are my first ever attempt at modelling (and i think not bad!) also the camo covering is also my first go at it.  I may do this again and post it up as a tutorial.  It's really very simple.  I would also do the camo different next time.  I'm not sure why i didn't realise but it spread out much more than i though so the 'pieces' are much bigger than i intended.