Where I work, on your birthday you bring in a cake to share with everyone but if truth be told, any day is a good day for cake in our office. Recently it was K’s birthday and the cake she made was an Orange and Almond cake. After the first few bites, there were a few requests for the recipe and I decided to give this moist, gluten free cake a go myself last weekend.
Peach Ombre Petal Cake
I was lucky enough to be asked to make the cake to celebrate the 90th birthday of my friend’s grandmother. When the G-Star was asked what cake she would like for her birthday, the answer was for the same as the wedding cake. The decoration had to be different so instead of piping roses on the outside as I did for the wedding cake, I used two techniques I had been wanting to use on this scale for a while – ombre and the petal technique. The result is this Peach Ombre Petal Cake… red velvet of course.
Purple Corset Cake
One of the hubby’s best mates turned 40 at the beginning of March and the hubby came home one night and asked if I would like to make the cake for J’s birthday. Of course I said yes, and then he asked if I could make the cake in the shape of breasts. Even though I haven’t really made a lot of “novelty” cakes, well, make that none whatsoever, I thought what the heck and started planning.
Now when you type into Mr Google breast/boob/corset cake there are a plethora of images at your disposal, some of which are a little bit to tacky for my liking (there is no way to make a nipple look good on a cake in my opinion) but I found some inspiration in a couple of cakes, and a corset from an online lingerie shop and proceeded to order the fondant, tins and a few other bits and pieces from my favourite supplier Cake Decorating Central. With all of this in hand, and J’s favourite colour, I proceeded to make a purple corset cake.
Lamingtons and Sprinkletons
There is a rule, in my house anyway, that on Australia Day you must eat a lamington. I did kind of break that rule this year, although we did eat Pavlova instead, but I think I more than made up for it by making a whole bunch of them a couple of days later.
A friend of mine from Mexico Victoria was staying with us at the time, and they do things a little differently down there by filling their lamingtons with jam so I made half of the batch the traditional way with just the plain cake dipped in chocolate and covered with coconut, and the remainder filled with jam and covered in coconut. I did run out of coconut so the remainder of the jam lamingtons were covered with coloured sprinkles, hence Sprinkletons were born.
Lemon Sour Cream Cake with Pine Nuts
The hubby and I have a little addiction to pine nuts. We will put them in everything we can whether it be pasta, lasagne or salad. However, I have never had them in a sweet dish.
Imagine my delight when I bought Classic Cakes by The Australian Women’s Weekly with one of the very first cakes in the book being a Lemon Sour Cream Cake which just happens to be topped with pine nuts. The oven was calling.
Southern Bombe
Another one of the cookbooks I purchased recently was SprinkleBakes by Heather Baird. I came across Heather’s blog when I was looking for red recipes to use up the extra food colouring purchased for My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake and I made the Red Spiral Biscuits, also featured in the book.
As I was flicking through the book when it arrived, one particular recipe stood out and I knew I had the perfect occasion to make it. The recipe was for a Southern Bombe and the occasion was yet another September birthday celebration for two of my beautiful friends.
Checker Board Cake with Honeycomb Icing
As is the case for many people, I have a lot of birthday’s amongst my family and friends in the month of September as well as Father’s Day. This year, we decided to combine my dad and brother’s birthday plus Father’s Day into one Sunday lunch at our house. However my brother decided he would go to the snow instead (and learn how to fall on his butt), so it ended up being all about our dad’s.
Red Velvet Rose Cake for Inner Wheel
In May I was asked to recreate the red velvet rose cake from My Best Friend’s Wedding Cake by the mother of the bride for a luncheon of the local Inner Wheel group in August.
The cake was to be predominately the same as the wedding cake, however as the symbol of the Inner Wheel is a red rose, a few of these were scattered in amongst the white.
Christmas 2011 – Bûche de Noël
The hubby and I moved into our new house the week before Christmas in 2010. On that day, our parents made a reservation for Christmas 2011 to be held at our house. That was fine by us as we both love to cook (needless to say, our house was basically built around our kitchen)
So in the months before Christmas we were working out a menu, and most importantly, what the dessert centrepiece would be.
My Best Friend’s Wedding… Cake
In February I had the utmost pleasure of making the wedding cake for one of my best friend’s on her wedding day. I have never EVER made a wedding cake before, and given I had only got married myself in October last year, I knew how much pressure there is for it to be perfect (after the annoyance we went through with ours, but that’s another story).