Di-licious

When decorating birthday cakes, I love finding a way to make them a little less ordinary.  My almost mother in law (Mr Di-licious and I haven’t made it down the aisle, yet) loves quilling . I’ve never done quilling myself but I thought it would make an excellent design feature for her 70 th birthday cake. Quilling is essentially rolled up strips of paper, arranged into beautiful patterns. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to emulate the effect with thin strips of fondant.  A couple of attempts later, I realised I really needed to use gumpaste. The strips need to be rolled out really thin, allowed to dry slightly and then rolled up– quilled. I made a variety of different shapes in different colours as well as a stylised 7-0. The final design didn’t follow an existing pattern – it just sort of happened.  If you look closely you can see flower shapes in there. The tablecloth idea was actually a work around.  Originally I’d planned to cover the whole ganached cake

Hoot Hoot!! How cute are these adorable owl cupcake toppers? I whipped these up last week for a special surprise birthday delivery for my niece. I've been making cupcakes for Hannah's birthdays for the last three years.  Its always interesting to look back at photos of earlier decorating efforts - I've come a long way.  Last year was sort of the p ièce de résistance   - the famed Golden Snitch cupcakes for her Harry Potter themed party. This year we were getting ready for our epic drive to Byron Bay for my sister's wedding , so we didn't make it to Bendigo.  So no Di-licious cupcakes for Hannah.  At least, that's what she thought! Last week I arranged to come and stay the night with Olive and I brought along half a dozen cute owl cupcakes - SURPRISE! We both agree that the embossed ones make the greatest impact but the plain pink ones are cute too. I re-purposed a scrapbooking card embosser to create the embossing effect (cheaper than the cak

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Drive to Byron Bay for my sister's wedding so we could transport the wedding cake I'd made her. A six day break where we spent four days in the car. Insane right? Did I mention I made a wedding cake? Not your quintessential tiered, fondant creation mind you.  In a nod to our Norwegian heritage, my sister asked me to make a traditional wedding cake called kransekake. If you haven’t seen one before, kransekake isn’t actually a cake; it’s a tower of eighteen sweet almond macaroon rings – think baked marzipan – ‘glued’ together with royal icing.  Instead of cutting the cake, the bride and groom lift the top ring.  The number of rings that stay attached to the top ring is supposed to signify how many children the happy couple will be blessed with.  The rings are then broken up into pieces (starting from the bottom) and served with coffee.  The dough is a cinch to make but its the baking that brings many a cook unstuc