Di-licious

I've been missing in action.  The winter school holidays started and all of a sudden I found myself out of the house for two weeks. Away with girlfriends, staying with family, away from my laptop and reliable internet and out of mobile phone range. Excuses, excuses! In my rush to go gallivanting around the countryside, I forgot to show off the third birthday cake I made for Mr Di-licious - the Country Music cake! It's true Mr Di-licious loves both kinds of music as well as Earl Grey Tea and chocolate - so this cake for his party at home with a few friends was the perfect opportunity for me to have a little fun at his expense. This chocolate cake (using my favourite chocolate party cake recipe) is filled with salted dulce de leche and covered in dark chocolate ganache. The blue base tile, numbers and 'wooden paling' letters are made out of fondant.  The letters are hand cut and textured with a leaf veiner. I used biscuit cutters to cut out the numbers...

Making one cake for the man you love is hard. Try making three to celebrate his 40th birthday! Unlike a normal cake order where the client specifies the flavour, shape, filling and decoration, Mr Di-licious simply said “Surprise me”. Humph....I think that’s worse. One cake down and the next needed in only a few days, inspiration finally struck one morning in the shower – make him an Earl Grey tea flavoured cake. Brilliant! My first scan of the web found lots of tea cakes but they were more church picnic than milestone birthday. It’s a celebration cake and in my world that means a creamy filling and chocolate. Chocolate and Earl Grey?  Suspend belief and take it from me: it works mate... it does! Time was short so instead of experimenting, I let my eyes do the walking through Google Images to find a recipe I could use. I was instantly smitten by a cake by Cultivate Online : The Queen’s Earl Grey Fudge Cake - a chocolate and earl grey tea cake, filled with earl grey fl...

Who doesn’t love a teddy bear? I still have my first teddy. My late grandfather gave it to me when I was born and I in turn passed it onto Olive when she was born. It’s certainly seen better days but it fills my heart with joy to see her cuddle a memento from my own childhood. When invited to bring some cupcakes to a teddy bear picnic birthday party, I just had to do something cute. And nothing could be cuter than bear paw prints. The fondant ‘badges’ look impressive and are easy to rustle up ahead of time. They’re as simple as one, two, three: 1. Colour your fondant 2. Roll out and cut big circles, medium circles and small circles. 3. Using water and a paint brush, stick the paw print onto the large circle. If you want to get fancy, you could squeeze the medium and small circles to create ovoid shapes for a more organic paw print design. Maybe you could make these ‘pawesome’ cupcakes for someone ‘beary’ special to you?   Chocolate Teddy Bear Paw Cupcakes Cake rec...

I guess it happens in every social circle but we’ve re-entered the zone of milestone birthdays – this time it’s the big 4-0. In February three close friends were turning forty within a week of one another. I remember them negotiating dates for parties months before. Invitations were issued, RSVPs sent and before I knew it I had three cake orders, three weeks in a row – all for big celebration cakes. I have this memory of my Dad’s fortieth birthday cake back in 1981. Mum ordered it from a bakery – it was a huge square cake, possibly chocolate, filled with mock cream and coated in chocolate sprinkles. Happy 40th Birthday Dennis was piped on top by a practiced hand. Whilst the fashion of cake decoration has evolved mostly for the better, a big square layer cake remains a classic for big celebrations. My interpretation of the ultimate milestone birthday cake is a triple chocolate layer cake. Three 11inch square layers of di-licious chocolate cake, sandwiched with chocolate butter...

I had a minor catastrophe in the kitchen this week - I split my ganache! I followed the same method I've always used: * 2:1 ratio of dark chocolate to cream * roughly chop the chocolate and put into a bowl * heat the cream to just boiling point in a small saucepan * pour the hot cream over the chocolate * stir until melted. It looked fine. It was lumpy initially but did become smooth after a lot of stirring. I allowed it to rest overnight but the next day it had a film of oil over the top. I tried to remix it, heating it gently in the microwave on low power. It turned grainy and lumpy. I tried mixing in some more cream. It looked worse. It was unusable. Time to cut my losses and start again. So what went wrong? Ganache is a notorious for being temperamental. You are emulsifying two seemingly un-mixable ingredients with the aid of heat and aeration. A lot can and often does go wrong. With a little guidance from some of my learned friends on Planet Cake's Tea Party...

What's a birthday without gifts and cake? So why not kill two birds with one stone and present your lucky friend with a gift-cake? Inspired by Sugarbloom's Tall Cupcake Tutorial , I thought I'd try my hand at covering a cupcake with fondant to make a birthday gift for a special friend. Never mind the fact that I had never covered an entire cake with fondant before.... Well, 9 cupcakes later I think I nailed it: The mini cake is actually one of my lemon delicious cupcakes, coated in white chocolate ganache and pale pink fondant. I didn't make the pink and white flowers myself, but I did pipe the monogram (another first with Royal Icing mix). The cake was packaged in a matching gift box with gorgeous Cristina Re vellum paper and brown grosgrain ribbon. I sacrificed a lot of cupcakes along the way, but I did learn some things in the procees: ganache is better than buttercream under fondant you really do need to let the ganache set before you try to smooth fo...