Noah in the Bath

Want to make your very own Noah-in-the-Bath? Head on to Learn Cake Decorating Online for my tutorial. Yes! My tutorial got featured!! How awesome is that?

http://www.learncakedecoratingonline.com/noah-bath-cake-topper/

Australian Cake Decorating Championships 2014

My entry at the Australian Cake Decorating Championships at the Cake Bake and Sweets Show in Sydney this weekend. We had to leave at 6am yesterday to drive 3 hours to Sydney to submit my entry. I came at second place. Would've loved to be first but second is still great considering this is my first time entering a competition. 

The theme was "Nature's Best" so I've made a bobblehead of a famous UK cake artist (with her permission of course!), and she's Mother Nature in an apple orchard airbrushing the trees and apples to bring out their best colours. Don't know how clear you can see it in these pics, but I made her balanced precariously on a ladder that's tipping over and she's sorta lost her airbrush which is floating in the air and as a result, made splotches of paint on the tree and ground. 

Incidentally, the splotches are in the shape of her logo - that was her only condition of granting me permission to use her as my model, and that is to feature her logo. Please visit her facebook and give her a like! https://www.facebook.com/DinkydoodleDesigns

Golfing Granny

Catching up!

I haven't posted in a while. Been a busy year. Don't know where to begin so I'll start with my latest bobblehead - here's Slash made for Noah's personal groomer's birthday.

Oh baby!

Two pregnant workmates, both due about the same time. So thought I'd try another topsy turvy, and this one is more topsy than my first attempt with the teapot. First, concept drawing using my iPad Autodesk Sketchbook Pro app. Love the app coz it works in layers. First layer is the base cake which is the toy box and teddy. Second layer the alphabet blocks. This way, if the topsy turvy doesn't work, I don't have to erase everything and start over; I simply erase the second layer and do the blocks again.

Toy box cake is a 6" square orange Madeira sponge, layered and covered with dark chocolate ganache. I cut out fondant rectangles to size and made some wood impressions.

Same thing with alphabet blocks in various colours.

Test out the angles...

Would have loved to add more toys and details but I had 2 novelty cakes to make that weekend, so it was quite a rush job.

Oh well, still got eaten!

Most epic one yet!

This is my most epic cake yet.... a standing bear cake. I'm really chuffed with how it turned out. It's a commissioned piece from my friend Alex for her sister's birthday. Her sister apparently likes Pedo Bear, which is rather inappropriate, I know... but clients do come with the weirdest requests! LOL. Although, Alex's original idea was to just bake a round glutten free dairy free chocolate cake and stick an edible image of Pedo on the cake. I talked her into this! Yes, I'm a sucker for punishment!

Start with watching an inspirational video by Bronwen Weber... do a search on You Tube. Bronwen's "cake bones" are available online but at $100, I decided to make my own... with a bit of help from Greg and Mr Bunnings, a nickname concocted by my buddies from the Facebook Australian Cake Decorating Network. When Greg and I were shopping for PVC bits at Bunnings, this very helpful staff member kept offering his help.... well, we stood looking at and pondering about pipes and bits for over an hour so I guess he realised we were kinda struggling. At his 3rd offer to help, I decided to explain what I planned to make. He scratched his head. I showed him a picture of Pedo Bear and he took off like a rocket.... hmmm.... I suppose that's the sort of effect Pedo Bear has on people.

From the bits and pieces, Greg made this cake skeleton...

Alex got her sister to bake her own birthday cake (smoooooth, Alex!)... It's gluten free, so a bit of a challenge to tort... oops!

Leaning tower of gluten free with cascading waterfall of ganache...

The best thing about chocolate cake is, you can sorta squish fallen bits back into the cake and glue them with ganache... like so...

Slap on a thick layer of ganache and no one's the wiser...

Meanwhile, Greg's prepping the cake board.

He even covered it with cake foil.... awww... looks like store bought!

So professional, it deserves a second look.

Assemble the skeleton, cover with foil. Oh, make sure you wash your bones thoroughly... we put ours through the dishwasher about 3 times.... afterall, they did come from the plumbing section in Bunnings!

Attach the cake board and secure it to the "hip bone"

Homemade LCMs, aka rice krispie treats, aka RKT. For this cake, I used up a giant box of rice bubbles, 3 bags of marshmallows and half a block of butter.... that's how much rice treats is needed to "flesh" out the bones.

One leg before and one leg after. The ganache helps the rice treats to stick to the bones.

Close-up of leg - doesn't that look like a bloody bone with ripped off flesh? Bu-wahahaha!

Greg's very good at packing in the rice treat flesh.

Legs done!

Under-belly done too, cling-wrap to hold everything in place and leave to set.

Once set, attach the spine and slide the cake down the spine, attach the shoulders and foil wrap.

Ganache the shoulders.

Rice treats wrapped around the shoulders and chest.

Plop on the head, which is a styrofoam ball. I used styro coz it's light and will stop the cake being too top heavy.

Okay.... the torso's looking elongated.... oops! Time to perform some surgery. Dislocate the shoulders, then saw off a chunk of the spine... easy... easy.....

Much better. Bear all ganached... well, almost... looks like skin, eh? LOL.

Close up of ganache after Greg and I have slapped it on...

Close up of ganache after smoothing. Best way to smooth ganache on a novelty cake is, wait for the initial slap-on layers to set and harden. Put on a pair of food-grade gloves, get ready a bowl of hot water. Dip fingers in hot water and use fingers to smooth.

Time for the fun stuff. Yet another good thing I stole from Greg (hehe)... his marble rolling pin. Nice and heavy, best ever to roll out fondant.

Stick on fondant one panel at a time.

Almost there...

Done! Sorry... as usual, I get carried away and forget to take pics but you get the picture. It's just the final touches. Pedo Bear says "you're too old for me" which is a good thing!