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

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.

Cake boulders

What to do with imperfect rustic-looking cake pops? Call them cake boulders and add some crushing effects. LOL.

This cake more epic than the last!

If I thought the dolly cake was epic..... all I can say is, "Phew!" I couldn't wait to apply the skills I learned at Jo Binkin's 3D novelty cake class last weekend (thanks Latorta for organising the class), so this is my attempt at a 3D cake.... well, 2 cakes - the piggy is essentially a 3-tier cake carved into shape and the bottle is a small cake on its own, torted and carved into a bottle. 

25 fondant lace butterfly cupcakes to go with the birthday cake.

Dressing Little Miss Piggy. LOL...

Halfway dressing Little Miss Piggy, the TNT truck arrived with my new iPhone 5.... exciting!! Okay, Piggy will just have to wait while I rush off to the Optus shop to get a micro-SIM. The phone is so new that there are no accessories to go with it. Even the new Canberra Apple Store has yet to stock up on screen protectors and covers. Seriously contemplating making a makeshift cover out of bubble wrap, we spotted some screen protectors and phone covers at JB Hifi. Not much of a choice - only sunset yellow...yuck! Oh well, that'll do for now.

Putting off tinkering with my new phone, I finally finished Piggy. Here she is with her sunny daisy overalls and bottle of wine.

Add some butterflies...

All dressed up and off to Sydney she goes.

BTW, this is the cake I learned to make at Jo Binkin's class last weekend.

Mudslide

I made a chocolate mud cake with chocolate ganache for work morning tea to celebrate the end of 2 excruciating months of monitoring reporting. It's a 6-monthly monitoring report so just as we finished, it's time to start the next.... oh dear! This cake stemmed from my innate Catholic guilt coz everyone in my team worked hard on the report.... everyone, except me... haha. So, to make my team (and mainly myself) feel better about my lack of involvement, I whipped this cake together in record time. Unlike the epic cake, this was put together overnight and as you can see, it's very sloppy work. Actually, it was worse coz I had chocolate ganache everywhere but hubby Greg wouldn't let me take a photo until he cleaned up the mess. 

The farm sinking in the mudslide has special significance for our work team, especially the sliding chooks. In the course of our work, we have to deal with very demanding stakeholders, so the chooks and the farmer and the farmer's wife sorta represent these stakeholders. Hahaha.... great stress reliever, I'd say. It's a stress reliever for me to make them and a stress reliever for my team mates to eat them. This is what we call a win-win situation. The barn and chooks are sculpted from my favourite Kellogg's LCM breakfast bars and covered with fondant - I think it's time Kellogg's contact me for sponsorship (hint, hint!).

Epic!

"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"

Just like Gone With the Wind, this cake is epic! It's a 4-day saga.

Day 1, Thursday: Bake the cake. It's a super rich and dense chocolate mud cake from my Planet Cake book. Check out the super rich dark Lindt chocolate, 70% cocoa. Add to that, another 50gms of decadent Koko Black cocoa powder, eggs, and only a smidgen of flour but almost half a kilo of caster sugar! This is no cake. This is chocolate, pure and simple! By the end of Day 1, my house smells like a chocolate factory! Eat your heart out, Willy Wonka!

As if that's not enough of chocolate, add a layer of Darel Lea dark rocky road filling!

Day 2, Friday: Get 1.3kg of premium white chocolate... no, it's not a typo. It really was 1.3 KILOS!

Melt white choc with pure cream to get a smooth ganache. Slice the cake in half, fill with ganache and chopped rocky road. Sandwich cake together and leave to set overnight.

Day 3, Saturday: Ice the cake with white chocolate ganache prepared the day before. This is where hubby's cement rendering skills come in really handy...

      

Make sure the ganache is as smooth as a baby's bottom, or in this case, a mother's boob. LOL. Leave to harden overnight.

   

Day 4, Sunday: Decorate, decorate, decorate. Start with dressing up the gown in fondant...

   

It helps to make a template first. I basically use the template to create panels of the gown and attach them one panel at a time. This is because I simply don't have a rolling pin large enough to roll out a giant circle for the entire gown.

Add the doll, finish off the rest of the gown and accessorise. Doll's hair styled courtesy of Emma Walsh. Thank you so much for doing such a great job. When I first asked Emma to style her hair, she thought it was the weirdest request she's ever received. Emma is a qualified hairstylist and has done a lot of hair but never a dolly's hair. Still, she gave it her best and look at how glamorous she made my dolly.

         

Thanks to hubby, Greg for the great job in piping these royal icing flowers!

Day 5, Monday: A cake is meant to be eaten so Dolly's minutes are definitely numbered!

 Bring out the knife!

Attack!!

"I'll definitely not be hungry after eating you!" says the Birthday girl, Emma Wright.

BU-WAHAHAHAHA.......

First slice off Dolly's back...

Dolly's back all gone!