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!

Ooh la la!

I made edible toys yesterday. These are cake toppers for a little boy. They're going all the way to France! My fondant sculptures are seeing more of the world than I am... I'm envious. LOL. A friend at work commissioned me to do these for her grandson, Toma's birthday.  Took me all of yesterday to make them. They each started life as a single Kellogg's LCM breakfast bar.

The helicopter is for the birthday boy (see his name on the chopper?), and the pink beetle is for a girl who'll be at the party. I was informed there'll be 4 kids at the birthday bash - 2 boys with blonde wavy hair, a girl with dark curly hair and another boy with dark curly hair; hence, the reason for 4 toys and kids with matching hair.

The blades on the chopper actually spins! Yes, Toma can play with his food! Isn't that every kids' birthday wish?

The trickiest part now is to pack these really well so they survive their trip to France.

Everyone needs some TLC

These 2 cake toppers are my latest commissioned piece from Glenn. He in turn has been commissioned to make 2 "Thank you" cakes from someone who wants to present the cakes to nurses who have looked after his wife when she was sick. The girl in blue represents a caring nurse and the girl in pink represents a patient. These took me 8 continuous hours to make but it was fun. Sorry, no step-by-steps this time. Once I started I just didn't want to stop to take pics! I'm quite pleased with how they turned out so I call this my new "Everyone needs some TLC" range. LOL. 

p/s: inspiration for these came from Willow Tree figurines.