Cupcake Day is round the corner

Due to the frantic monitoring report, we've deferred our RSPCA Cupcake Day till Monday, 3 Sept. We have cupcake orders totalling 200. Emma and Alex are busy baking cupcakes this weekend and I've prepped the cake boxes all ready for cupcake deliveries on Monday, my 200 fondant puppies are ready to leave home.... awww..... (sniff!)

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!

Busy weekend... phew!

It's such a busy weekend. I made a bunch of cake toppers, more cupcake toppers and finished my first cake decorating project, with a little bit of help from hubby..... well, quite a bit of help coz Greg took care of all the bits that needed chocolate cooking or chocolate melting, and there's a LOT of chocolate in this cake. 1.3kg of white chocolate just for the ganache frosting! I can't post any pics of the cake yet coz it's for a birthday surprise tomorrow but stay tuned, there'll be pics tomorrow. :-)

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.

Multicultural Multicoloured puppies!

100 multicultural multicoloured puppies. Psychedelic! It's been a busy sweatshop weekend.

And, 2 "knitted" bunnies to add to my knitting collection for Alex. Can you see their button eyes?

Knitting with fondant

In addition to pink malamutes I also "knitted" some fondant. My friend Alex is a keen knitter and she's asked for some knitting theme cupcake toppers, so I got the ideas and instructions from here: http://veganyumyum.com/2007/06/knit-night-cupcakes/

This is SO retro. Alex is going to love this, she's such a retro chick.

 Like grandma's bundle of knitting. LOL.

I also made some retro buttons complete with wood grain look. Yes, they're fondant and completely edible. Honestly!

Okay, sweat shop is closed for the day. Stay tuned for more psychedelic puppies tomorrow.

Multicultural puppies - watermelon malamutes

Watermelon pink malamutes to add to my multicultural puppies collection.

Multicultural puppies!

The start of my range of multicultural puppies, starting with orange puppies tonight. Will be making heaps of different coloured puppies this weekend so watch this space.

Also making hearts to go with each puppy. The best heart cutters are the PME ones. This one is the smallest from a set of 3 sizes. PME is a UK-brand of cake decorating tools. Bloody expensive but very good quality. Well worth the extra expense. PME cutters make very clean cuts, so less time spent in smoothing out the edges.