Time to celebrate!

Today the phone I got for my cake business started ringing so much that I immediately went to the Finnish Business Information System's website, and there it was: Kotileipomo Juhlakuu has been registered to the Trade Register!

With this news, also the cake-related posts from this blog will move to a new address, and from now on posts of cakes and edible decorations can be found in www.juhlakuu.fi/en/.

Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon cake, vol.2

This is already my second Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon cake. The first one I made for my brother last Christmas.

Although you'd think it would be easier to make this the second time, this too did take some hours to execute!

I have to admit that the cake decorator in me is already eagerly waiting for cooler weather and dryer indoor air. In this humid weather even the mobile air conditioning unit doesn't seem to help much, and this cake needed to be decorated partly inside the fridge, as the fondant started to sweat every time it was taken out. :)

Sugar fondant piggies

I was asked to make separate pig decorations such as in my Swimming pigs twix cake, so here they are.


I would have loved to change the design on more than one pig, but the rather humid weather decided against it - so the jump-diving pig will have to wait. :)



The diver pig comes with a snorkel, but I couldn't have that in the picture.

Angry Birds Christmas cake

This cake's assignment was interesting, as the cake was supposed to have "King Pig, ordinary pig, that red birds and 3 little blue birds watching tv on the sofa with Christmas hats on". The sofa however was agreed to be changed to planks.

The flavour this time was supposed to be strawberry without quark, so I replaced the quark with mascarpone.


Congratulations Ville, 9 years old!

Happy Birthday Blog!

Today it has been a year since I started this blog, but because I've been busy with things related to starting my own business as well as a couple of cake orders needed to be done this weekend, I haven't had the time to celebrate in any way.

Even the picture used in this post has been borrowed from another 1st Birthday cake :)


But nevertheless...

CONGRATULATIONS, BLOG!

Robot cupcakes

 
Earlier this summer I made animal parade cupcakes for my cousin's son's birthday party, and this time I was asked to make robot/space themed cupcakes for her other son.



I was again given a theme-appropriate cupcake set, and was asked to use the same recipe again.


This time though I dyed the frosting with black paste colour and sprinkled some edible silver luster dust on top.



Because there were going to be 24 cupcakes, and because my oven can only hold 12 at a time, I made the cupcake batter in two separate bowls from the start. In all the excitement though I accidentally forgot to divide the amount of eggs by two (half in each bowl), and only when my cousin was already on her way did I realize that I had accidentally used double the amount of eggs than I was supposed to. Oh no. 
I hope these cupcakes are not going to taste absolutely horrible... :(

Follow your dreams - from hobby to business

Follow your dreams

A little over a year ago I was pulled into the wonderful world of unique cake making, and I can safely say that there has been real progress in the execution since then.

With my blog's first birthday just around the corner, it's been a good time to do something radical, and so I decided to turn my hobby into a business.
For those dreaming of the same thing, it's not easy. But after all the paper work and studying of the law, the feeling when you receive your own business ID is absolutely fantastic!

One aid in helping to reach my goal has undoubtedly been the interior sticker (text designed by me) attached to my bedroom wall when I moved into my new home three years ago, which every morning and every night reminds me to follow my dreams.

Now I only have to wait for the company name to be registered, and after that we'll see what the future may hold... :)

Paper work in preparation of starting up a business

Private trader start-up notification
finally ready to be posted

This is where it all begun...                                                              ...and this is where it's now
Both of these cakes I made for my nephew's birthday, one year apart.

Radio controller cake

The story of this cake started already a while ago, when one of my co-workers asked if I could make him a leaving-party cake for work. He couldn't say which kind of a cake he'd want, but once I asked whether he'd prefer "basic cream cake" or "one of those WOW! cakes", the choice wasn't difficult. For the model of this cake I can yet again only blame myself, as I was the one suggesting this (also work-related) radio controller as the model of the cake.

The warm weather caused the cake wanting to
melt each time it was removed from the fridge

And although we agreed about the cake way over a month ago, I cut it really close with the execution. I forgot to take pictures and measurements of the controller before my holiday (so that I could have made the non-cake parts well in advance), so didn't get the pictures until this Monday. Originally I had planned to make the cake this coming weekend, but then I heard that the person in question was going to be on holiday next week. Although my co-worker said it'd be enough to see pictures of the cake and to know that it's being served at work, I wanted him to be able to see the actual cake live as well.


On top of everything, the other cake order for this week took time away from this cake's preparation, so it really was a close call... but I managed to get it done!

Inside the cake was a caramel filling, decorations are made out of sugar fondant / gum paste.

It's all in the details :)

  

Just in case someone didn't believe this was edible... :)

Gelatin-free first birthday cake for a girl

This teddy bear seems to have
become my "signature" decoration :)

This sweet first birthday cake took its idea from this example cake, and as you can see, I didn't exactly let my imagination run wild with the implementation :)




This cake was requested with a gelatin-free strawberry filling, so I modified my usual strawberry filling by adding white chocolate to firm the filling up a bit..







Gelatin-free strawberry and white chocolate filling:
(for a ø20cm cake)

180 g         strawberry purée
90 g           vanilla flavoured quark
90 g           white chocolate
2 dl            double cream


Melt the chocolate in a microwave or on a double boiler and let it cool.
Mix the strawberry purée and vanilla quark together. Whip the cream in a separate bowl.

Add the slightly cooled chocolate into the strawberry-quark mix, and carefully fold in the whipped cream. Mix until smooth.

Chocolate cheesecake

Today was one of my friends' birthday, and with another friend we decided to invite ourselves over for a surprise celebration.

Originally I wasn't supposed to make any kind of cake, but I just couldn't resist the temptation, so this cake was the result of ingredients I happened to have available. :)
I didn't have cream cheese, but happened to have mascarpone, so I altered a previously used chocolate cheesecake recipe:




Chocolate cheesecake: (this recipe was for a ø15cm cake tin - for ø24cm multiply the amounts by 2,5)


90 g          dark or digestive biscuits
25 g          margarine

2               gelantin leaves
1 tbsp       water
125 g        milk chocolate (because I didn't have enough dark chocolate in my cupboards :) )
125 g        mascarpone cheese
0,2 dl        caster sugar
0,5 tsp      vanilla sugar
1               eggs (separated)
1 dl           whipping cream


Place the gelatin leaves into a bowl of cold water and melt 100 g of the chocolate. Chop the rest of the chocolate into small chips.

Crush the biscuits and mix with melted margarine. Place a baking sheet into a springform pan and spread the biscuit crumbs evenly by pressing gently into the bottom of the pan. Put in the fridge to set.

Whip the cream with vanilla sugar. Separate the egg yolk and mix it with mascarpone and slightly cooled melted chocolate. Whisk the egg white with sugar until it forms hard peaks.
When the gelatin leaves are soft, squeeze out excess water and melt them with a tablespoonful of boiling hot water. Add the gelatin into the mascarpone-chocolate mix, add the chocolate chips and carefully also mix in the whipped cream and egg whites.

Spread the mix on top of the biscuit crumb layer and leave to set in the fridge for several hours before serving.

Golfer's birthday cake

This cake continues the series of birthday cakes for my cousins' children :)


This time with a golf theme for a 14-year-old Valtteri, and the filling was summery strawberry.




Congratulations Valtteri!

Chocolate swans wedding present

Some say tempering chocolate is easy. It's not.
At least not at the first time.


I have once before tempered (milk) chocolate successfully, so I decided to make a hand-made chocolate wedding gift for my cousin.
I bought a silicone swan mold earlier this summer for possible future wedding cakes, and wanted to try it now in action. And although it took me ages to get the tempering right (doing it over and over again), the finished result was pretty good. Although I think I still need practice piping the texts...


Congratulations Satu and Jani!

Animal parade cupcakes

This weekend I was asked to make chocolaty cupcakes for my cousin's son's birthday party, and I was also given an animal themed cupcake set to go by.

The cupcakes were made using a recipe I've used before, but for the frosting I decided to try something new. I can't remember which idea came first - that I would incorporate white chocolate into the frosting or that I'd use green-coloured frosting and pipe grass (in keeping with the animal theme) - but eventually I decided to make a green-coloured white chocolate frosting and pipe it with my grass/spaghetti tip.

I searched for the perfect white chocolate frosting recipe from both Finnish and English sites, but eventually decided that the American style white chocolate and buttercream mixes would simply be too sweet in order to taste good, so I used this white chocolate frosting recipe:



White chocolate frosting: (enough for 24 cup cakes)

250 g         white chocolate
100 g         margarine
125 g         mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp        icing sugar


Melt the white chocolate and let it coold down slightly. Mix together margarine and mascarpone cheese and add the white chocolate and icing sugar while continuing to mix. Add food colouring if desired. Keep whisking the frosting until it's fluffy enough.



Chocolate chip muffins: (makes 24)


300 g        margarine
3 dl           caster sugar
4               eggs
7 dl           plain flour
4 tsp         baking powder
5 tbsp       dark cocoa powder
3 dl           milk
160 g        dark chocolate chips


Whisk margarine and sugar together until fluffy. Add one egg at a time. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add into the batter along with milk. Finally mix in the chocolate chips.

Pour the batter (I used a piping bag which makes this a lot easier) into cup cake cases and bake in 225°C for about 12-15 minutes. Let cool.

Minecraft cake

Minecraft Steve guarding
the rice crispie treat house

About a week and a half ago I was asked to make a Minecraft cake for one of my cousins' son's birthday. This time I also received a list of objects and characters which should be included, and I tried my hardest to fulfill at least some of the wishes. :)

This was the list:
"The cake could have a house, goodie character Steve with a diamond sword, a few little pigs and baddies as many as you can make. Baddies are wished in the order the pictures are, so you can leave them out from the end of the list. Steve should be at the house and baddies should be attacking."

The baddies were listed in this order:
Slender man, Herobrine (who also should have a diamond sword), pig, mutant enderman, mutant creeper, mutant zombie, skeleton, enderman



I tried my best, hope it's enough for Robin! :)

Herobrine (with the sword)

Slender man

Pig

Sand cake

"Don't be a bad cake, be a good cake"...


This is something most Finnish kids say (in Finnish though) after filling a bucket with sand, turning it over, and hitting the bottom of the bucket with a sand shovel. :) 

This time, I made an actual edible version of this "sand cake"


This became my holiday cake, as although it doesn't yet feel that way, my summer holiday starts tomorrow. Originally I planned to make a cake that would have represented a sandy beach, as I wanted to try edible sand on a cake. At some point the beach turned into a bucket of sand, and the next idea was to make a bucket shaped cake which had sand in it. Due to lack of time, that idea was simplified even further, and the cake became a very basic sand cake from my childhood.


(the sand toys behind the cake are just photo props, as I didn't have time to make edible versions :) )



I tried a peach flavoured filling for this cake. We'll see how that goes down with my colleagues tomorrow... :)



Peach filling: (for a 6 egg cake)

230 g       canned peaches in juice
                     (NB! 230 g is the net weight for the peaches! Of course you can also use fresh peaches)
150 g       peach flavoured quark
3,5 dl       double cream
5              gelatin leaves
2 tbsp      fruit juice or water


Put the gelatin leaves into cold water to soak for 5-10 minutes. 
Drain peaches and puree them. Mix in the quark.
Whip the cream.
When the gelatin leaves are soft, squeeze out excess water and and melt them with boiling hot juice or water. Add the gelatin mix into the peach quark mix and stir well. Add whipped cream and mix until smooth.



How to make a sand cake:

Bake two different size cakes (I used 15cm and 20cm tins)

Cut the cake bases into discs as usual, place on top of each other
and cut into rough shape

Fill the cake, cover with cling film and place in the fridge to set
(I used a partition board between the two cakes so that the cake would eventually be easier to cut into portions. You can see pictures of how to do that here)

Once the cake is set, carve it into its final shape and cover with buttercream

Crush different colour biscuits with a blender into fine powder.
You can also mix in different colour sugars,
which make the biscuit sand glisten like the real deal

Cover the buttercream with biscuit sand and decorate for example
with sugar fondant stones or clams if you want

TOPModel birthday cake

This cake was a result of a trade, as I needed cardboard cake boxes from Lappeenranta and my cousin needed a birthday cake for her daughter.

Apparently the birthday girl likes TOPModel -books, so I took that idea and used my long-ago-acquired but so far unused book shaped cake tin. I didn't however remember to check the amount of filling with the volume of the tin, so this time the cake turned up slightly flat. Oops. (*This time I got to taste the cake too, and I noticed that the amount of filling was actually just right in the end. Phew)
I also forgot to draw the lines of the pages while the fondant was still soft, so I left them out completely. Double oops.

Once again I wanted to bring "something extra" to the cake, so I ended up making a couple of colour pencils (with birthday girl's name and age on them) and of course a much needed pencil sharpener and some pencil shavings - all out of sugar fondant. :)



This cake had a caramel filling, but my unfortunately my "Limited Edition" Daim hot chocolate powder ran out and the Dumle hot chocolate I replaced it with just wasn't quite caramelly enough.

Baby Shower cake for a boy

This week's order was this strawberry flavoured Baby Shower cake for a mother-to-be expecting a baby boy.




The cake was supposed to look like a proper 'Yankee cake', and not like one that has been picked up from a local bakery. Decorations were meant to be baby trainers and "to the side some rattle and blocks etc.", and on top of the cake should read: "It's a boy!"


Hopefully this version is 'Yankee' enough! :D