Barbie cake

This cake I made for my niece's birthday party.


Because her present wish list included Barbie dolls, I thought I would combine a present and a cake, even though the actual cake wish was for a "Lego Star Wars Star Destroyer cake", inspired by her dad's birthday cake a little while ago. Because I had already made a Lego Star Wars ship, we managed to push through the Barbie idea. I did however promise that Barbie would be "in space" (hence the stars on the bottom cake) where there would also be a star destroyer... :)


This cake ended up having two flavours: the bottom cake was a traditional strawberry cake and Barbie's dress was caramel flavoured cake.

Barbie's dress was surprisingly difficult to get draping nicely,
but in the end I managed to do it

Number 6 is a strawberry flavoured lollipop pushed into the cake,
made with a silicone mould by grinding and melting a Chupa Chups lollipop 

Before delivery I added the promised star destroyer :)

Snow White -cake for a 4-year-old

This strawberry and banana -filled Snow White cake was made to order for a 4-year-old little girl.

Happy Birthday Iina!

Cake base: 
(ø26cm, 175°C, 50-60min)

7          eggs
3 dl      sugar
1,5 dl   plain flour
1,5 dl   potato flour
2,5 tl    baking powder


Banana filling:

5          bananas, mashed
2 tl       lemon juice

The butterflies on the side of the cake I made well in advance
so they had time to dry into the wanted shape

Strawberry filling:


500 g   strawberries, puréed
0,5 dl   sugar
180 g   strawberry quark
5           leaves of gelatin
2 rkl      water
+
5 dl       whipping cream
2 tl        vanilla sugar

American style

In American cake programs they often use "pound cake" or "red velvet cake" as the base for shaped cakes. I have wondered for some time now what these cakes taste like, so I decided to try out a couple of recipes. The intriguing sounding "red velvet" I decided to leave for Valentine's day because of its colour, so this time the test subject was the famous "pound cake".

The Internet is of course filled with different kinds of "pound cake" recipes, so after a short examination I decided to try the original one. According to Wikipedia, "pound cake" got its name from its recipe: a pound of flour, a pound of butter, a pound of eggs and a pound of sugar. In the test batch I reduced the recipe to 100+100+100+100 grams and added a pinch of baking powder for extra lift and vanilla sugar for taste, so I didn't end up following the recipe completely. In addition I used baking margarine instead of butter. The Southerner ladies would be horrified, I'm sure!



This recipe was enough for a 15cm cake tin (that Santa brought), so it's not very economical. ...But it's good! :)



"Pound cake"

100 g     margarine
100 g     sugar
100 g     eggs (= 2)
100 g     plain flour
3/4 tsp   baking powder
1 tsp      vanilla sugar

Whisk the softened margarine with sugars to a fluffy mixture. Beat in the eggs and mix in the flour and the baking powder. Pour the mix into a breadcrumbed cake tin and bake in 175°C for about half an hour. Leave to cool.

Sweet heel

I was excited about making the sugar fondant baby boot yesterday and thought about also trying out a high heel shoe, and here's the result.


The template (which I modified slightly) I found here.


I scaled down the template to about 40% of the original, because I wanted to "waste" as little fondant as possible. The length of the sole came out at about 10 cm.

I myself wouldn't wear a shoe like this, as it looks rather uncomfortable.
I'm more of a trainer-kind-of-a-person :)

For the first time I had a chance to try using vodka to paint with
petal dust, and it worked great!
(Sorry for the label, I'm definitely NOT trying to advertise the brand)

Baby's shoe out of fondant

I haven't had time to bake anything in a while, and my fingers were itching to do something, so I decided to give this baby shoe a go.


Now I've at least practiced it in case I sometime need to make these for an order... :)

One more fleece hat

A little while ago I made fleece hats for my niece and nephew on their request, and was inspired to do one more for a little girl celebrating her birthday in the near future. I thought I could get away with publishing the pictures beforehand as I trust this particular little girl doesn't yet follow my blog, and that her parents understand not to show these to her :)

Apparently this girl likes dragons, so a dragon she got.

Yet another successful pose from the experienced hat model :)

Lightning McQueen and Angry Birds cake

Once again I noticed how I always set the bar a little too high, especially in relation to the time available.

Sleep deprived, and after baking an entirely new cake (because the one I had baked the previous day had a filling too thin so it ran out of the sides of the cake) I continued with this cake until late at night in order to finish it according to my original vision.

This cake was made to order for a 5-year-old Nikolas, and the theme was Lightning McQueen and Angry Birds - every little boy's dream combination, I suppose :)

Inside the cake is (yet again) a strawberry filling.

Congratulations Nikolas!

I'm so glad I own round cookie cutters (and cable sleeves for the smaller circles ;) )!

A very angry little bird sitting on the rear spoiler

Fleece hats for children

A year ago I made fleece hats as Christmas presents for my brother's children. The other one had a train and the other one a fire breathing dragon.


This winter I received an "order" from the kids for new hats, but this time one was supposed to be green with green laces and with a crocodile, and the other one was supposed to be all yellow with a train and a train track.

Because the yellow fleece in store at the time was more like like the colour of mustard, I decided to make the hats in the same colour (dispite the instructions) and make only the laces from the desired colours (because I had a little bit of brighter yellow left over from last year).

Here are the results: