Dinoco truck birthday cake

This birthday was supposed to be celebrated already a couple of weeks ago, but due to unfortunate circumstances and little birthday boy's misfortune, the party was postponed.

The theme of this cake the birthday boy decided to be "the King's truck", i.e. the blue Dinoco truck from Disney Pixar's Cars. When I asked what the flavour should be, the answer was "Lightning McQueen, so red". Right, ok. Strawberry it is then :)

 

I made the entire truck out of cake,
so the sharp shapes were difficult
to execute

I used cereal and biscuit crumbs as
"sand" to cover the base

Congratulations Aapo, 4 years!

Naming cake for a baby boy

This time a new name was given to Leevi Petteri.

              CONGRATULATIONS!



Baby hand prints and foot prints on the side of the cake were airbrushed using a stencil.

I made both stencils myself out of overhead projector sheets, and the model for hand prints I stole copied from here. :)

Miss Piggy housewarming cake with Baileys filling

I absolutely love those cake request which I'm given a theme and a free hand to execute it. This is what happened with this cake.

This cake was supposed to be for a house warming party, and the theme was Miss Piggy. The filling was left to me to decide.

Miss Piggy was made out of sugar paste

Some time ago while looking for cake ideas for a baby shower, I came across this baby crib cake, and it came to my mind as soon as my brain registered the word 'house warming'. This gave me an idea to make a bed cake, on which Miss Piggy would have a well deserved rest in between her packing/unpacking.








I understood that the cake was to go to someone who's into bowling, so naturally I needed to add a bowling ball to the cake!

I was able to utilize my England-brought air brush kit yet again with the bed ends. Airbrushing makes the colour more vibrant and more interesting. And it's such a great fun to do! :)







Choosing the filling for this cake was easy, as my intuition told me right from the start that this cake was going to have a Baileys flavour. Here is the recipe I used for this filling:



Baileys-filling (adults only!): (this recipe makes enough filling for a 10 person cake)

300 g            unflavoured cream cheese
3 tbsp           Baileys Irish Cream
0,5 dl            icing sugar
1,5 dl            double cream


Whip the cream. Mix together the cream cheese, Baileys and icing sugar and add the whipped cream into the mix.

As well as in the filling, I used Baileys with milk to moisten the cake, and used Baileys as the liquid in the butter cream layer between the cake and the sugar fondant.

"IKEA hack" kitchen island

Since moving into my flat (almost three years ago) I've been desperately longing for a kitchen renovation, as the approx. 50cm wide kitchen counter has set major challenges for baking. My dining room table previously placed in the kitchen has doubled as extra counter space, but being so low it wasn't the ideal work surface either. In addition, the storage space in my tiny little kitchen was starting to run out due to the number of accumulated cake tins and other supplies.

Because of my current budget (and the possibility of an impending pipe renovation) an entire kitchen renovation was out of the question, and so the solution came in the form of a DIY kitchen island. Luckily my living room is big enough to accommodate the dining table, so no radical changes were needed.

kitchen before

Of course I wanted to make the kitchen island as cheaply as possible (still fitting to my needs), so a large part of it came from Ikea.

The frame of this kitchen island consists of two EXPEDIT 2x2 shelving units which were attached together with two made-to-measure furniture boards (bottom and top). Work surface is Ikea's (sawed in half and re-glued) NUMERÄR beech, and there are four locking furniture wheels underneath the unit.

I did notice that even when made cheaply, a kitchen island is quite expensive, but if the other option is to renovate the entire kitchen, it's definitely worth the investment!

Mother's Day's hearty swiss roll

Some time ago I received this linktip from my brother's wife, and I've been waiting for the right occasion to try it out.

This weekend I was supposed to have my hands full with a birthday cake making, so I didn't plan on making anything for Mother's Day. But since this weekend's cake was moved forward a couple of weeks, I suddenly had both time and extra ingredients.  


For this swiss roll I made a simple filling of (sweetened) babies' raspberry and blueberry puree and whipped cream.

Once you've made the swiss roll batter, move some of it into a separate bowl and mix in some food colouring

Pipe decorations with the coloured batter onto a baking sheet

Bake in the oven (200°C) for 2-3 minutes and let cool a bit
(another option is to freeze the decorations for about 10 minutes in the freezer)

Spread the remaining swiss roll batter on top of the decorations and bake normally

Turn the baked swiss roll over on another sheet of baking paper and  carefully remove the sheet from the decorated side.
NOTE! You'll need to turn the sheet cake over once more before adding the filling so that the decorated side will become the outside layer of the swiss roll