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. :)

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!

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... :(

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.

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!

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

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.

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!

Angry Birds tiered birthday cake

I had an excellent opportunity to combine different decorating techniques, when I was asked to make (yet another :) ) Angry Birds themed cake for a slightly larger amount of people.

Because the wish was for a chocolaty caramel cake, I used the same combination of Twix-bars and caramel cake as in the swimming pigs cake.



This time I didn't want to cover the cake with fondant, so this cake was covered with caramel flavoured butter cream, coloured with my new airbrush colours. The grass between the two tiers was buttercream piped with a spaghetti piping tip.

Number six on top of the cake was poured into a number shaped lollipop mold with (first time ever successfully tempered!) melted chocolate. The name and the Angry Birds characters were sugar paste.

Angry Birds pig cake

My cousin's daughter, who in the autumn came to make sugar decorations with me, came over to make her own 11th birthday cake with me.

So this cake was a joint effort, and the finishing touches she made herself (I only helped with the more difficult parts, such as the snout and the crown).

Swimming pigs Twix cake

A little while ago my brother's wife sent me a link to a picture of this widely spread Kit Kat swimming pigs cake, and I figured out it was at the same time a discreet order for her own birthday cake. :)



Kit Kat bars proved to be very difficult to find in Finland, and so I was allowed to use Twix bars instead. The flavour of the cake was up to me, so I took one Twix bar, closed my eyes and chewed. Because Twix bar consists of a layer of biscuit and a layer of caramel with a chocolate coating, I decided to make it a caramel cake.

First I thought of changing the pigs to people, and make the cake a blue-watered jacuzzi tub, but this idea would have required the use of dyed white chocolate, and I didn't think white chocolate would have gone well with the Twix bars.





The pigs I made once again in advance, and in my typical way I couldn't just make simple pig figures, but had (in my own opinion) an excellent idea of adding character to the pigs with some extra props... :)








HOW TO MAKE SWIMMING PIGS TWIX CAKE:

Cut Twix bars to desired length and place on the side of a cake iced with butter cream.

If you want to make sure that the Twix bars stay in place,
you can tie a ribbon around the cake
(if the butter cream layer is thick enough, the bars should stay in place themselves)

Melt some chocolate in a double boiler or a microwave and spread the
melted chocolate on top of the cake. Add decorations and let set in the fridge.

Colouring Easter eggs with food colouring

This super easy idea of colouring Easter eggs I took from Wilton's web pages.


THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED:

- hard boiled eggs
- boiling hot water
- food colourings
- vinegar


HOW TO MAKE:

Mix boiling hot water, a splash of food colouring and a tablespoon of vinegar in a sufficient sized bowl. Stir well.

Submerge a hard boiled egg in the colour mix and let  set until the egg is a desired shade.

Rinse with cold water and dry carefully with a paper towel.

Sugar fondant baby trainers

I tried to make my very first sugar fondant shoe already last summer, and the result looked more like a clown shoe than a trainer. This time my aim was to make the shoes look more like baby trainers, and so I adjusted the template slightly.

Unfortunately I didn't think of taking pictures of the entire process, but hopefully I'll have time to post the instructions here at some point.
*INSTRUCTIONS (in Finnish but with step-by-step pictures) CAN NOW BE FOUND HERE

Here's my modified baby shoe template:
(note that it's missing the side strip, but that's just a straight strip going all around the shoe)

Angry Birds birthday cake

This weekend I've been busy baking, as I received two separate cake orders for the same weekend. The other one was a Christening cake picked up yesterday, and the other order was for a cake which would have three blue Angry Birds on top. I made a sketch of this cake too beforehand, even though there wasn't any need for a separate "approval" this time.



I heard a rumour that the birthday girl isn't a big fan of blowing out the candles (and had even once waited for all the candles to burn out), and the parents still wanted candles on the cake, so I thought in this case one candle is better than five.

The little birds were made out of sugar fondant in advance, as was the grass surrounding the cake (I was also invited to the party and I personally don't like thick layers of fondant on a cake, so that was one of the reasons I thought a separate grass layer was better. And it also brings some more 3D-effect on the cake). The stem of the candle I hid into a fondant-log, which also helps in keeping the candle upright.

The original plan...

CONGRATULATIONS IINA!

...and the finished cake

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 :)