The Greats of Undertaking a Cake Decorating Course

Hello my lovely bloggers!

So about 2 months ago (Yes, I know it's been a while) I decided to undertake a cake decorating course, just to get a bit of formal training.  I learnt so much from this course, although more of the course had to do with baking the cake and masking (covering the cake in icing or cream) and not so much fondant work however I took up some valuable skills as well as had an insight to what it is like being in an industrial kitchen. Here's what I baked for the 5 weeks:

• Yule Log (sponge with whipped cream and bakers jam rolled, covered in chocolate ganash)
• Carrot Cake (covered in cream cheese icing and marzipan carrots)
• Black Forest Cake
• Chocolate Sponge 'Happy Birthday Cake''
• Square Chocolate Sponge Cake with rossettes, roses and leaves piped on :)

Bare with me, transporting these cakes home is quite hard!

Delicious Choc Mint Cupcakes

I've landed upon an amazing recipe and have altered some of it to suit simplicity and yumminess (do forgive me for some odd measurements, as I halved the recipe)! I only made these yesterday but they're so delicious that I can't stop eating them! It's an easy recipe from scratch, and I promise that they will not dissappoint!

Sonic The Hedgehog

Ooh lovely, I have another order! These cakes just don't stop rolling. So this is my first atempt at a spiral cake, the idea was simple - carve each tier so it creates a spiral. Laying the fondant on this cake was not at easy, although I got smoother results on the bigger tier than the top tier. I think this was because I took the cake straight from the fridge, so underneath the fondant it sweat and caused it to tear really easily... lesson learned! The car was made out of fondant mixed with gum paste... and was modelled by my lovely mother! The other figurines were actual toys so it made my life so much easier! Enjoy :)



Birthday Boy happy with his cake!



Toy Story Rex

Oh la la... Cakes cakes cakes! They never end and yet I'm glad they don't because then I have the opportuninity to make my cakes look better. No, they are not perfect, I'm aware of that, but remember that I'm only 16 and I've never taken a cake decorating lesson in my life! So this cake was for my boyfriends cousin who is turning two! He's an adorable bubba and I wanted to do my absolute best to make his favourite character into a reality of cake!

There is so many things I learned just from creating this cake. My biggest dilema was the fondant; the cake shop I regularly buy my decorating supplies from had no white Satin Ice fondant so I used Bakels rolled fondant - big mistake! It was constantly cracking no matter how much Crisco I added to it, so I was in a rush this morning trying to find someone that stocks White Satin Ice fondant, and obviously, I've found it!

So a few problems in this cake was...

• The cracking and creases in my fondant in some areas.
• My wonky letters...
• Rex is a bit fat don'tcha think :P hehehe
• First time i've piped a border... It was a bit.. hmmm....

My improvements:...

• I ice my cakes so much better with ButterCream
• I have less creases and cracks than usual!
• I did the explosion rip for the first time and I did it in one go! WOOOH!]
• I used gum paste for the first time

Anyways, off I go and start planning my next cake order... :)

Woof Woof

Made a quick batch of Vanilla Cupcakes the other day for my mum's friend. She absolutely loved them!

Just Dance !

Ahhhhh.... So I got a Cake Order... My FIRST Cake order... Oh the wonderful feeling to think that somebody trusted in my almost non-existent self taught skills to make them a cake! So the lucky customer was a good friend of mine and she loved music and dance. The design was simple but cute and I hoped that it would become a success. I tried make chocolate ganache for the first time and to be honest? I don't like the taste of ganache and I found that buttercream was just so much easier to use...

And here's the wonderful ... lopsy (yes, I was not very happy about that. I really need to improve on that!) cake!

Aren't these fondant toppers kind of cute?!

It's not perfect but I'm slowly learning...

Ancient Egyptian Cake

So here I am again, on my cake decorating journey, finding its mystical ways into a realm of gorgeous and delicious cakes. Having only decorated cupcakes, I thought it was time to dipped my toe into the exoticness of decorating a large cake. My boyfriend's mum's birthday was coming up and I wanted to do something really special for her... Why not make a cake? It took quite some planning and buying, but I decided to do an Ancient Egyptian cake as she loves Ancient Egypt. Finding pictures of other similar themed cakes was really tough as i needed some inspiration but after coming across this gorgeous cake, made by a fantastic decorator, Erica Obrien, I based it to become my inspiration: Click here to check it out!

The beauty of making this cake, was just having a go with everything! Baking a large cake was a first for me, and I decided to use cake mix so that it was cheap and easy, yet baking it took much patience as it took longer in a large tin. Here is the outcome :)

Pretty good for a first attempt!

 I covered all the layers in fondant and spray painted them with Wilton's edible spray paint The brown sugar pyramids were made with mixing brown sugar and egg whites to make a consistency  where i could compact the sugar and mold the pyramids with the help of a knife.

 The scarabs were molded out of fondant and the hieroglyphics  were hand drawn using an edible marker.

And lastly, I used buttercream to do the writing :)


As an overall, I think I did quite well although I had a few issues with trimming the cake (It wasn't very leveled) and laying the fondant as it was cracking when I laid it on the cake.


The cake... WAS DELICIOUS and I began craving my own cake! Gee I love cake decorating <3

Cookie Monster and Elmo !

Hi all! So this week for my small business, I chose to do some Cookie Monster and Elmo cupcakes! After having quite some trouble with my piping bag (it developed a hole and leaked icing everywhere!), and finally deciding that using a zip-lock bag as a temporary piping bag would have to do, I finally completed these awesome cupcakes! They were just 'so awesome' that I sold out all my cupcakes yesterday at school - thats right... SOLD OUT!!! Woooh!!! The piping did take some time, but really, the cupcakes turned out to be so good and quite a success.

Enjoy...

I used half an Oreo bisquit for his mouth, royal icing for his 'blue fuzzy hair' and fondant for Cookie Monsters eyes.

You've just got to love buttercream!

Same deal with the royal icing here, and fondant used for the mouth, nose and eyes. Elmo's so cute!

Under The Sea Completed!

Here's the finished product! :) I'm not completely happy with it, but overall I think I did okay!

Yuuuuummmm....

Under The Sea

Week 2 of Scrumdiddlyumptious CupCakes is coming up and I thought I'd do an ocean theme! I've already gotten some little toothpick umbrella's and I'm keen to start baking these beauty's!

So the game plan is that I bake 12 cupcakes with a beach scene (umbrella toothpick, brown sugar sand, blue buttercream icing with a fondant beach towel), 12 cupcakes with little sea critters (blue buttercream icing with fondant turtle, octopus and starfish) and last but not least, 12 cupcakes with blue and pink buttercream piped on top with a swirly effect!

I've got three flavours going: Chocolate, Vanilla and Vanilla with Chocolate Chips! Yum yum yum!

My plan:

The Perfect Cupcake!

So over the last month or so that I've been baking cupcakes, I've had a LOT of trouble trying to get a nice dome shaped cupcake.... aka.... the perfect cupcake!  I know, for those of you who aren't baking and decorating entrepreneurs, this seems really absurd but in the cupcake world, having the perfect cupcake is so important so that you can decorate it properly and the end product is 'perfect'.

So what was happening with my cupcakes is that a lot of them would be saggy, lopsided or uneven. Was I mixing the batter wrongly, do I need to smoothen the batter before I place the tray into the oven?

Well from what I found... NO!

The tip is to get a teaspoon, insert half of the teaspoon into each casing of batter and swirl the teaspoon around evenly. I'm actually not sure how this makes the cupcakes so nicely shaped, but it really does work!
Just remember to not over mix your batter as this can make the cupcakes less spongy and not rise as well.

The 'Perfect' Cupcake

This is not my own photo.

Lady Bugs, Caterpillars and Swirls

Its finally come to Week 1... Of our cupcake and cake business... Our business was named "Scrumdiddlyumptious CupCakes"! So I planned for this weekend that I'd copy a few designs of cupcakes I'd seen on the internet.

Heres the plan (sorry for such a poor copy, my scanner isn't the best in the world):

And here is the best part! What came out of my hard hours, slaving away on these gorgeous cupcakes!

What an effort that was! <3



Just a Little Bit of Fun!

So after showing my boyfriend and his family my newly decorated cupcakes, him, his brother and his sister wanted to have a crack at decorating their own cupcakes! We ended up having a decorating competition but I think we all won it in the end. :)

Demi and Yianni decorating a cupcake together... And our finished products!

My Very First Attempt!

My game plan for my first attempt was to make 3 different cupcakes. I used White Wings Vanilla Cupcakes mix just for its simplicity and I knew it was delicious! I planned to roll fondant onto two cupcakes, one cupcake placed with a fondant star and the next cupcake with colourful fondant polka dots! My third cupcake was going to be decorated with royal icing, and I was going to make Cookie Monster! His eyes were going to be made with fondant, colouring his eyes with a black edible ink pen, and an Oreo to create his yummy cookie effect! Do these look cool or what?!?