Posts categorized "cake decorating"

easter baking

Easter is a great time to get a little creative with baking. This year's creations included a cake and a tart, based on the caramel filled easter eggs that are a long time favourite in our house.

The cake is a chocolate cake with a caramel mouse filling, covered with swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate ganache. 

Fiona Carter Easter Egg Cake

My Easter Egg tart has a caramel filling, covered with chocolate ganache and salted caramel swirls.

Fiona Carter's Easter Egg Tart

A few little tarts were made as well, with a little left over caramel mousse...

Fiona Carter's Easter Egg mini tarts

And lastly, a favourite baking treat I've been making for years, the Easter Egg cupcakes... pop a small solid chocolate egg into the batter of cupcakes, bake and you'll have a little chocolatey surprise inside. If you'd like to see more about these cupcakes, I wrote a post several years ago which you can read HERE.

Fiona Carter's Easter Egg cupcakes

Hope you have a happy Easter!

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona


cake decorating with baby pom pom trim

The baby pom pom trim has been restocked at Ribbons Galore.

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I received a question regarding the pom pom trim via the Ribbons Galore Facebook page.... could the baby pom pom trim be used on a cake board? As it happens, I have used this trim to decorate a cake board, so thought I'd show some pictures here.

My daughter wanted a blue marbled iced cake for her birthday last year.

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The cake board was edged with the white baby pom pom trim. I used royal icing, which I piped onto the edge, then stuck the pom pom trim to that. Once the royal icing was set (dried) the trim stayed in place during the party.

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The cake board I used was approximately 4mm thick, and there was a thin layer of fondant icing covering the board. The baby pom pom trim fitted neatly on the edge.

Here are a few more close up shots...

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Quite often you will see ribbon used to edge the cake boards, but the baby pom pom trim gives a different look, and adds a little fun to the cake.

Thanks for visiting...

Cheers

Fiona

 


mini bunting cake decoration

I offered to make a cake for Phoebe's soccer team last Sunday, with only a few hours to make, bake, cool and decorate the cake.

I decided I needed a simple, very quick and easy decoration for the cake and turned to my paper crafting skills.... to make mini bunting for the top of the cake.

To make the bunting, first I printed out the wording I needed for the bunting, cut it out (twice as long as I needed each letter). I folded each letter around the bakers twine, and stuck these together with a little double-sided tape. To finish I trimmed the bottom each of each letter flag with pinking shears for the zig-zag effect. Then arranged the spacing between the wording.

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I doubled the bakers twine to give a little more thickness. This eco cotton cherry bakers twine is from Ribbons Galore. The mini bunting was tied to the wooden skewers (didn't have time to find anything else). And then the bunting was placed onto the iced and decorated cake.

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I'll share the details of the cake. I used a new recipe for this cake. It's the rainbow cake recipe from the latest Donna Hay Kids Magazine (Annual 8, 2011).

You can find the cake picture on page 87 and the actual recipe on page 92. One big thing I did differently was to bake my cake in one large rectangle cake tin (22cm x 23cm cake tin), Donna baked her recipe in two 22cm round tins. I cooked my cake for about 20-30 minutes longer.

The cake mixture is huge, in my KitchenAid the mixture came to the top of the beater.

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I tried to make one part of the cake red with the Wilton Christmas Red colour gel, but the colour still came out pink. Another third of the mixture is make into a chocolate cake mix (directions in the recipe) and the last third of the mixture is left uncoloured. The three cake mixes were layered in rows across the cake tin.

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... and mixed together with a tooth pick and handy helper (who I'm sure was just waiting to lick the bowl!)

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Ready to bake....

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The cake was iced with a basic vanilla butter cream and decorated with red raspberry lollies (cause kids always like the lollies, even big kids in the U14's).

This is all that was left from the evening team gathering....

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The cake this size served 30-35 people. It was a delicious cake, quite moist, I would highly recommend it... it will be going into my small but very trusted cake repertoire for reliable and delicious cakes.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona x


june = birthdays = cupcakes

Who really needs an excuse to make cupcakes? Not me, but a birthday in the family gives me a great reason to start up the KitchenAid and start baking in bulk.

Phoebe requested rainbow cupcakes for her birthday (for the soccer team, for school and for the school soccer team... thank goodness basketball training was called off or that would have been another lot}. My gorgeous girls like to set me challenges when it comes to their birthday cakes. Rainbow cupcakes is probably one of the good ones, not necessarily hard but a bit fiddly.

Phoebe chose the colour, but I limited her to three colours as I figured it would be impossible to layer a full selection of rainbow colours in a little patty paper of about 4cm tall. Pink, green and blue where the chosen colours.

Now going back to when I was a kid I loved marble cakes, remember the cakes with swirls of colour in them.  I loved when you cut into them each piece was different cause of the way the colours were mixed. These rainbow cupcakes were going to be made using the similar method, with the coloured mixture being layered, not swirled.

I made up my batch of cupcake mixture. Divided it into three batches and coloured each one. I used the Wilton icing colours (rose, leaf green and royal blue colours), these are a concentrated gel so you can get a strong colour but the mixture doesn't get too watery as it would with regular food colours.

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I layered the colours into the patty pans...Fec-blog-cupcakes-1

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And baked. 20 mintues later they were done....Fec-blog-cupcakes-4

Then iced in plain vanilla buttercream {no colour added!} And yes, the cake below does have pink at the bottom, I did mix the layering up in a few batches.Fec-blog-cupcakes-5

Done! The looked bright, colourful and happy, perfect for a June birthday.

Another birthday celebrated with cupcakes.

Thanks for dropping by.

Cheers

Fiona


mini gingerbread houses and christmas truffles

Here's a couple of little handmade goodies I have made over the last few days.

Mini gingerbread houses. I wanted to make some little houses as gifts this year. After searching around for some house templates, I found these cute little houses by Megan Rearon of the Not Martha blog. Megan made her houses small, so they perch on the side of your hot chocolate mug. Megan's Gingerbread house template makes tiny little houses. I enlarged her template 140% to make my little houses below. (I didn't cut the little slots from the sides, leaving the sides of my houses whole). The houses were decorated with royal icing and sweets, then wrapped in celephane with a ribbon.

Fiona Carter's mini gingerbread houses 
Fiona Carter's mini gingerbread houses 
Fiona Carter's mini gingerbread houses 
Fiona Carter's mini gingerbread houses 

Christmas truffles. I don't make truffles very often, but this year I wanted to make some rum balls. Again I went searching for recipes and found a rum and raisin truffle which appealed, as well as a couple of other recipes. 

Fiona Carter's Christmas truffles 
Fiona Carter's Christmas truffles

Wrapped in celephane and tied with Ribbons Galore ribbon :-)

Fiona Carter's Christmas truffles

The truffle recipes I made are:

I hope you have a very merry Christmas. Thanks for visiting my blog over the past year.

Cheers

Fiona x  


the day the circus came to town

The year 6 dinner was a few weeks ago, and I'm finally sharing the photos of the school hall that we decorated for the kids. You've probably guessed by now, the theme was CIRCUS.

It was such a great theme to work with, full of colour and happiness for the kids. I had SO much fun working with this theme. I started with the colour scheme; blue, red, yellow, purple, green and orange. Anything that went into the decorations were kept to these colours, which worked to give an overall look to the hall.

The whole dinner event was certainly a group effort with lots of our year 6 parents helping out in many, many ways to bring the whole evening together.

So here's an overview of the evening in photos....

Here is the hall all decorated waiting for the kids to arrive.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Another mum (who was was so much fun to work with) and I made all the bunting for the ceiling space. We sewed triangles of cardboard onto ribbon. These lengths of bunting were then hung from the centre of the hall out to the walls to create the feeling of the inside of a circus tent.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

I love the coloured paper lanterns which can be purchased in many stores at the moment. I used them to "flood" the ceiling to hide the centre of the ceiling space where all the bunting and fairy lights were tied.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

The walls of the hall were covered with coloured fabric, and a large bunting was hung around the edge to form a border.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Banners and circus go so well together. This big banner was hung on the stage so it could be seen from the hall.
Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

The hall stage with the "farewell banner", the cake stand with cupcakes and a lollies stand (made from a polling booth).

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas 

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

The cupcakes were gorgeous and delicious, made and decorated by a talented group of year 6 mums.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Side show alley filled one corner of the hall. Each "side show alley" attraction is made from a cardboard polling booth.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Laughing clowns made from polystyrene heads. One of the very artistic year 6 students painted the clown faces for us.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Bendy mirrors. I was able to buy two sheets of bendy (perspex) mirror from Reverse Garbage. A year 6 dad took on the task of making the frames for these mirrors. They looked so fantastic and filled another corner of the hall.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

The "class of 2010" photo wall. Each child had a photo mounted onto a balloon shape on the wall.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

These silhouette carousel horses were on loan to us from Myer Chatswood. I was walking through the shopping centre back in October (obviously the start of spring carnival racing), and these horses were on display in one of Myer's windows. We were very lucky to be able to borrow them for our evening. The horses fitted the theme perfectly, and filled a few large spaces in the hall.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

Outside we had a "ticket booth" also made from a polling booth, and lots of balloons.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

There was a clown and two stilt-walkers entertaining the kids outside before they entered the dinner.

Fiona Carter's circus themed event ideas

The night went really well, it seems as though the kids and teachers enjoyed their night at the circus. Another mum was the coordinator for all the food served to the children and teachers. They enjoyed sausages in rolls, corn on a stick, fruit and marshmallow sticks and ice-creams. A popcorn-making machine was hired for the evening which, apart from spreading the smell of freshly popped corn across the playground, gave the kids a snack while they were gathering in the playground prior to the dinner.

To finish off this post I need to include a photo of my gorgeous girls. Big sis with little sis (who isn't that little anymore). I think they might be the same height now. Phoebe looked beautiful going to her dinner.

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Thankfully one of the dads at the dinner snapped a photo of Phoebe with mum and dad at the end of the evening....

FEC blog photo 

Well, that's about all for this post. Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona

Craftsy


cake decorating : cakes galore!

For a long time now I have wanted to take a cake decorating course. At the end of last year I finally decided to find a course.... and do it! So I searched google in an attempt to find a course, and to my surprise I found one that was starting in February this year, just down the road (well, sort of) from where I live. It required a joint family commitment, as my course took up 6 hours on alternate Saturdays.... Saturdays which are usually full of athletics, soccer, netball and basketball. Paul (the best dad in the world) agreed to taking on extra sporting duties (of which he already does alot of) so that I could go off and play with fondant and royal icing for the day!

So, for the first six months or so of this year I took part in this Cake Decorating course at TAFE. It was such a fantastic course, covering all the basics of decorating. I've loved experimenting and playing with different icings and pastes, and it was great being back in a commercial-style kitchen. I finished the course in June and have a few cakes completed so far....

This retro flower cake was one of two I had to decorate in the last week of the course. Imagine my excitement at finding an icing flower punch very similar to my retro flower punch I use so often in my paper crafting.

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The second cake decorated on the last day of the course was my Christmas Elf cake... The fluffy santa was supplied by my cake decorating teacher. Long, long time readers of my blog may remember my love of fluffy Easter chicks... When I saw this fluffy santa, I just had to place him on top of my cake!

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Next one was a birthday cake I made for Phoebe's teacher. Phoebe helped with this one...

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Phoebe wanted a soccer cake for her birthday this year. It was good timing, as I was coming to the end of my course and had a little confidence in dealing with fondant. We'd found the little soccer decorations in a cake decorating store in Maitland.

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So that's all my colourful, fondant-y creations so far... I hope there will be many more. I just need some more time and some excuses to make cakes... and decorate them.

Thanks for visiting.

Cheers

Fiona