Cakes times 2

I had to post these pictures of the cakes made for my parents recently. They have their birthdays within a couple of days of each other so we celebrated them in the middle.

My Dad is really into tramping so I wanted to make him a mountain cake with snow, a glacier and a lake like the photos he brings home from his trips. For my Mum I wanted to make a simple, classic cake - her favourite colour is red and I included these shoes I learnt to make the other week at class.

The tramping cake is banana flavoured, the red cake is carrot flavoured. I say flavoured, because they don't contain fruit or nuts. My tutor recommends not using real fruit or nuts in a cake as a classmate made a banana cake for a wedding and the fruit fermented, causing the cake to explode when the bride cut it....not pretty. I'm so happy with how they turned out!! We cut the red cake and tried some, it was pretty good and fed about 12 people with some left over so that worked out well!!

I have also been busy making my competition cakes. I have one week left!! So next weekend I will have some new photos to put up. I''m so excited to see what everyone else comes up with!

Featured - Kiwi Cakes Newsletter

The other week I had a nice little suprise in my email inbox - I was featured in the Kiwi Cakes newsletter this month. How exciting!! I sent them a photo of my Christmas cake and recieved a little present from them to say thanks for the photo.

Check out the Kiwi Cakes blog and website for cake decorating ideas, icing, cutters, tools and etc. for all your cake decorating needs. Well worth a visit!

I started learning how to make shoes last night at cake decorating class and I hope to have some photos of them up soon. Keep checking back!

Christmas Time = Christmas Cake!

Well it's that time of the year - time to pull out the Christmas cake! My Grandma always makes the Christmas cakes for our family, but I had been set the task to make one for my cake decorating class so this year we will have 2!

These pictures show the different things I decorated my cake with. Everything is made with fondant icing mixed with Tylose (a hardener) and the occasional toothpick. The lettering is cut out with stencils which I have in upper and lower case. I have used a "Kiwiana Christmas" theme for my cake - pavlova, jandals, ham, buzzy bees, a kiwi and gumboots. Everything is edible!

The cake is fruit cake made with ginger ale, cranberry's, sultanas, raisins and a dried berry mix. Something a little bit different!