School Fair Cake Stall

Jackie's school fair is tomorrow and, as luck would have it, his grade is in charge of the Cake Stall.
I decided to go with simple and pretty (i.e. no fillings!!!) and did some chocolate & vanilla cupcakes with chocolate/vanilla buttercream.


A group of Mums got together this morning and organised all the cakes that had been brought in for the stall. Let me say - there was a lot of cake!!!


Best Beloved is pretty happy about that though - he was a little cross that I baked all day and that this morning there was nothing left in the house for morning tea...

Harry Mac's First Birthday

Gorgeous Hamish McMurtry turned 1 and celebrated with a ball themed party in the park. The party was awesome (the playground being particularly spectacular) and the boys had a ball (pardon the pun).

For my lovely little Godson we created two different taste sensations. The first were mudcake & mint buttercream cupcakes filled with a mint ganache.

The second batch involved my first attempt at a jelly-style filling and were vanilla cupcakes with orange filling and jaffa buttercream.

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I had also designed Harry's birthday party invitations with a vintage red, white & blue theme, which enabled me to do matching toppers too.

The Dinosaur From Hell

Strictly speaking, this blog is about my cupcakes. Cupcakes however have been far and few between of late. We've moved house making it near impossible to do anything creative - I feel like I'm only just getting back on my feet now and I'm hoping that I'll do some fabulous cakes for Sammie's 3rd party in a couple of weeks.

I have, however, not been completely cake idle. Apart from eating plenty of cake, I also made a massive effort for Jack's 6th party in February. Stan the Stego was a 3D mass of icing which took me, literally, all night to ice. It was incredibly humid and no sooner would I pipe a tiny amount and I would have to put the icing back into the fridge for 10 minutes before I could do anymore.

It was of course worth every cursed second though when I saw the look on Jackie's face when he laid eyes on the cake. I'm hoping never to have to repeat it though!

Butterfly Fancies

At the very start of my journey into cupcakes, I made some gorgeous royal icing butterfly decorations. They remain my favourite decoration in terms of impact - they just look gorgeous. They take a bit of time to do but they're well worth the effort.




I did a stand for Valerie's 60th birthday (a garden party) which featured 3 types of vanilla cupcakes. The first were covered with a whipped buttercream icing in two tones - lilac and mint and decorated with silver cachous.




It was my first attempt at doing two-toned icing and I was really happy with the result (given I was slightly afraid it may just turn out looking like playdough does when you mix two colours together... murky brown). I'm certainly keen to try the two-toned icing again given how striking it looked.



The second type were covered with a whipped buttercream icing in mint and decorated with tiny lilac royal icing spots and a hand-made daisy.




The third type, my favourite, were covered with a whipped buttercream icing in mint and decorated with a lilac butterfly. I did 3 types of butterflies, my favourite of which had pale wings with darker lilac "spots". The end result was fabulous, if I do say so myself!!!

Rose & Turkish Delights

These cupcakes are my Mum's all time favourites. They are an adaption of a Turkish Delight cupcake featured in the Womens' Weekly 'Cupcakes' recipe book and are absolutely delicious.

The cake is a white chocolate pistachio cake which I fill with a white chocolate ganache. The top is assembled with tiny pieces of turkish delight, pistachios and melted white chocolate. They taste sensational. The cakes shown is a very hasty photo taken of a batch I made recently for a get-together with my lovely gym friends. They were not my best work - mainly because I got distracted and forgot I was using rosewater and not rosewater essence, so they were very rosy indeed!!!

Australians All Let Us Eat Cake!

These cupcakes were a very quick effort done for an Australian theme. I was feeling particularly poorly so they were not my best work but Paul, gorgeous man that he is, swore they were some of the best tasting cakes I'd ever made.

I made two varieties - the first was a vanilla cupcake with chocolate glazed icing, topped with whipped white buttercream frosting and violet crumble shards. The second was a vanilla sponge, covered in chocolate glazed icing and shredded coconut, filled with raspberry jam & whipped white buttercream frosting. Delish!

Old MacDonald Had A Cake

Our gorgeous little friend, Livvy, had a farm theme for her 5th birthday this year. I played around for a while with some modelling paste and made these very cute cows & pigs. They were a lot of fun to create - it was a bit like playdough for grown ups!

The only issue was that as the week went on, the red I had decorated the pigs with became deeper and deeper. So, by the time the party rolled around (and these photos were taken), the pigs actually looked a bit like they had slapcheek! Ooops.