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.

Tee Time

Hot on the heels of the nautical 60th, came a golfing themed 60th for Sarah's other gorgeous Dad, Kevin. Sarah's lovely Mum, Val, had some great ideas which I worked with and we ended up with a large cutting cake which featured Kevin's initials propped up against golf tees. The cake was a buttercake sandwiches with lemon cream filling and iced with a whipped white buttercream frosting. The sides were decorated with green & white coconut and a pale green star border.

The cupcakes were all vanilla cake and 3 different designs. The first was a mound of pale green frosting "grass" surrounding a golf flag (which I made featuring either Kevin's initials or "60"). The second was a pale green embossed fondant icing topped with a tiny golf tee and ball. The third was a golf ball edible printed icing impression (from the lovely folks at http://www.cakesaroundtown.com.au/ who have images for just about any theme you can come up with), surrounded by pale green frosted "grass".

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It was a lot of fun to make all the tees and balls. Each time I've made something different I've learnt how to use different tools much more effectively and this particular theme was great for improving some of my flower moulding paste techniques! When all the little golf balls were sitting by themselves they looked more like hailstones than golf balls, but the tees managed to give them a better identity!

Ahoy There!

Sometimes when I think about a theme, I have these grand visions in my head of what I'd like the cakes to look like. It should be said though that I am possibly the least crafty person I know - I can't sew, knit, draw, paint or do anything that involves taking a vision in your head and somehow representing it on paper. I do okay with play-dough though, so that must be why I manage okay with cakes.

Last year my gorgeous best friend, Sarah, organised an absolutely sensational surprise 60th birthday party for her very lovely Dad. Her Dad is a sailing man and so the party's theme was a nautical one (which, I might add, was such a sensational theme - everything for the party just looked terrific!). Sarah, and her sister Kate, did a fabulous job with the party organising - their Dad was completely surprised and I'm sure they will all treasure that evening always.

Sarah asked me to do some cakes for him and I had a few ideas in my head and I really had to tinker around a little to make the end product match the vision in my mind. Of course, it didn't help that once I'd mucked around night after night to finally find something I was happy with, my darling eldest Son woke up early one morning and decided he'd break all of the decorations into pieces!!! (The first one was an accident and I think the rest followed because he figured if he was going to get into trouble he may as well do a good job of committing the crime.)

Despite the sabotage, I was really happy with how the stand turned out - in fact, the decorations were probably better the second time around. I did 60 vanilla cupcakes which were all iced with a whipped white buttercream frosting. I then decorated each cupcake with either a fondant life preserver, sailboat or anchor. The decorations were fiddly, but really effective. If either of my boys turn out to be rowers, I'll be set for cake ideas!

Pink Breakfast CupCakes

My Sister-in-Law, Kathy, organises a Pink Breakfast every October to raise money for breast cancer research. It's a fun morning and Kath, together with her friend Lurelle, put in an enormous amount of work both on the day and in the months beforehand. Given my brother, my neice and my nephew all have their birthdays in the four weeks surrounding the breakfast, I think Kath does an amazing job in pulling it all together each year.

Each year I've tried to support their efforts by either donating a prize or in providing cupcakes. Last year's cupcakes were sensational. As I have two lovely little boys, pink is not a colour we see a lot of in our house. For that reason, I absolutely love doing cakes for a theme that involves pretty pastels. Pale pink flowers and hearts just don't work for boys' parties!

I created two varieties of cupcakes for last year's Pink Breakfast stand. Both were vanilla cakes and the first was iced with embossed white fondant icing and a pink moulded blossom. The second was iced with embossed pink fondant icing, a small swirl of whipped white buttercream frosting and a royal icing dotty heart.

The night before the breakfast I did a head count and realised I hadn't made enough, so I also threw together some last minute "Iced Vovo's" - a vanilla cupcake with rose cream filling, whipped white buttercream frosting coated in pink & white coconut.

The stand looked fabulous, decorated in a shabby chic rose patterned paper. There wasn't a crumb to be found on the stand once everyone had left, which is the greatest compliment I could have been given.

Going Dotty

One of my favourite ways to decorate my cupcakes is by using handmade letters or shapes. They are very easy peasy to do so they're really not that special, but they give a great effect. It's an easy but effective way of incorporating a colour theme and they look gorgeous when they're finished.

I got the idea after I spent days making royal icing butterflies for some cupcakes a few years ago. The butterflies were far more intricate and time consuming, but the premise is the same. These ones were for a "D&P" initial 40th birthday party. Cute.

Di & Jonny's Wedding

My gorgeous friend, and very own lovely bridesmaid, Diana was married in August 2008. She asked me to do her wedding cake and I jumped at the chance (and then tried to think of as many ways as possible that I could get out of it once I realised that if I stuffed it up, it was her WEDDING cake I'd ruined!).


Di & Jonny wanted a mud-cake topper, which we iced with white fondant and decorated with a gorgeous big black silk flower. The stand was covered in an absolutely gorgeous black & white flocked paper (sourced from my lovely friends at http://www.amazingpaper.com.au/). We then covered the three bottom tiers of the stand with buttercake cupcakes in white papers which were filled with a rose cream centre. They were each then iced with an embossed fondant icing in either black or white and then decorated with either a black or white moulded blossom.


The blossoms had all been made in the week preceeding the wedding and I transported them up to the Coast in tissue paper. The cakes I made the day before and then filled and iced them on the day. Di & Jonny's wedding was a little stressful, so I was kind of sitting in the middle her apartment amongst the stress with icing absolutely everywhere. To add to the situation, I was also buckling under the pressure of being Di & Jonny's emcee that evening, a job which I would have gladly sold by soul to escape. It's a miracle any of the cakes made it downstairs to the reception in one piece really.

All the stress aside, that stand is probably my favourite ever - it was so elegant and looked perfect when it was all set up and finished. The time spent in making all of those flowers was well and truly worth it and I'm delighted that, in the end, I gave Di & Jonny exactly what they wanted for their wedding cake. They are two of the most lovely people I know and I'm so honoured to have shared in their wedding.


A big thankyou to Renee Caldwell - http://www.reneecaldwell.com.au/ for the beautiful photos from the day.

Red Hat Ladies

Last July I created a stand for the Ascot chapter of The Red Hat Ladies (hence the garish red & purple colourings). This was my first go at embossing icing and I was surprised at how fabulous it looks, considering how relatively simple it is to do.

I had two cake varieties. The first was a chocolate mud cupcake, filled with a chocolate peppermint ganache, iced with a red embossed fondant icing and decorated with purple & red primroses. The second was a vanilla cupcake with whipped white buttercream frosting, purple buttercream swirls and a royal icing decoration (either a red hat or red tiara).

The top of the stand featured a buttercake fondant iced small cutting cake, decorated with red roses. At the time, it was the most number of cakes I'd made at any one time, so it took a little while to get my head around how to get them all baked and iced within 24 hours to maintain their freshness. I don't think any of the Red Hat Ladies would have minded if they were a day older though - they were devoured by the end of the lunch to the very last crumb.

Mini Primroses

These were some very tasty little morsels for our beautiful friend, Olivia, on her 4th birthday.

They were very simple - a vanilla cake, vanilla frosting with a purple or pink primrose.

Pretty & perfect - just like Miss O!

Cupcake Stands

Two of my all time favourite cupcake stands are the stands I created for my gorgeous Godson, Max on his Naming Day and the stand for my youngest son and chief mischief-maker, Sam. Max & Sam had similar colouring themes and their stands were just gorgeous (if I do say so myself!).

Max's stand featured my "Letters" - royal icing letter decorations, together with lots of spots & dots. The stand was decorated with very cute pale blues, lime greens and white papers.

Sam's first birthday party featured a zoo theme ("The smallest creature at the Long Family Zoo is about to turn 1."). The cake stand featured Letters, together with some royal icing animal decorations and a small cutting cake on top. I used pale blue and green papers, together with matching paper from his birthday invitations to decorate the stand.

Both cakes were a vanilla cake, with whipped white buttercream frosting.

Delish!

A "Website" Is Born!

In the last couple of months I've had multiple people ask me if I have a website to show off my cupcakes. I wondered where they thought I might find the time to create one.... and yet, here I am!

I will slowly try to upload photographs of past cupcakes and, if there's ever any time left over at the end of a day again, I'll try and put some more of my vision into reality and share it with you.

If you like the look of my cakes and would like to contact me, feel free to email me at thelongjunk@gmail.com or phone 0431 28 7775.

Enjoy!