I make stuff. Simple as that.

Like cupcakes, without the cups!

thecakebar:

Chocolate Dipped Peanut Butter Stuffed Bananas! (tutorial)

(via creativity-corner)

I made this cake for my friend, Rob. It was his birthday today and some weeks ago I told him I’d like to make a cake for him. So he knew I was going to make him a cake, but I kept the theme a secret ‘til I presented it to him today. He was so happy with what he got as Studio Ghibli’s “My neighbour Totoro” is one of his favourite films, ever.

This cake was an awesome challenge, learning curve, and a great step up from the “Yoshi’s Island” cake I made a couple of months ago. This is the second time I’ve modelled sugar paste and, although it’s not absolutely perfect, I’m really happy with the results. My biggest challenge, this time around, was actually working in this summer heat. My house, as it is in sunlight all afternoon and evening ‘til sunset, means our living room and kitchen become unbearably hot and the heat began to dry out the sugar paste at an alarming rate, resulting in some lumps and bumps to the cake’s exterior. Again, I’m still learning, so this is very much a case of “practice makes perfect”.

So the cake components are:

-3 layer cake (2 chocolate sponges and 1 blue-coloured vanilla sponge sandwiched together with Mars bar ganache)

-Blue sugarpaste background around the sides of the cake decorated with grass, flowers, butterflies and leaf border, also sugarpaste. (Thank goodness for shape cutters!)
-Leaves atop the cake in a variety of shades of green

-Three Totoro characters. Largest Totoro is fully edible with cake body, covered in dark grey sugarpaste & other colours for finer details. Medium-sized blue & white sugarpaste character, and lastly, the tiny white character, also made entirely of sugarpaste. The reason I made the largest Totoro edible is because I hate the idea of biting into a solid chunk of sugarpaste.

The perks of making birthday cakes for friends? Getting to eat some afterwards. It was really tasty, even if I do say so myself. This is definitely my most awesome cake creation to date. It took me 10 hours in total, but so worth it. I hope, with time, I’ll become a lot more proficient (and efficient) in my cake making :)

The following are some “making-of” pictures. Enjoy!

All cake sponges cooling down.

Forming Totoro out of blue vanilla sponge cake, making him entirely edible. Though, I know birthday boy, Rob, would feel rather guilty about eating him.

Last sponge layer is on.

Coating the cake in beautifully rich and creamy Mars bar ganache.

Ready to be covered.

Totoro and pals before being placed on top of the cake.

This tiny little guy was so cute, as he is in the film.

Rob, the birthday boy, with his cake :)

There it is - finished! I love the daffodil-type flower I made :D

My slice of cake! Yummy!

Chocolate bark I made for tonight’s dessert :)

White chocolate layer is filled with salted pretzels and the dark chocolate layer is filled with corn flakes and topped with corn flakes, broken pretzels and sugar paste flowers, hearts & stars.

The mint chocolate torte I just made for tonight’s dessert :) It’s made with a chocolate biscuit base, dense mint chocolate filling topped with a light layer of whipped cream and dark chocolate curls.

For this particular torte I halved the recipe, as it’s just me and my husband having it, otherwise we’ll be eating this for a few weeks - eek!

kimberleykee:

ahhhh if I ate everything I wanted to eat… 

(via crowdedemptiness)

mmmmm!

I made this entire spread of baked goods for my friend’s party.

Baked goodies include: Peanut butter brownies, Plain chocolate brownies & marshmallow-filled French macarons and what I call ‘crunchy chocolate treats’. I guess they’re similar to what Americans call chocolate bark & have rice krispies, cornflakes and a layer of salted pretzels.

Yum!

You know when you have dessert and it’s so yummy, you think “this is too good not to share…”? This is what I feel about flan. It’s a dessert that triggers memories of sitting, eating, in my granny’s kitchen as a young girl.

Sadly I didn’t make the flan/creme caramel myself, it’s store bought, but hey. It’s still very yummy!

If you’ve never had flan, get to it! Just have a simple vanilla flavoured one with plenty of caramel :) Let this image below tempt you!