Tinkerbell giant cupcake birthday cake

I finally had a chance to bake and decorate a giant cupcake this week, boy did I have fun!!! I was lucky that the giant cupcake 3D pan was on sale at Myer a few weeks ago since I didn't fancy carving up a cake from scratch. Using the design from the Planet Cake book as my guide I covered an orange butter sponge cake (filled with orange buttercream) with some jaffa flavoured white choc fondant and proceeded to decorate to my hearts content. This birthday was Tinkerbell themed so I had to make a Tinkerbell figurine holding a paint brush since the birthday girl loves to paint.

Isn't she cute? I didn't try to replicate Tinkerbell limb for limb, I just used her as a guide and simplified her facial details.

Everything was edible, including the cherry on top which was make from red fondant given a super shine finish with my edible flower glaze (I love that stuff!!)

Wedding family characture portrait

Ok, I have to admit I found this request difficult, really, really, REALLY difficult. Last year my good friend Sel asked me to make this painting for a very special family member. Her request was a characture family portrait, no problem I said, easy I thought, if I can paint portraits and seascapes surely I can paint charactures right? HA! I was wrong, you see I am a realist, a thorough, anal, draw every detail kinda realist, I see it I draw it even to my high school art teacher's dismay. I sucked at abstract art and could never create anything by just using the object's colour or shape. So when I started on this painting I tried so hard to keep the subject simple and cartoonish that I lost the character of each person, I struggled, vented, chucked a tanty, tore my hair out, almost gave up about 15 times and drew the intial sketch a further 8 times before Sel and I were happy with the final design. Then I ummmmed and ahhhed, procrastinated, dug my heels in for a further few weeks before getting the courage to put the design on canvas. I was petrified I'd stuff it up, I think I tested the background colour 3 times, and did some mini colour versions before I finally took the plunge and started the painting. To my surprise I enjoyed painting it, I came across no hiccups, and ever the pesimist kept my triump under wraps right till the last stroke was complete. Am I happy with the result, heck yes! Will I be doing this again, heck no!! lol

Spiderman birthday cake

This is what I was busy completing for this weekend, a lovely Spiderman cake. Thank goodness I had the foresight to make the figurines two weeks ago, hot and humid weather + a very hectic schedule gave me very little time to do anymore figurines. This is a super moist choc mud cake with choc buttercream icing, the walls of the cake were a mixture of white choc fondant and Nestle milk chocolate (yum). The only thing not edible were the 2 cars I popped on the board at the last minute. I had a scary moment the night before where the hot weather played havoc with my milk choc walls, they kept going soft and wanting to break yikes!!! Thankfully the weather cooled down and I was able to complete the walls and cake, even if it was at 1.30am in the morning :-(

I made the spider webs from melted white chocolate, a template, some grease proof paper and a piping tip. Once they were dry I just peeled them off and "glued" them to the cake using more chocolate. Did I mention that the cake weighed a tonne? I nearly killed my back carrying it to the car!!