Anya's 10th birthday polka dot party

Phew, my very 1st lolly/dessert table is complete! I can finally kick back and appreciate all the hard work that went into Anya's polkadot party today. Six months of planning, collecting and crafting has paid off and the day was a huge success, its not every day my daughter bursts into tears because she's so happy ;-) Seeing her happy face made it all worth it. My inspiration as always, came from the fabulous AMY ATLAS (I LOVE her work!!) and Sharnel Dollar (amazingly talented lady!) Hats off to both these ladies for always pulling off the perfect party because it sure is hard work.

Most of the goodies were made by me with a lot of help from my girls, so its not perfect but I like it this way, we had fun doing those projects together.

The birthday cake was a 2 tier caramel fudge mudcake with caramel fudge buttercream icing.

My 1st macarons, don't think I'll be makng these again in a hurry, I found it very fidly lol My eldest wrote out all the label tags since my handwriting is BAD ;-)

These were made by Anya, we melted some white chocolate, coloured some blue and red and Anya piped the red and blue into a baking dish, then poured over the white chocolate and used a kebab stick to make some swirls. She then popped some smarties, peanut M&M's and sprinkles ontop to set. Once set we broke the chocolate into pieces.

We used some leftover fabric (sew deerly loved)to make these lolly bag tags, the girls then filled the bags with lollies and stapled the tag into place.

Another project I did with the girls, they piped blue chocolate into picnic spoons and then used various smarties and sprinkles to decorate the spoons. It went well with our polkadot theme.

These lovely vanilla cupcakes were entirely baked and decorated by my 10yr old daughter, I only helped mix the icing for her and she then piped it on the cupcakes and popped on the toppers. Cupcake wrappers are by The cupcake wrapper co, aren't they cute? They can be wiped clean and best of all they don't get greasy from icing mixtures. It was very hard work to pull together but everyone had a fab day.

Holy Communion cupcakes and cake set

The weekend of the 24th July was very busy for me, not only was it my eldest daughters birthday (think 24 cupcakes for the whole class) but I also had two Communion projects to complete. One was for a lovely girl called Bronte, I made her the set of cupcakes above in pink, yellow and blue, while the other set was for a boy called Nicholas.

Please excuse the terrible photo's, I had one of my chocolate panels break at the eleventh hour and went into a mad panic rush to make another one before delivery time. So instead of getting lovely clear and unhuried pics at 4pm I got these done in a rush at 6pm on my kitchen bench. The cake was a 2 tier baked New York cheesecake surrounded by chocolate panels, the cupcakes were plain vanilla with vanilla buttercream.

Here is a close up of the figurine I made, I am very happy of how he turned out, he's my very 1st "suited" figurine, and very 1st standing figurine.

Sneak peak to bedroom "reno"

Ok, not REALLY a renovation since we are renting, but I am doing up the bedroom and this is the fabrics I've used. Since my eldest and youngest share a birthday in July they will also be sharing a bedroom come 23rd July and as a combined gift from us I am doing up their room. Its actually the same fabric and colour pallett I am using for Anya's party and to keep costs down I've used it in the bedroom makeover.

Fabrics are

- Cosmo Cricket, Snorkel RED and Aqua Polka Dots on White
- Michael Miller, Minnie Ta Dots, Red
- Simply Sweet, Quilt Soup, Barbara Jones, BJ Red dots on aqua
- Michael Miller, Ta Dots in ocean
- Couple of Monaluna, Mingle, Red and Aqua range fabrics

Now to hurry up and finish all my projects, two weeks to reveal day, eeeeeeek!

Hip hop Spotti dotti birthday invites

So all the invites (done by The English Pea)for my eldest 10th birthday party was handed out yesterday, no turning back now, come what may this party WILL happen. Theme will be aqua and red polka dots since Anya is now "too old" for fairy/princess parties, we will be playing games such as twister, musical dots, spot the difference and join the dots. I started prepping and collecting for this party in January since I knew it would take awhile to collect all the fabric and blue and red items required to decorate her party. I am quietly having a panic attack, but probably more so because I am simultaniously doing up her room as a surprise which will be "revealed" the week before the party, on her actual birthday. I need more time, but then again if 6 months isn't enough time to do her room and plan her party then no amount of time will be enough. So watch this space!

Sewing 80th birthday cake

Look at what I delivered to the reception centre this morning, isn't it quirky? The birthday lady used to be a seamstress, specialising in wedding dresses and her daughter and son had this cake made (to feed 70 people) as a surprise. The main elements that had to be present on the cake was the mannequin with wedding dress, scissors, tape measure, pin cusshion, spool of thread and buttons + thimble. Everything on this cake is edible, even the pins you see. The main cake was a orange citrus double tier cake filled with orange and white chocolate ganache, yummmm!

I was stressed the most by having to cover the cakes in fondant but surprisingly I had no hiccups covering the 10' and 8' inch cakes. No creases and no lumps, mainly due to a neat trick "Planet Cake's book by Paris Cutter" has taught me, to ganache the outside of your cakes, let it set and then run a hot knife along the outside to smooth out bumps and creases. The cakes ended up very smooth (yay). Everything on the cake was made from scratch, only the sewing machine and scissors were made using a candy mould.

I loved the sewing machine the best, I used a candy mould to get the shape of the machine (grease the mould with some vegetable fat, pop in some fondant (Pettinice) then wack it out onto your table and let it set before moving or touching it) and used edible pastes to "paint" on the details.

The pin cusshion was made using a medium circle cutter, I cut out the green paste first, pressed the top into my mesh icing sugar shaker (to get the pattern) then used the circle cutter to cut out some grey paste, stuck them toghter and painted the base using edible silver paste. Pins were made from No 3 spaghettini (Angel hair) painted silver (edible) and topped with a coloured fondant "pinhead". All up a very time consuming project, but fun to do. I spent 3 weeks on making all the fondant items (so they could dry properly) and the last week I spent baking, assembling and covering the cakes.

Happy 2nd birthday Liandra

It was my youngest daughter Liandra's 2nd birthday today so to celebrate the special occasion my other girls chose the fruit fairy cake from Debbie Brown's Enchanting magical cakes book. I had a lot of fun making this cake, the body of the cake was cookies and cream madeira filled with chocolate ganach. The easiest items to make was the actual fairies themselves and I had a few hairy moments baking the two halves of cake. My 1st cake (made in a pyrex bowl) didn't cook, even after 4 hrs in the oven it was still raw so I pulled it out and tried again. The 2nd attempt was made using a metal mixing bowl and it turned out perfectly, I did have some trouble applying the fondant. Debbie makes it look super easy in her book but trust me covering a round object in fondant is far from easy! I ended up with a few small creases at the base of the cake which I hid with grass ;-)

Close up of the blackberry fairy, the gloss you can see was achieved by applying edible confectioners glaze, love that stuff!

Close up of the tangerine fairy. All up a fun cake to make which was a challenge but not so difficult that you'd throw in the towel in frustration. Liandra loved it, which is what counts the most in the end.

Sienna's Cheescake for 13th birthday

Holy moly but this project was a doozy. A 10' inch refrigerated cheescake with 24 mini cheescakes. Sounds easy enough, ha! It wasn't, ok the making of the cheescakes was easy but the decorating was a complete pain, I had to do several tests to see what would and what wouldn't work and after numerous swear words and lots of stamping of feet I came up with the following. The birthday girl wanted butterflies in pinks, mauves, lilac's and aqua and the cake had to be cheescake, the rest was up to me. The problem with cheescake is it doesn't like any type of decorations (other than fresh cream and fruit) any type of fondant or pastillage tends to sweat and then go mushy so that leaves you with chocolate. I love to eat chocolate but am not overly confident in using it in decoration, its an unpredictable cranky medium and one I'd like to stay away from. In the end I used white chocolate modelling paste to make the butterflies and coated the underside of each butterfly with white chocolate to stop it absorbing moisture while resting on the cake. I tried to think how to cover the cake to make it look pretty and thought a chocolate collar might work really well, the 1st chocolate collar I made turned out quite well (that was my back up collar) but my 2nd collar (using edible pattern sheets) was a shamozzle. I managed to get half the collar on but the 2nd half had a serious kink in it and I wasn't quick enough to smooth it out, then it broke when I tried to remove the acetate arghhhhh. Back to the drawingboard so I tried making the collar in 4 pannels and with a half circle pattern on the rim so it didn't look unproffesional and shoddy. It worked and the impromptu lattice swirl effect I popped on afterwards made it look even better. It was quite fragile and I had kittens trying to keep it safe for the past three days, esp when I was "gluing" on the butterflies with chocolate.

The number 13 is also made from choc fondant and resting on a choc plaque. I used some Christina Re butterfly paper to cover the cupcake supports (seen in the top pic) and made matching cupcake wrappers to go around my mini cheescakes (encased in foil wrappers to stop the moisture and fat "bleeding" through) The most stressful part for me was keeping it all refrigerated till the last minute, then quickly popping on the butterflies and then dropping it off intact. Don't think I'll be doing anymore of these in a hurry!