Pencil crayon mini cake tutorial

STEP 1: Gather your ingredients, you'll need some mini swiss rolls (mine are Italian choc mini swiss rolls) you could use twinkies or tootsie rolls, some mini ice cream cones and some coloured fondant.

STEP 2: Lay out your pencil so you can see how much of the mini ice cream cone you need to cut off. I've cut about 1/3 off the bottom of mine.

STEP 3: For the wooden nib parts of the "pencils" I've coloured some fondant skin tone, you could colour it light peach or light brown to represent the timber nib of the pencil. I then rolled the skin toned fondant flat and made a rough template so it would fit around the ice cream cone neatly. Cover the tip of your cone in the colour your pencil is meant to be (mine is red) and brush some buttercream around your cone to act as glue, now drape and smooth the fondant around the cone, slightly over lapping at the bottom of the red fondant to hide the jagged seam. Tuck the over hanging skin tone fondant at the bottom of the cone in, this will help anchor the fondant and smooth out any lumps and bumps.

STEP 4: Measure how tall your swiss roll is and add another 2cm overhang, also check the circumfrenche of your roll as you want the fondant to go all the way around with a nice sharp finish/seam, now cut a rectangle from your coloured fondant (mine is red) (My rectangle was 12cm tall x 14cm wide). Ice the swiss roll in buttercream, (don't forget to put some icing on the tip of the swiss roll so your cone can adhere to it and be more secure), and cut a circle the size of the bottom of your swiss roll, stick the circle to the bottom of your swiss roll, smoothing down the edges. Stick the "nib/cone" to the top of your swiss roll.

Now gently pop your swiss roll on the rectangle fondant and roll it up till the seams meet up, cut away any excess with scissors and close the seam. Cut out a smaller red circle and stick this to the skin tone circle at the bottom of your "pencil" (this is the coloured lead you see when you look at the bottom of a pencil)

STEP 5: Gently smooth the top part of your coloured fondant to the skin tone nib, you may need to use some sugar glue or water to make the fondants adhere. Don't wet it too much or your colours will smudge and run onto your skin tone nibs. If there is any overlapping fondant don't panic, just cut it off with some scissors and smooth it. Let it dry for an hour before moving it around, I find if I pop it on baking paper as soon as I've made one it won't stick and break when I try to move them.

Have fun making them ;-)

Leoni

Caramel mudcake recipe

Image courtesy from Taste.com.au



Anne from Norway asked me to share my mudcake recipe since these cakes weren't common where she was from and she wanted to try and make one, so Anne, this is for you. Obviously you can make them in dark and white chocolate too but this is a favourite amongst my family.

CARAMEL MUDCAKE

Ingredients


250g butter


150g white cooking chocolate


2 cups of brown sugar


1 cup of buttermilk


1 1/2 cups of plain flour


1/2 cup self raising flour


1 teaspoon vanilla essence


3 eggs (at room temperature)





Preparation





1) Preheat oven to 150 degrees C (Mine is a gas oven and no fan) Grease a 20cm round cake tin (mine is also 8cm high), line base and sides with baking paper.


2) Combine butter, chocolate, sugar and milk in a saucepan and stir over low heat (don't boil) untill smooth and melted. Transfer to a large bowl and let it cool to room temperature (about 20 min)


3) Using a wisk add the sifted plain + self raising flour, then vanilla essence then eggs. Make sure you do not over mix or your batter will become tough.


4)Pour mixture into your prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 50 minutes. After the 1 hour mark I usually turn my tin around in the oven and loosely cover the top with some tinfoil, I then bake it for a further 50 min till cooked. I check the cake with a serrated knife put in at an angle.


5) Keep the cake in the pan while it cools, I usually cover the top with a thick towel while it cools, it keeps the moisture in the cake. Once cool I pop it on a plate to ice, but you could also eat it plain with some whipped cream.

Back to school apple party for Imara

Phew, another party complete, I am bushed after this one! This party was for my 3rd daughter Imara she turned 4 on the 29th January. Since school was starting back (after 8 very long weeks) on the 2nd February and Imara was starting a new Kindy I thought a back to school theme would be a good way to encourage some enthusiasm for school amongst my elder girls and hopefully make it easier for Imara to start the new year. I made a list of all the things Imara loves, apples, drawing, reading, writing etc and tried to draw some inspiration from her likes. I also looked, drooled and was inspired by Amy Atlas's Back to School bake sale, a feature Amy did for Parents Magazine back in September 2010. So many cool ideas, where to start! I featured the apple throughout the party as well as the bookworm because Imara always takes an apple to Kindy and LOVES to read the most. To start with I made Imara's apple invitation using Kikki K's apple tags, I just printed the details on some blank cardstock and cut it to fit the apple shape, I then used the Kikki K envelopes and stickers from their stationary range to send them off to her friends.

I then started off by painting some MDF boards with blackboard paint and with the leftover paint I covered an old dining table (that already had a lot of scribbles on it) top so the girls could have fun drawing on it after or during the party with some chalk. On the blackboard I stuck a white tree wall decal which also became the focal point for my table and the "vessel" for my homemade apple cookies. Yep, I hung apple cookies from my "tree", it looked so cute and best of all the girls just had to undo the ribbon bow if they wanted to eat one. I was then inspired by Bird's Party free downloadeable back to school printables (I used them on labels, tags and pencil toppers), they are amazing, but if you want something different please visit Bird's Party shop because she has some AMAZING designs to suit everyone.

The banner infront of the table I made using Dimple Prints free downloadeable alphabets, thank you Carli they are so cute, Carli also has an Etsy shop HERE.

The best thing about the blackboard paint on the table and walls is that I could use both surfaces as giant "lables" for my sweet goodies. Any excuse to write on walls and furniture ;-)
The building blocks (red ones on the right side of the table) are custom made by Lilly-Pilly arts on Ebay.

For the cake I decided on a small chocolate sponge filled with chocolate fudge icing, Imara's favourite flavour. Everything on the cake is edible and made from fondant, Imara loved the bookworm the best.

Instead of traditional platters and cake standsI decided to use mini blackboards resting on books (covered in craft paper) that I had lying around the house.

One of the items I made for the dessert table (since Imara LOVES drawing) are these cute pencils, I used mini sponge rolls (you could use twinkies or tootsie rolls) for the body of the pencil and mini icecream cones cut in half for the pencil leads. I then covered it all in coloured fondant.

Yummy apple pops inspired by Bakerella

Scrummy vanilla buttercake cupcakes with numbers, apple and worm toppers made from fondant.

One of Imara's favourite drinks is plain milk, so had to have that at the party! Instead of printing lables I bought these cute blackboard labels from Bradensgrace Wallart and wrote the word milk using plain white chalk. How cute are the polka dot straws from Tout Mon Amour? I love them, and they have heaps of other goodies, so please visit them to see for yourself.

The gorgeous birthday girl wore a custom made apple skirt with polkadot frill from Janum, thank you Majd I love the skirt! I made a matching T-shirt with a $4 Target T-shirt and some left over felt and fabric.
The party table was decorated with melamine plates (from Spotlight) and home made polkadot napkins and party hats (inspired by Kate Landers) I wrote each child's name on the table, in chalk, above each plate as place cards.

At the back of each chair is a handmade library bag containing a children's book about apples ;-) I made the bunting flags from Kokka green and red apples, Chalkboard Letters and Numbers fabric, Kaufman Metro Market Apple in Red and Michael Millers lime green polka dots fabric.

Each child took home these cute mini suitcases with Penny Scallan bag tags and stickers.

and each suitcase contained 1 x edible crayons, I handmade these using Parties by Hardie's cute tutorial, alphabet cookie snacks (made by me because I couldn't find any to buy at my local store grrr), notebook (covered in funky apple fabric) and pencil + apple. Hope you enjoyed reading about the party, please also join me on my Facebook Page, I would love to see you there.

Last but not least a HUGE thank you to Amy Atlas for featuring this party, I am beyond thrilled and honored!!!

Cheers,

Leoni

Black & white engagement

This is what I've just completed for an engagement this weekend. Nancy showed me a photo of a ring box she wanted on the top tier and asked for everything to be black and white themed with hearts. I made a mix of coconut, chocolate and vanilla cupcakes + cakes to feed 150 guests, that certainly is a LOT of cake! I custom made the stand to match the theme by covering cakeboards in white fabric with black ribbon trim while the support pillars were decorated in black and white damask fabric. All cupcake wrappers were handmade by me in Christina Re black & white damask paper as I tried to match the pillar fabric (and succeeded, yay).

Here is a close up of the top tier, a 6" inch round coconut cake with coconut buttercream icing and covered in white choc fondant. Everything is edible (but I wouldn't try or you'd break your teeth lol), the jewelry box is made from black flower modelling paste while the ring is white modelling paste painted in edible silver dust after it had dried. The diamond in the ring is isomalt (edible sugar) and bought from a cake store (its readily available on the internet), size of edible diamond 1.5 carats set in 6 prong "platinum" setting, wish it was real ;-)

Back to school party idea board

For those of you living in Australia, did you know its only 2.5 weeks to go till school starts again? Eeeeeek! I bet some of you can't wait! lol I've already started collecting items for my eldest two girls who will be in grade 5 and 1 respectively. Since my 3rd child's birthday is only 3 short days till D-day we've decided to have a back to school birthday party with apples as the focal point. Imara will be 4 in 2 weeks time and although she will be going to Kinder rather than big school I thought I'd encourage the enthusiasm for Kinder by having the school theme incorporated into her party.

I put this idea board together to start the creative juices flowing, image on the top left hand corner is from TomKat Studios, the one next to it (chair) is from remodelista, bottom right hand corner is from Amy Atlas while the rest were from Google image searches (author unknown). I've got a pretty good idea what I will be doing for her party but I am stuck on her cake, usually I have the cake sorted first and the party idea then follows but since its been hot and humid here in Melbourne its been very hard working with fondant. We've got some cool weather coming up early this week so I better think fast what I will be making so I can get the sugar work completed and it can dry in time. I am also stuck on some gift ideas, I've bought part of her gift (Penny Scallan lunch bag and matching drink bottle) but can't think what else to get her. Imara is Barbie mad but I am so OVER Barbie at the moment I'd prefer not to buy anymore of those, besides my sister in law has bought her another Barbie for her birthday.

I better start thinking a little harder before I run out of time!

Featured on Hostess with the Mostess!!!

Happy New year everyone, hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas and holiday with family and friends. Its been very busy for me with 4 children home and trying to keep them busy, hence being MIA since Christmas lol Everyone goes back to school on the 2nd February so I'll have more time to come back on here ;-)

First up some exciting news for me this month is that my party for Jasmine has been featured on Hostess with the Mostess!!! I was so excited to see my pics on the HWTM blog, I think I nearly fainted lol Mind you HWTM made my photo's look 10 times better, I was floored at how professional they looked. Thank you so much HWTM for featuring my little party, I am absolutely stoked :-)

My next project is Imara's 4th birthday on the 29th January, here is a hint of what I am thinking.............

Merry Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas everyone, have a safe and wonderful time with your family. Here are two photo's to show how I have re-used Jasmine's birthday party elements. I am all for recycling ;-)

Cheers,

Leoni

xxxxx