I cake, therefore I am

Christmas baking extravaganza

This year Michele and I did two days of epic baking to make x-mas gifts for our colleagues!

Swirl cookies

Easy rocky road

Rum Balls and Tia Maria Balls

Caramel Fudge

Adriano Zumbo's Macarons

Choc cherry cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting and fondant bunting

My work had a bunting competition for Christmas this year. These bunting cupcakes were a combined entry with some of my co-workers. We think they turned out really well.

The cakes and ganache are from Not Quite Nigella. The bunting is fondant coloured with green and red food colouring cut into triangles. Writing icing for the letters. The lovely Anna put her craft skills into gear and made the material bunting which ww attached to skewers.

Ferrero Rocher overload

Chocolate, marshmallow Ferrero Rocher cake

This one was a last minute cake request from my husband who needed to bring something in for a work birthday morning tea.

Cake base is Lorraine's 'I can't believe you made that' cake recipe.

Frosting is Sweetapolita's Marshmallow Cream Cheese Fillingwith Cadbury fingers for the edge and Ferrero Roches for the top of the cake. If I had a nice bright (maybe red) ribbon it would have been a great finishing touch to the cake.

Three tier chocolate layer cake (Happy birthday Julie and Merry X-mas everyone)

Raspberry chocolate layer cake

Finally catching up on some old posts!

I love cake (who doesn't) and I think layer cakes are the prettiest kind of cake there is. The day of our work X-mas party was also our co-worker Julie's birthday - so an excellent excuse to attempt this amazing creation.

Raspberry chocolate layer cake

Making the cake:

I used Lorraine's 'I can't believe you made that' cake recipe and (as usual) it worked out perfectly! Instead of making one cake, I doubled the recipe and made three.

Making the fillings and frosting:

I used the three frosting recipes from Sweetapolita's divine cake blog.

Marshmallow Cream Cheese Filling (hurray for discovering Marshmallow fluff at Woollies!!)
Pink Whipped Vanilla Cream Filling
Chocolate Frosting

Decoration:

As per Sweetapolita's instructions I layered the fillings in between each cake, adding fresh raspberries to the pink whipped cream layer. I frosted the outside with teh chocolate frosting and added some more fresh raspberries to finish. Yum!

Spiced pumpkin and turkey (happy Thanksgiving!)

Spiced pumpkin chai cupcakes and chocolate turkeys

I love having an excuse to bake something new! Thanksgiving (even though we don't celebrate this in Australia) was a chance to try out something a little bit different. The pumpkin chai cupcakes were a big hit - some people liked them so much that they cam back for seconds and thirds!

thanksgiving cupcakes

Making the cakes:

These cupcakes were inspired by this recipe from food52, I ended up using:

2 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
120g butter
pinch of salt
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
500 g pumpkin pie mix
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon

This made heaps of batter, enough for about 30 medium cupcakes.

pie mix from an American store

heaps of batter

the pumpkin cupcakes cooling

Decorating - Chai frosting:

I basically followed the frosting recipe and instructions from the food52 recipe. For the chai syrup I used used brown sugar instead of white. I used a plain round tip to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, and added a piece of candy corn to finish.

chai syrup ingredients

sugar starting to dissolve

finished syrup cooling

frosting ready to be combined

chai cream cheese frosting

frosted cupcakes

pumpkin chai cupcakes with candy corn decoration

Decorating - Chocolate turkeys:

These super cute turkeys are from a blog I follow called Whipped (http://whippedbaking.com). They are made with candy corn, white chocolate bits with black fondant for eyes and chocolate sprinkles. I used chocolate cream cheese frosting.

white chocolate bits for the eyes

dark chocolate fondant for the heads, black vanilla fondant on white chocolate bits for the eyes with candy corn beaks

turkey cupcake

Baby shower treats (Rebecca is having a boy!)

Baby shower cupcakes, scones and chocolate strawberries

For my dear friend Rebecca's baby shower we prepared a dessert table and a lolly station. While the items were tasty, they couldn't compete with the jungle themed cake by Rebecca's sister and mother!

Baby shower dessert station

Cupcakes

I made 24 cupcakes (12 vanilla and 12 chocolate) using my usual recipes. I did a batch of chocolate butter cream and a batch of vanilla butter cream (adding a few drops of blue food colouring to some of the vanilla batch) for the frosting. I purchased an assortment of baby shower themed cupcake toppers from ebay (http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/toppers_cakes_pops). These were so simple to make, and the cake toppers make them look almost professional!

Baby shower cupcakes

Scones

I used a recipe from Taste.com.au (http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/24492/scones) that I have had success with previously. Each scone was cut in half, smeared with a delicious strawberry jam. I then whipped some cream and piped a small dollop on top of the jam.

Scones with jam and cream

Chocolate strawberries

These were very simple to make. I washed the strawberries and let them dry. Meanwhile I melted some white chocolate buttons and added a few drops of blue food colouring. Each strawberry is dipped on the chocolate and then left to set on baking paper coated with some spray oil (to stop them sticking). These are best kept in the fridge until they are served.

Blue chocolate strawberries

Lolly table

I know - this isn't really baking, but I think the lolly table we put together was pretty and worth sharing. It was dead simple, all you need are an assortment of lollies, some glass jars, vases etc and some different coloured ribbons and serving spoons/tongs. Party guests each filled a small bag to take home as a thank you for coming to the shower.

Baby shower lolly station