Tag Archives: fondant

1st deviantART Birthday

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A year ago, I made the decision to finally join deviantART. It was a rather flippant decision, not meant to turn into anything significant. I certainly didn't plan to become invested in the site. I just couldn't comment and fave art I stumbled upon without an account, so I joined.

I turned into one of the best decisions I made. deviantART has a thriving artisan craft community. You have to dig a little to find it, and it's virtually imperceptible from the outside. But it is there, and it is full of some incredibly talented artisans.

The community has not only been supportive of me beyond what I thought imaginable, it has inspired me and it has changed the way I view this hobby. I've come to respect culinary art as an art form. From the photography of savoury dishes to the creation of novelty cakes, it's all art, it's all expression. The community has motivated me to improve not just in culinary art, but to learn and improve in still life photography as well.

I have so much to thank the community for, so I decided to say thanks in the best way I know how.

Cake is the word…

12 Days of Christmas :: 6 Bauble Cakes

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The single most exciting part of Christmas for me is decorating the tree. Most of November consists of me waiting for any sign that's it's appropriate to bring the tree out. This year our neighbours put up their Christmas lights really early, and that was all I needed. I eagrly grabbed the tree and set about my favourite task.

No one else in my family is really into any artistic hobbies or creatively inclined, so even when I was quite young they were more than happy to let me decorate the tree. To everyone else, it seemed like a chore. It eventually became my 'thing' at Christmas. As a kid I'd become easily bothered if people tried to 'help', because it would inevitably result in them putting decorations in places that were just aesthetically horrible. These days, my boyfriend always helps me decorate the tree. While he jokes about how pedantic I am about it and teases me about my decorating 'rules', he shares the same creativity and an eye for detail that comes with his love for artistic hobbies. He's just a pedantic as me, and the only person I trust to help me with this onerous task. It was really evident this year when we were finding places for the last handful of baubles. My sister suggested a place for him to put the one in his hand and he replied with, "No, you can't put it there. There's another bauble of the same size and colour right there." That's my boy!

As I grew up, every year I'd have a different theme. Out decorations were a haphazard collection of brand new assortments of baubles alongside ratty old ones from the 80s. I'd pick and choose colours every year, with one of my favourites being red and gold. These days, my tree is always blue and silver. I've built up quite the collection of blue and silver decorations now, a collection large enough to fit the ridiculously over-sized Christmas tree. While blue and silver is my chosen poison these days, I miss the red and gold a little. I almost have no red and gold baubles left any more, so it was with immense joy that I returned to one of my favourite colour schemes with these edible versions.

Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree…

12 Days of Christmas :: 3 Candle Cakes

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I have such a love of candles. I own far too many candles that I never burn because I have some weird thing about keeping things looking new and never using them because reasons (I'm looking at you, 5 sets of Derwent pencils still wrapped in plastic). 

Once I inevitably get over this weird quirk and light them, I'm quickly captivated by them as the flame dances on their molten surface. I love their elegance, their ambiance and their beauty. I especially love their fragrance, be it from a scented candle or the smell of a wick just blown out. I also love the way they remind me of being a kid. I grew up in a household where money was variably present, and so we often had one or more of our utilities cut off. Of course, as a kid, you don't yet know the stress of money and bills so it's all just another adventure. Today we get to boil the water for our baths on the stove and read stories by candle light. There were a lot of candle light nights. Maybe it's because they bring me back to this time of personal innocence, or maybe it's just their intrinsic beauty, but I find them so calming. 

Candles also remind me of Christmas. They're my favourite centrepiece at Christmas dinner, though they look gorgeous adorning any occasion. Lit or unlit, they make the setting look beautiful. So when creating a list of baking for my 12 Days of Christmas, I just knew candles had to be featured. 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

The Legend of Zelda: Furnix Cake

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Over on what is fast becoming my new home, deviantART, a group called Game Art HQ was hosting an ART collab called Link's Blacklist. It's a fan art tribute to The Legend of Zelda. But instead of featuring the usual types of fan art, this art collab ventured to be something different. It features only enemies from The Legend of Zelda. It involved 60 artists and each artist had to claim a different enemy from the series so there are no repeats. If you're a fan of the series, or even if you're not, you should go check out the gallery. The standard there is amazing.

Now, this group accepts only quality fan art. I'm a digital art newbie, so instead of drawing something, I turned to a medium I was more advance in. Cakeage.

I chose to do Furnix from Skyward Sword.

You encounter these enemies when you enter the Ancient Cistern. I saw these gorgeous birds flying around and hoped I wouldn't have to kill something so beautiful. Then they started spitting fireballs at me. Sigh.

There are so many gorgeous elements to Skyward Sword. The aesthetic of that game make me swoon. So it was a delight to recreate something from the game.

Or, at least, it was when I first embarked on the project. I've never had so many things go wrong with a cake before. This was the most stressed I had ever been when making a cake.

But let’s start that story from the very beginning. ..

Heart of Roses Wedding Cake

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I disappeared from the blog for the last week, and so apologies for the silence! Our Masters cohort had our seminars last Friday, wherein we had to deliver a presentation on our research to not only our peers, but to all the other students and academics in the department as well. Not only did we have to deal with the usual fear of public speaking, but also the knowledge that our research could be torn apart by the academics during question time. Add to this the knowledge that we would be graded on our presentation as well as our ability to handle question time and we were all wrecks! My week was spent preparing and rehearsing and trying to get all my data analysed in time. It was the most busy and stressed and pressured I, and we as a collective group, have been for our whole degree. 

It was exactly the time when I should have been saying no to commissions. Especially to commissions for occasions as important as a wedding. 

I'm incredibly bad at saying, "no". 

It was a good practise of the time management skills I've been perfecting throughout the last 7 years of University degrees.

Roses are red…

Fondant Tutorial

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I receive baking questions from people almost on a daily basis, not just here on the blog, but the various mediums I'm part of. Right from my personal Facebook account through to deviantART. Some of them are to do with recipes I've posted, others asking for tips or troubleshooting, but almost half of them are fondant questions. Why it has taken me until now to write a fondant tute, I'll never know. So instead of typing out my experiences each time I answer someone, I'm going to document it here to save a heap of time.

This fondant recipe is more expensive and time consuming than marshmallow fondant. If I'm just covering a cake and doing simple decorations, I use marshmallow fondant. My recipe for regular fondant fluctuates based on the need. Sometimes I use a recipe that involves gelatine. If I want it to dry hard, I'll use gum trag in the recipe. This tutorial will give you my main recipe for regular fondant, as well as all my tips for a successful first time working with the stuff.

This said, for me it's not all in the recipe. For me, the most important thing is the quality of ingredients you use and learning what fondant should feel like. I always use CSR sugar because it is high quality and tastes nice. This recipe ends up tasting like fairy floss, which comes down mostly to the ingredients chosen. 

Let’s begin

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Cupcakes

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This Saturday is the big day!

Fans of the series will probably know already, but this Saturday The Hunger Games comes out in DVD. I am so excited. Beyond excited. Now we can all stop watching the crappy cinema cam version we've all been clinging to after emptying our pockets at the cinema. We can relive the experience without people walking past the screen or laughing or whooping at inappropriate times. So good.

The DVD release coincides with my very first weekend off in a long time, so I will be spending it sobbing into my popcorn over The Hunger Games and the loss of favourite characters.

I was so excited I decided to celebrate – with cupcakes!

I wasn't really happy with how the mockingjay pin cupcake come out on my first attempt when I made the Hunger Games cupcakes, so any excuse to give this another go was a welcome one. 

This post is gonna be really pic heavy, you guys. I spent so long making these that I can't resist showing you all every little detail.

They just want a good show, that's all they want…

Jye’s Christening Cake

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My cousin Jessica is one of my most supportive family members when it comes to my baking adventures, as well as my most regular commissioner. A few of them have been for her son. You may remember the Baby Shower Cupcakes I made as a gift for her, or the Pirate Dreams cake for his first birthday. So when his Christening rolled around, she again asked me to make a cake for the occasion. I was more than happy to oblige. 

But before we launch into the final product, there is a story of drama and tears. This cake almost didn't happen.

My tale of multiple fails of epicness…

Truffle Box Mudcake

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A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Zoopa (the social club in our Zoology Department) committee about a cake. They were hosting a fundraising auction and, because I won both judges and people's choice award at this years and last years Bake Off, they wanted me to bake a cake for it.

Whenever I get an unrestrained chance to bake a cake for the masses, the thought of, "Yay! I can do something I've been wanting to for ages," quickly turns to, "Holy crap. What am I going to do?" The choice is overwhelming. Especially given that it needed to appeal to all genders and a range of demographics with a single thing in common: Zoology. I toyed with several novelty cake ideas that were either animal or science based. In the end, I went with something that was just going to taste nice.

What’s in the box…