Rainbow Cake

A friend was telling me about a rainbow cake she saw on someone's blog and so decided to surprise her and make her one. It's a basic butter cake, with the colours of the rainbow mixed in portions of the batter, which is then topped onto each other to give it the rainbow effect.
I was rather weary of the colours being too gaudy and affecting the taste of the cake, but thankfully the cake still tasted very much like a butter/vanilla cake and no one could taste any of the colours.
It's would be a nice surprise to cover the cake with icing and then have a lovely surprise once you cut into it. Well...it would also definitely be a nice way to make cupcakes, but then that would require lots of time and work spooning the correct amount into each patty.

All the colours stacked on top of each other

Colours all mixed and ready to be assembled.

The inside of the cake

Love the colours...

Lavender Cupcakes

Since moving to Melbourne, I have been fascinated with the lavender flowers and realised that people did use it for cakes and such. So embarked on a mission to make these cupcakes when spring came and lavenders were abundantly available.
Managed to get some pure lavender essence which I used as the flavouring to the cupcakes. Nonetheless I didnt want the cupcakes to taste too much like pot purri so omitted it from the butter cream. Did garnish with some fresh lavenders I picked from the garden. Overall I am happy with the results, and the two people who ate them said they were nice and not too overpowering.

Apple, Cinnamon & Raisin Studel

Another first for me. Learned this recently and decided to try it out at my work place. Quite happy with the results and I must say the apple filling just by itself is just lovely.

Making the Filo pastry is too time consuming, so we used store bought ones.

Perhaps for the next project I'll make fruits of the forest which is a mixture of berries and apples. Getting the hang of rolling up the studel, and I think it could be a little more tighter, and filled with a little more filling.

Citrus Poppy Seed Slice

Somehow am hooked to the combination of lemon/orange with poppy seed. This recipe was rather easy, and I could even use the whole orange and lemon for the syrup needed to pour over the slice.
The rinds were sliced and cooked with the orange and lemon juice with some sugar till it was thick. Once the cake was cooked, the syrup was poured over the cake and then once it was cool enough, I sliced it and added a rosette of whipped cream and topped it with the blanched and cooked rinds.

The tangy-ness of the orange and lemon juice does hit you as you take a bit into the cake, and later you do have poppy seeds stuck to your teeth that reminds you of the great tangy taste of the cake.

Lemon Poppyseed Slice

Lemon and poppyseed filling in a sweet shortcrust pastry shell. Then topped with a lemon glaze. Yummy...

Marble Cake

This is a classic recipe I used to make when I was a kid. Something my mum taught me as a little girl. The basic recipe is a simple pound cake recipe and it can changed to make a chocolate cake or in this case a marble cake.
At home, we would just make the cake and as soon as it came out of the oven, cut it and start eating. We didn't have the luxury of any sort of icing.

As this was made at work, I added a mixture of butter and chocolate icing to give it a marble effect.

Mixed Fruit Meringue

Made this at work since we had lots of egg whites left over. I added glace cherries, mixed peel and roasted almonds to the mixture, before baking them and then topped it with chantilly cream and some diced strawberries.

Mocha Cake

Though I heard the word Mocha many a times, it didn't occur to me how easy it was to get a mixture and use it as a flavouring for cakes and ganaches.

Found a recipe for a mocha brownie but decided to just use my basic butter cake recipe and convert it to a mocha cake topped with mocha ganache.

It was really moist and if I had some kahlua it would have gone well with the ganache. Anyways...there is always another time..

Carousel of Animals

When Jules asked me to make this, I thought..."oh sure, that's easy". Then when I started making the animals I realised how out of touch I was to handling the fondant and even the fondant I got was not adhering to the mixing of colours and gum-tex. But I had already bought so much fondant so I had to make it work.
Finally got the animals to look decently resembling the lion, dog, cat and elephant.
Did have some help with some videos online

http://www.vimeo.com/3873417
http://www.vimeo.com/3966579 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4RGguwXjgg and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9u63Mh-SsY&feature=related

Overall I managed to get most of the features of the animals, but could still work on some esp when I painted on the eyes.
The cake is a chocolate cake, sandwiched with chocolate ganache, then covered all with fondant.

Chocolate Brownies

Have always loved brownies since the very first time I tried making it. Then when I started working, we used a so simple recipe which hardly takes much time to make. So have been making this since with a variety of nuts and chocolate buttons.

Blueberry Cupcakes

I guess there were still blueberries from our berry picking trip at Portarlington that I just decided to make some cupcakes. Used some whole blueberries in the cupcake and the pureed the rest which was mixed with the butter cream.

I did add some lemon rind and juice too, to the cupcakes but was not too sure how it would taste, so did not add too much.

Overall I think it turned out tasty, but could have made it bigger. Also realised that the blueberries needed to also be at room temperature before adding them to the butter cream. Otherwise it could make the butter cream split.

One way to remedy this was to allow the butter cream to stand a while longer and then beat it again.

But I really wonder why they call it blue berries...looks more dark pink to me :-)

Blueberry Cheesecake

Another first making a blueberry cheesecake with fresh blueberries, my friends and I picked the day before.
I generally think the blueberries taste so much better when they are cooked. Yes one may eat them freshly picked from the trees, but it taste even better in this cheesecake.

Aeroplane Cake

After months of not making a cake to be decorated, I received this order from Sarah; Jesse's mum.
A simple butter cake for both the aeroplane and the base. After searching the net I found a few ideas on how to actually cut the cake up to make the aeroplane (airplane). Have enclosed a few here if anyone is interested.





This image is taken from the following book



Then I had to figure out how the fondant would react in this weather as it's summer here now and temperatures were varying between 20's and 30's. In Malaysia it was too humid and needed a cool dry place to get the fondant to hold its shape. I also knew that one never could keep the fondant in the fridge. But lo and behold, the fondant hardened when I kept it in the fridge. Now that is something new for me and what a relief.

Anyways I managed to get the propellers to harden enough to keep it upright. I could have wrapped the whole aeroplane with one piece of fondant instead of in its individual pieces. But was trying to figure out how to do that and then set it on top of the base without breaking it. So made the individual pieces up and stuck them together on the base.