Alice in Wonderland

And finally it's done! My Alice in Wonderland extravaganza! I started working on the details for this cake back in March. I started planning the detail of this cake two years ago - shortly after the last birthday party for this lucky birthday girl!

Alice in Wonderland as a theme provides endless amounts of ideas and possibilities. I had ever so many ideas and there are more Alice cakes out there then stars in the sky (I can't back this up scientifically so don't ask). I spent hours pouring over them and designing this one in my head, then I turned the draft design over to the birthday girl who had very specific ideas of her own that we incorporated into the cake design after going back and forth a couple of times.

Enough with the babble, here's some of the detail:





I love the pocket watch and I love the upside down Alice, but most of all I love the toadstools.





The tea pouring was a last minute addition but nearly everyone who has seen the cake has commented on it - gave it that little extra something.


Everything is edible but there are quite a few wires and supports holding the whole shabang together (it's a game of memory when you deliver cakes and have to relay all the wires/supports to the receivee). 


The bottom layer of this beauty is white chocolate, pink and purple mud swirled and the second layer (the hat) is chocolate and green mud swirled. The kettle is red rice Krispy treat (rice bubbles and marshmallows). All the colors and flavours where specifically detailed by the birthday girl :).

Birthday party attendees reported that the cake tasted as good as it looked and fitted in perfectly with all the colourful crazy details of the party. If I can get my hot little hands on some photos of the inside of the cake and the party, I will post them.
That's my last cake for a while as I'm headed overseas (yay!).

Hopefully this mammoth cake will suffice for a while! Here are some progress shots as the cake went up!

Until next time,

xC

Long time, no speak!

It's been so long since I last posted, I even missed my blog one year anniversary! Bad Blogger. I don't have any excuse/s other then my life has just...filled. I'm working on a very exciting Alice in Wonderland cake for an upcoming birthday party. To tide you over until then, here's a cake I made for a work morning tea about a month ago......

The inside is purple, pink and white swirl - so prreeeettttyyyyyy!

Bring on the cold weather!

Have a great week!

xC

Naked Fiasco

In preparation for my wedding cake, I needed reasons to practice modelling people so I could make our cake toppers.

This led to a topless woman jumping out of a birthday cake for my Dad and a naked man lying on top of a cake for my Mum for mother's day (the events generally fall very close to each other). Don't ask me why they couldn't receive cakes with fully clothed people - perhaps replicas of themselves even - my mind just went straight to nakedness. Also, in my defence, clothes hide mistakes, naked meant I had to focus very much on the 'structure'.

My point is........I'm no stranger to risque cakes. So I thought it would be a nice little challenge when my cousin asked me to make a very naked, very realistic set of boobs for her husband's birthday.

What was a challenge became near impossible as it alternated rain and insane humidity in the week leading up to the cake's pickup. I won't bore you with the details - you're here for the cake after all, but I think it's important to note three results/learnings from this situation:

1. I hereby vow not to decorate cakes from Nov-Feb each year; and to carefully carefully consider cakes close to either side of this period.
2. the cake design had to be altered slightly from completely bare to partially covered, to hide the boob that melted. That's right - THE BOOB MELTED.
3. my husband is an extremely patient and understanding man. He came home very late on the night prior to the cake being picked up, tired and stressed from work, and discovered our bedroom (the only place the air-conditioning was working) had been converted to a mini cake decorating studio. We then slept with the cake in our bedroom that night (air-conditioning).

So, nothing is a waste if you learn something right? Here's the final product, which the birthday boy loved!

love is in the air....

Slack. I'm Slack. There is no excuse. Valentine's day was nearly two weeks ago and I'm only just now posting the cute cookies I made :).

These babies are vanilla sugar cookies decorated with royal icing. My cookie icing skills are getting slightly better but still need lots of practice.

Hope your Valentine's day was filled with alotta love!

xC

Nutella & Sea Salt stuffed cookies

These cookies are deceiving – plain innocent sugar cookies on the outside, Nutella and sea salt explosion on the inside!

I saw the recipe for these here – and they originally came from here. Given the rave reviews, I decided to give them a go for a recent work morning tea. I was very impressed!

The sugar cookie recipe could be used on its own, it’s light and fluffy and yum but also sturdy enough to hold filling. I was dubious that the Nutella would hold up and not melt and seep through the cookie dough the minute they were in the oven......but the dough held together beautifully and the final effect was a sweet, salty, chocolatey, cookie party in my mouth.

For quality control purposes, my husband and I tried one straight out of the oven with gooey warm Nutella and one cooled (the Nutella goes chewy). We both decided that the cooler one was in fact nicer – good news for my friends eating them the next day.

The only adjustment I would make next time is to add a few more sea salt flakes and possibly to mix them in with the Nutella (the recipe currently suggested sprinkling them on the cookie dough). I would also like to make them smaller, although it is difficult when you’re trying to stuff them.

So if you’re looking for a cookie with a twist - I would definitely encourage you to give this recipe a go! I imagine that you could stuff other things in with the Nutella. When I have a touch more time, I intend to give this much more thought!

Have a great week!

Babies + Birdies

I looked at the invitation and gazed off into space......what would I do? My friend and loyal blog follower (I assume she follows loyally) asked me to make some cupcakes for her baby shower. I was given free reign but she suggested a bird theme.

I decided, after combing through every store at my local shopping centre for a bird shaped cutter, that I could pipe little cupcake toppers! Genius! Cogs turning.....I could use the birds on the invite, print them out at an appropriate size, stick them under my trusty piece of perspex and pipe royal icing over the top! Cue crowd clapping in my head.

These were surprisingly easy and non-time consuming - I love discovering a new design technique! This could be done with nearly anything - could copy invitation designs, favourite patterns, landscapes, cityscapes - oh the possibilities!

These little morsels are citrus white chocolate mud cake - yummy and fresh - perfect for an afternoon gathering of ladies.

Good luck Pippa - can't wait to meet Squirt!

xC

Early Morning Wedding

These delightful little creations were for a small early morning (think 8am!) wedding at Victoria Park Golf Course - an equally delightful venue.

The Bride originally decided on butter cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream swirl, silver cachous and fresh purple flowers. She ended up changing her mind and I must say, while the buttercream would have undoubtedly looked elegant and fresh (with me at the helm, how could they not?) I'm grateful for the decision change. With the alternating heat and rain with a side of humidity at this time of year, my nerves would have been on edge, waiting for the buttercream to melt. Don't get me wrong, the heat and rain affect the fondant as well, I'm just a little better at managing the effects on fondant.

The cupcakes are displayed on a disposable cupcake tower, just the thing for smaller occasions. They are (relatively) cheap, reusable at a pinch and completely eliminate the (mildly) annoying task of getting a hired perspex stand back to the cake shop as the late fees are not to be sneezed at.

And so starts my 2012 caking.......

:)

Flickr

Just a quick post to let you peeps know (if you haven’t heard a trillion different times from my secret PR planted all over the world. I kid. They're on in Australia), I am on Flickr!

 

My name is the sugar shelf (sound familiar?) if you are searching on flickr, you have to be sure to select ‘people’ once you’ve typed in my name otherwise it will try to show you pictures of sugar shelves (whatever they look like).

 

If that sounds to time and energy intensive, here is a link I prepared earlier:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61459103@N02/

 

Have a delicious week.

 

C

2011

I like to take a couple of quick moments each year to reflect on what I've done. I have a tendency to rush through my life, always concentrating on the next goal. It's good to stop and think about everything I've already achieved, how much I crammed into one year. I also tend to concentrate on my last caking mistake, what I need to improve, and forget about the cakes that I finished and loved. So I'm going to use this post to look at my caking & cookieing adventures in 2011.

FYI - In my head this has dramatic remembering type music to go with the photos. You can insert your own dramatic remembering type music as you scroll through.

This year I have decorated 18 cakes........

Not bad, about 1.5 a month.

I've iced at least 100 cookies....... from New Years last year

to Christmas this year!

I think that's a fair bit! I'm going to try to slow down in 2012, do less but do it better :). I'm also going to do more cookies, I received Juila Usher's Ultimate Cookies book for Christmas and it has totally inspired me!

Happy New Year! Here's hoping you have a safe and happy 2012! See you then!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Hope you had a crackin day! Totally planned to post this on Christmas Eve Eve and then Christmas Eve and then family and alcohol (unusual for me) got in the way.

So now, I'm going to cram all of my Christmas goodies into this post!

First up - this time last week we caught up with some friends at my favourite mexican restaurant. We usually only do small gifts if any and I had been dying to try my new Cactus cookie cutter so I attempted to make Christmas cactus cookies. I'm a huge fan of Cacti but it has occurred to me since receiving this cutter that there's probably not much call for cactus cookies......so I seized this opportunity happily.

That's crushed candy cane on top........

I also wanted to test the new bags and cookie pop sticks I had purchased - great for cookie bouquets!

The restaurant loved them and took a photo of them and us to put on their instagram site - our 10 seconds of fame.

The next cake was for a family friend. Somewhat hastily pulled together but successful none the less I think!

It may surprise you to know that even going flat out, a cake like this still takes me at least 1 1/2 days to complete. Cake decorating is a time consuming thing, there are many elements that take time to dry/set and you can't go on until these are ready. Not to mention that even a small cake like this takes a couple of hours to bake and a few more to cool down.

The final cake was for my family on Christmas day. My mum chooses a new colour scheme each year (yes, she changes her Christmas colour scheme every year) - this year was silver and white. I always try to incorporate the choosen colour scheme into the family cake so it won't clash with everything else in the house. I have been wanting to try a 3D Christmas tree for some time (that's what this is).

Apologies, this is the best photo I have of the cake, unfortunately it was just after I finished it and has all my cake stuff in the background.

Some cakes are so hard to photograph, mostly when there's alot of white or the colours are very similar. Also, I often complete cakes at night after work and don't actually have a chance to photograph them in daylight until the day of the event. There is this nifty invention called a cake tent which is, as it sounds, a tent where cakes can be photographed (you know, to add to their portfolio). I believe there are different backgrounds and you can adjust the lighting as you please. Me thinks further investigation of these tents is needed.

To finish up - a close up of the present pile (all edible)........

And that's my Christmas :)

xxC