A little sweet-tooth

I LOVE to bake and decorate cakes! The funny thing is that I only discovered cake decorating just before Christmas last year. Just thought it would be fun to make a Christmas themed cake for the family party, so off I went and bought a big, fat, book. I ended up buying two square fruit cakes and some sugar paste, and sat down with my book, ready to be inspired. This was the first time I had ever used sugar paste (or fondant) on a cake, and the result wasn't too bad. 

Since then, I've jumped at any occasion to make a cake (I normally bake them, I just didn't have enough time to make a proper fruit cake). I found plenty of videos on YouTube, and started learning more about how to work with the fondant, and all the things you can make with it..flowers, figures, plaques etc! The list seems almost endless.

These were the first flowers I ever made. They were made out of marzipan, and wasn't too hard to make when using a five petal cutter. Was pretty pleased with the result, at least since it was the first time trying. I was also trying out different ways of colouring sugar paste, and for this one I tried to get a marble effect going. A bit hard to see in the photo, but it's there.

When Charlie turned 3, and was asked what he wanted for his birthday, the answer was simple,"A rocketship cake, mummy!". And as he didn't ask for anything else, what can a mum do but to make said cake. I searched the internet to find some inspiration, and found a photo of a perfect cake, made by using a footy shaped tin. Once the design was settled upon, the rest wasn't too hard. I went to my favourite cake supply store, and rented the tin for $3. I used a normal chocolate cake recipe (all kids love chocolate cake), and baked the cake without much too much problems... I did however try a choc mud recipe first, that ended up getting stuck in the tin, so I ended up having to line it, and I also changed to the normal choc cake, as the mud cake was  bit to unstable for the shape. The second attempt worked perfectly. I coloured the sugarpaste blue, and covered the cake using some sugar syrup as "glue". The flames, smoke and stars were made from royal icing (and I did correct the slightly uneven fire after the photo was taken), while the legs and "glass" on the windows were cardboard covered in foil. Everything else, including the little astronaut was made from sugarpaste.

The cake was a great success, and Charlie still talks about his "rocketship birthday".