Cakes!!!

I have decided to do a blog about the cakes I have made. All of these I have either made on my own, or collaborated with someone more skilled than myself. I will try to explain each one.

This first cake is Diddy's Christening cake. It is white chocolate mud cake with white choc ganache and strawberry choc decorations. I decided to do chocolate decorations because I don't like eating sugar decorations and making them is so tedious. If I am going to invest a large amount of my time making decorations then they had better taste nice when I'm finished!!! Taste is more important to me than appearance. After all, it's what is inside that counts!!!


Kristy deserves the credit for Rohan's 3rd birthday cake. Even though I was the one who found the picture in a magazine and spent hours making the little cakes (50 in total, we had a combined party and Jago had a cake that was in the shape of a 2), Kristy was the one who put together the little teddies in the cars. It took her hours and she spent the entire time whingeing about it. But she did do a fantastic job!! They look so cute.












I decided to do a camping cake for Rohan's first birthday. I googled and googled and could not find anything suitable to copy so I used bits and pieces from pictures of cakes I found and threw in some of my own ideas. I was quite pleased with the outcome!









This next cake was the first and last time I made sugar flowers. Actually, I lie. I was MEANT to make the sugar flowers but mum and Kristy ended up doing most of them because the chalky feeling of them made my blood run cold. Mum gave Kris and I a lesson and I spent more time complaining than I did flower making. I think mum had to rework all the flowers I made anyway. The cake tasted delicious and for all the hours we spent making those stupid little flowers, I think they were chucked in the bin. I have not met anyone who likes to eat them. It was after this cake that I vowed never to waste so much time on aesthetically pleasing things that taste like crap again!!!


This is the cake I am most proud of. I made it for mum's 6oth birthday. The cake itself is caramel mud cake with white chocolate ganache. The photo is made from icing. You can upload your pic on to a website and they turn it into icing. Kristy spent about 40 minutes trying to get the picture on to the cake. It was soooo difficult!!! The two cakes are massive. They don't look like much here, but they are huge. Just making the cake alone was a 1 day job. Then making the frangipani's took me another whole day. I'm sure if you were the type of person who is not easily distracted then you could probably accomplish making them in a much shorter time though. Luckily Aunty Barbra was on hand to help me ice the cake. She did the piping around the edges as I had neither the hand strength, technique nor inclination to learn either to do the job. It was a mammoth task to ice it. I had my cousin melting chocolate and James's mum giving me colouring tips. But it turned out to be spectacular!! Worth every man hour I reckon!!

You will notice that I am quite fond of decorating cakes with chocolate. I think it comes from my love of chocolate!! This dinosaur cake was made for Kristy's belated 10th birthday (it was very much belated. I think it was 17 years late!!). Kristy has never let anyone in the family forget that her 10th birthday was overlooked. So we decided that to stop her constantly bringing it up we would throw her a belated one. As she was into Jurassic park when she was 10 I did a dinosaur themed cake. It is just a basic mudcake with a white chocolate dinosaur. I made the dinosaur by drawing a picture of a raptor on baking paper and then painting it with white chocolate. Once it has hardened you just pop it on the cake. Easy!!

Koby's christening was the day after mum's 60th birthday so his cake was just thrown together. I had pre-made the cake and the chocs so all we did was slop a bit of ganache on and pop the choccies on top. It doesn't look anywhere near as good as it tasted!!!






Kylah had a Wiggly Party for her third birthday so I just bought a cake topper for her cake. Those things are such a pain in the rear to get on a cake. Not much to say about this one.....











We took Kylah to Sea World to swim with the dolphins for her 7th birthday so her cake was sea and dolphin themed. The chocolates are coloured with special powder you buy specifically for colouring chocolates. I also used strawberry oil in them to make them extra delicious.









Another one of Kylah's cakes!!! Although I guess out of all my children she has had the most birthdays! This is 3 round butter cakes stacked on top of each other. It took my sister in law, Eliza, and I about 5 hours to make. The amount of butter in this cake is insane!!!








Kylah's fourth birthday was a Thomas theme. Yes, Kylah was right into Thomas at four. I think I copied this one from the womans weekly kids cake book.










Kylah's first birthday cake. This butterfly was HUGE. It took me forever to do but worked out pretty well. It was very tasty!!!











Jazzy's 5th birthday cake. Jazzy was supposed to have a pony party for her 5th birthday but it got rained out. She is horse obsessed so I decided to make her a horse cake. I had delegated the job of cake making to Ben, but at the 11th hour he made a deal with me that he would do all the housework if he didn't have to make the cake. It was only 1 week since I had left hospital after having Didabell and I was in no condition to do housework so I accepted the deal. Luckily it didn't take too long to make.



These are just little cupcakes that Kylah and Jazzy took to dancing one week to share with their friends. They have chocolate roses on top. Yummo!!!












Jago's first birthday cake. A piggy. I could have done a better one but I wanted it to kind of match with the ducky cake for Rohan's second birthday and the cow cake for mum's 59th birthday (the three of them had a combined party). The duckie and cow cake should be below somewhere. I think the piggy cake was a butter cake with butter cream icing. I made the cakes in advance and froze them so all I had to do the day before the party was ice them. It took mum and I a good 6 hours to ice the three cakes. And by the time we got to the last cake, the cow, we were so over it that we did a pretty crappy job!!







Here is Rohan's duckie cake. And it is bleepingly obvious that mum and I ran out of steam when we started the cow cake. It is a bit of a disappointment.





































The one and only cake made solely by Ben. Jazzy's 3rd birthday was a mermaid cake. I copied the idea from someone on facebooks pictures of their child's birthday. I'm not sure where they got the idea from. But it was a big hit. Well done Ben!!!!









Jazzy's second birthday was cup cakes decorated with flowers. The flowers are made out of marshmellows and smarties.















Jazzy had a My Little Pony cake for her 4th birthday. She was/is Pony mad!!! Again, those icing pictures are so painful to work with. I do not recommend them at all!!!!!! They don't taste very nice either.









Jasmines 1st birthday cake. This was much harder to make than it looks. I had left it till the last minute because I had been so consumed with Kristy's wedding, Jazzy being ill with a feeding tube, me being in intensive care with bird flu.... crazy times!!! But mum helped me put this cake together at the 11th hour and it turned out ok.













Kylah's 6th birthday cake. This is supposed to be a dancer on her cake made from chocolate and mosaic-ed with broken freckles. I was feeling quite artistic at the time!! The idea and execution was all done by me!














I plan to keep adding pics to this post with my latest cakes. Or maybe I will have to wait a year or two and then do a cakes#2!! post. I love making cakes and plan the children's birthday cakes months in advance. I'm sure a lot of people moan about how I go overboard with the kids birthdays (and I do admit the jumping castle AND petting zoo at Rohan and Jago's 2nd and 1st bday might have been a tad overkill) but I really don't see the harm in making their birthday's fun and enjoyable for everyone.

When my kids are older they are going to look back and have so many wonderful memories from their birthday parties. Heck, I'm sure a lot of other kids are going to look back and have so many wonderful memories from my kids birthday parties. I get just as much enjoyment from planning the ultimate day for them and the perfect cake each year as they do from experiencing it. I truly believe that you can't spoil a child by giving them things or planning elaborate parties. I believe you can spoil a child by accepting rude or bad behaviour. I don't believe my children act spoilt and they have a LOT of toys and always have huge birthday parties. It is because we teach them to appreciate what they have and never to expect anything from anyone.

Anyway it is late at night and this post has taken me a lot longer than what I had planned. I didn't realise I had made so many cakes over the years!!!

xx


(since I have written this blog I have added a few more pics.  The first one is the cake from Rohan & Jago's combined party - Snips and snails and puppy dog tails themed cake.  The second one is from Diddy's 1st birthday party, which was nursery rhyme themed.  The third is Jazzy's smash open cake.  )