Fantastic cookies using Kiwicakes cookie cutters

I was thrilled to receive these cookie photos from The Whole Cake & Caboodle - they showcase cookie cutters from Kiwicakes Castle $6
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A stunning princess crown cookie cutter $6

And this gorgeous glass slipper cutter $6

Clikstix! - the easiest strip cutters to use - built in ejectors

I'm thrilled to announce Kiwicakes is now the sole NZ distributor for Clikstix. Revolutionary alphabet, number & shape cutters from the UK, with built in ejectors, so you no longer have to pick out the fiddly bits of icing. Designs include three styles of alphabet & numbers, daisy, blossom, hearts & stars.

I received samples from the manufacturer, prior to taking on the distributorship for this product and I can assure you they're easy to use.

Priced from 16.95-19.95 per set. Click here to view the full range.

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Pink Champagne cupcakes from a Kiwicakes member

I was sent these lovely photos from Ree Roebeck, one of our Kiwicakes members. She used the recipe I posted here. Don't they look awesome?

Today I am 35 years old

Goodbye 34!. Today I am 35 years old. I was very lucky and have been treated to two cakes. One by my children and one by my good friend Lisa.

My children are 7 & 4. Miss 7 drew up the plan beforehand and Mr 4 helped with the sprinkles. They were staying the night with Nana, she helped with the baking.

This cake made for me by my good friend Lisa was very tall, I love the piping gel on the glass, to look like condensation, the modelling of the umbrella & lemon slice were amazing.

The umbrella was based on a party invitation I had for a little get together with my girlfriends on Saturday evening.

I've always had a passion for cocktail paraphernalia. Here's a shot of just some of my glass swizzle sticks.

And I just adore the paper comb thingamebobs!

As the party on Saturday night was a cocktail party, I made (very quick 1/2 hour) Margarita cupcakes. I will post the recipe for these in the next day or so.

I was in a big hurry when I made these and literally flung the icing on, but I was happy with the coarse sugar rimming, to make it look like salted glass rim.



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Our fun weekend in Napier

Gosh it's hard to believe it was more than a week ago that Grandma Kiwicakes & I set off for Napier for the national NZCDG cake conference. We stopped overnight in Auckland on Thursday night, expecting the trip to Napier to take a very long time. What I hadn't counted on, was all of the road improvements since I last travelled that far south by road. (since the children have come along, we don't get that far from home - by car anyway).

We left Auckland at 7am and stopped in Tirau at Poppy's for breakfast (pancakes with maple syrup & bacon) and were back on the road again at 9.30am. Poppy's has two amazing huge Poppy flower scupltures on the top of their roof.

Around 11am, or just after we popped in to Taupo, from a  slightly different angle, to what we were used to, now that the bypass is in place. We had Taupo on our mental list of places to stop, as we were making a beeline for - as Grandma Kiwicakes puts it "The best darn kitchen shop in NZ". The shop in question is called Chef's Complements  if you're anyway where near by and haven't ever been. You simply must put it on your list of things to do. The lovely Vicki has an amazing cake decorating selection, as well as just about every kitchen gadget you can imagine and some you can't. I can see why Grandma Kiwicakes was so impressed, when she last visited. We actually did quite a bit of shopping there. Grandma Kiwicakes bought some Christmas presents, but I can't say what they were, as the intended recipients read this blog.

The road improvements were obvious, as we drove up the hill out of Taupo, past the Hilton - we read a road sign "Napier 146km", I drove a few hundred metres around the corner and was greeted with "Napier 136km". We had an easy run through to Napier, with only a few logging trucks to contend with. Just out of Napier, we stopped at a winery for lunch, it was raining at this stage, so no photos sorry.

Just after 2pm we rolled in to Napier and made a beeline for the information centre, to gather some maps & details of the area. As it was still raining at this stage, we had a drive around and checked out the beautiful Marine Parade. When I chose our accomodation for Napier, I wanted to feel as though I was REALLY staying in Napier. I found this lovely B&B on the internet MON LOGIS (photo from Mon Logis website) It's a beautiful old home from the 1860's and was one of the few on Marine parade to survive the 1931 earthquake. Our host for the weekend was a lovely french gentleman named Gerard. He tells a great story and was very kind to have our breakfast ready at 7am each day. Of which all of us that stayed there cannot rave about enough. Fresh baked croissant, lovely bread and quite possibly the best bowl of fruit salad I have ever had in my life (this is no exaggeration), yummy muesli. It set us up so well for the day, as it was super hectic at conference, we didn't have time to stop & eat, until mid afternoon. Gerard even offered me an omlette, but I didn't have a spare inch of room to squeeze it in.

Check out the view from our room! - at 6am Saturday morning.

 Looking up and down Marine Parade - I was struck just how decongested the roads are in this area - compared to back home.

We set up the Kiwicakes sales area on Friday afternoon at E.I.T ready for Saturday trading. It was great so see many old friends and lots of new ones too. Thanks to everyone that came by, especially to say hi!.

We had so much fun, we had an entire classroom at E.I.T to ourselves and it felt like one big Kiwicakes party all weeknd. Flo had fun demoing the Cricut Cake, as well as the Cricut Expressions (paper cutting machine). Unfortunately I was so busy for most of the weeknd, I didn't catch more than 20 minutes total  of what she was doing, grabbed in few minute bursts over the entire weekend.

Late in the day on Sunday, when I realised I didn't have many photos, I quickly snapped some photos of her work.

The little fireman is only about 7.5cm high and his little fire extenguisher is only about 3cm high. Flo cut this using red pettinice, with nothing added. She rolled it ultra thin using a pasta machine. The fireman comes from the Paper Dolls cartridge.

She also cut the filigree butterflies from red pettinice. She left them to dry over a container for the afternoon and voila, they were brought to life.

I was amazed to find, she used the pettinice straight from the packet and it dried beautifully, if I'd had to lay money on it, I would have sworn there was hardener in the icing. The butterfly is from the Cake Basics catridge.

Flo also cut out some cupcake wrappers using her Cricut Expressions (paper cutting machine)

On Sunday morning we grabbed a few minutes to look at the exhibition and competition cakes. The theme for the plaque competition was Art Deco. I would have liked to stay and look for longer.

 The 3 cakes in the photo above were created by E.I.T students after 20 hours tuition (students are enrolled in a culinary course at E.I.T)

On Saturday night we had dinner at Lone Star on Marine Parade, I've since learned this is a chain of restaraunts with locations throughout NZ. Our food was excellent, including my kahlua and moro bar cheescake. Thanks Rachel, Iman & Florinda for joining us.

I would like to extend special thanks to Ann, for travelling to Napier with us, for the sole purpose of helping us over the weekend, and to Flo for her inexhaustible Cricut knowledge.

We arrived home tired and happy at 7pm on Sunday evening.

Stunning chocolates and all for me!

Yesterday I popped in to the Katrina Gordon hospitality show here in Whangarei. I caught up with the highly talented Shane Paraone from Northtec. He was doing a great demo on chocolate making And these babies here are coloured using Rainbow Dust.

They were incredibly difficult to photograph because of their high shine, the irridescence of the lustre seemed to float below the surface like looking in to a glass paperweight. This photo surely does not do them justice, but I snapped it in failing light last night - right before these beauties were gobbled up.
Shane (and all the other Tutors) at the Northtec hospitality courses are highly qualified chefs. The facilites at Northtec are amazing. I have eaten at the Northtec student resteraunt and the food is of a very high standard.

I was pleased to discover that around March 2011 Shane will be running a 2 day chocolate making course at Northtec, I can't wait. I've told him to put my name at the top of the list.

Halloween fun

Yesterday we held a small Halloween party at our house for our 2 children and 3 of their friends. We had pumpkin decorating, as well as brownie and cupcake decorating. The Mum of the other 3 children is also a keen cake decorator, so we had heaps of fun. It was also a good excuse to get my Cricut Cake out and cut some Halloween shapes.

Start with one decorated party table (I stocked up on some of the cheap Halloween decorations in Spotlights $1 sale after Halloween last year)

I really liked my black cauldron in the centre of the table which housed our undecorated cupcakes.

I made the children some snacks - Fairy bread. Or should that be SCARY BREAD? To get an even coverage of sprinkles over the bread, I cut my bread, but before removing the cookie cutter, I add my sprinkles - this allows you to roll the sprinkles into all the nooks & crannies - and get them right out to the edges.

I found these great little cauldrons at spotlight, which were great for the cupcake decorating supplies.

Also great for the cocktail straws

We had plenty of spooky icing. I'm in love with this decorating bag holder, which I brought home from work, just for this purpose.

For some of their cupcake decorating, I cut out some designs for them, using the cricut. I did some pumpkins (the first one at 2'' was too big, so I scaled down to 1.5''), the cats are 1.5'' & 2''.

I gave them a lustre powder brush filled with Metallic flame frenzy lustre, so they could give them an orange metallic glow.

I also cut out some "Boo" - I did one for each child, before they arrived

I covered them in hologram white glitter, using corn syrup as glue, I let them dry for a couple of hours before the kids arrived. These are 1 1/4''.

My first one was far too big, but I didn't want to waste it, so I popped it on to a slice of brownie. I really like the way the lettering hangs over the brownie (it's a piece of white frosting sheet)

The children making the cupcakes were ages 3, 4, 5 & 7. They had a blast.

Pumpkin decorating was fun (no orange pumpkins could be found anywhere in town, so we had grey ones.

Brownie decorating was also fun, we had a variety of skeleton formations, in their brownies graves.

I thought the children did a great job with their cupcakes, it was a tired & happy bunch of kiddies at the end of their day.

Little Mr 4's work

Miss 7's work

Miss 3's work

What did you get up to for Halloween?