Christmas Tree Pops - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

With the festive season just around the corner we thought that these Christmas Tree cake pops might inspire you to get decorating! The basics you need are your cake mixture, cake pop mould, cake pop sticks and melting chocolate (I used a mixture of green and white to get this pastel colour). 

These snowman sprinkles are beautifully moulded and so realistic! 

Our new range of dragees look neat on a stippled chocolate tree. Here I used a triangle and rice shapes. You can also get dragees in a handy assorted pack.

These edible star decorations together with hologram glitter give this tree a classy look.

This look can be acheived with a mix of green and peacock coloured jimmies.

Classic garland decorations are easy to achieve with Christmas sugar pearls and fit-for-purpose tweezers. Stick them on while the chocolate is still drying and they will adhere easily.

Lastly you can use turquoise edible glitter for a quick and easy festive coating.

Stencilled Heart Cookies - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

This classy cookie was achieved with a Cookie Cutter and Stencil Set. Our range includes an arrow heart, a lace and a lace heart for all of your valentines, anniversary or romantic occasions.

On top of my baked vanilla cookies I stuck baby pink fondant heart shapes rolled to 3mm thick. 

A couple of drops of fluorescent pink mixed into a small amount of royal icing gave me this vibrant highlighting colour. This food colouring even fluoresces under black light!

I used an angled spatula to spread a thin layer of the pink royal icing over the stencil placed on top of the fondant surface. They don't take long to dry then you can package them in a cellophane bag and tie with a matching ribbon. Pretty!

Girly Cookie Art - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Today I'm going to share with you some cookies I demonstrated at the Auckland Cake Expo in July. They all have an element of beauty - perfect for feminine occasions.

These confused cupcake cookies were made with this basic cutter and adorned with vibrant fondant using the same cutter as for the cookies. The bottom striped 'wrapper' section was made using a marbling technique you can watch in an earlier Kiwicakes blog here. If you look closely you will see that even the orange has faint parallel yellow lines in it. Its a neat trick to learn and help avoid fondant decorations from looking flat. The cupcake 'tops' were made glam with the addition of mini silver balls spaced out perfectly with the aid of this Press Ice Tool and the faintest touch of edible glue. The bow, butterfly and mini pearl additions were made simple with a really versatile tiny features silicone mould.

This racy red stiletto was also made with a basic shoe cutter. The fondant I chose was red for impact and I used a peacock impression mat to texture the surface - only because it was right beside me at the time. Its funny how sometimes you try something though and it just works. As always I stuck the fondant shape to the cookie with edible glue. An even swipe of silver lustre from a pump brush gives it subtle sparkle and then rice shape dragees stuck on turn this into an evening shoe. The wee bow on the toe was made from the same mould as used with the cupcake cookies above.

This dreamy castle was made easy with our Castle Cookie Cutter. Its shape is based on Schloss Neuschwanstein, which for me evokes fond memories of a teenage exchange to Southern Germany. Younger children nowadays would invariably associate it with their favourite princess movies and stories. The two stars of the show for me here are the suggestive brick impression markings and the dainty pink padlock feature. Magical!

Princess Elsa's Coronation Frozen Party Menu - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

If you need inspiration for a winter wonderland themed party then check out this balanced mix of fun food ideas from my daughter's party recently. 

I labelled the individual dishes as our party girls are at the school age where they love learning to read and these gave them some giggles. We have stylish tags available online at Kiwicakes too.

Slices like this can be made up to a week in advance, covered in coconut 'snow' and stored in the fridge until party day. 

I love the crunch and vibrancy these bought to the table.

  

Yum yum hot from the oven. The 5 & 6 year old party girls thought this sign was hilarious! In the background you can spot the easiest table decoration ever - a tall glass vase filled with sparkly blue and silver christmas baubles.

These lemonade tasting 'clouds' were soft and billowy. Thank goodness for nanas who bake and help with food prep.

I was careful to avoid peanuts in the party food so these are almonds.

I normally endorse buying New Zealand made but in winter I feel lucky that Australia exports these summery fruit here and surprisingly at a really reasonable price. We bought 3 punnets and this was the first dish to run out!

We served creaming soda drinks (similar to lemonade) in these cool clear retro bottles. Check out the range of various designs we have in stock. Alternatively you could fill them with water, blue fanta or milk and all would still pass as 'melted snow'.

These cookies can be made a day ahead and are a fun project for kids to assist with. You will need shortbread cookies, white marshmallows, white chocolate, licorice, dried apricots and blue sugar pearls on your shopping list. The more inconsistent and 'melted' they look the better!

I think this jelly shortcake slice beats jelly cups which never seem to get finished. And leftovers make great lunchbox surprises for days to come. This was made with 50:50 blueberry and lemonade packet jelly mixes to get the mid-aqua colour.

Plump raisins were offered as 'snowman eyes' but you could even use chocolate drops or other confectionery.

A party is not a party in my house until there are cocktail sausages. Enough said.

These store-bought pretzel sticks made nice woody-looking 'arms'. Eskimo lollies are another easy supermarket item to pick up that is in keeping with the theme.

Lastly we sent the kids home with a signature handcrafted cookie. Its easy to do.

This snowflake cookie is topped with fondant which is gently ice coloured, with the same snowflake  cookie cutter, stuck on with sugar glue, finished with a dash of glacier glitter and presented in a favour bag. 

Big smiles all around!

Kiwicakes 8th birthday cake winner - Paula Andrew

At the recent cake expo in Auckland. Paula Andrew our winner of the Kiwicakes birthday cake competition delivered her winning cake. The little Trixie Kiwi unfortunately forgot to hop in the car, for the tip down to Auckland from up North. However we think Paula did an amazing job to get it to us at all, with all her wee ones out sick with the flu.

It was great to be able to share our birthday cake with many expo visitors and our friends from other cake stalls around the hall. It sure was a tasty cake (raspberry and lemonade). Everyone commented just how gorgeous it was to eat. We done Paula, we loved our cake!

Princess Anna of Arendelle Frozen Cake - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

It was difficult for my daughter to move past her favourite movie Frozen when choosing a birthday party idea. So as mum I accepted the challenge and went about creating a cake to suit. This was my first attempt at a dolly varden style cake and I am pleased with the result.

Princess Anna's skirt is made with a dolly varden pan and she is sitting upon a hexagonal cake. I liked that it had 6 points reminiscent of a snowflake and thought it added more interest than a traditional square or circle base. 

This is a white chocolate mudcake so quite dense in texture and really easy to work with when decorating. It was a big mixture to fill both tins generously. We are talking 5+ cups of caster sugar and 700g butter eeek! Once baked and cooled I covered both cakes in a thin layer of buttercream that I added a couple of Tablespoons of sparkling plum powder to for a sharp fruity hit.

I first covered the skirt cake in a 'petticoat' thin layer of white fondant so it was sealed all over. Blue pettinice was the perfect colour to finish Princess Anna's skirt. I draped it in two panels, the front being embossed with a swirly design from the floral impression mat set. I covered the joins with a ribbon of jade fondant. Blue sugar pearls were inserted into the middle of the embossed flowers before the fondant dried. A purple scalloped base was made from fondant and a small circle cookie cutter and all were adhered with a little sugar glue. Rose designs were added to the sides to keep it looking authentic.

This dolls legs are incredibly long as she is pointing her toes. They ended up going halfway down into the base cake! It meant cutting a hole in the cake card for her ankles to slot through. I wrapped her lower body in plastic wrap so she didn't get dirty then used an apple-corer to cut a space down for her legs and bottom. The cake board was adorned with various size snowflakes made with this plunger cutter set. Actually I didn't even make the snowflakes, my daughter (then still 5) managed to stamp, plunge and glitter them entirely herself. We used white sparkes but they would've also been neat in silver or sea green. 

Here is our birthday princess in her specially tailored costume for the party - gotta love clever Nanas! Six years old today XX