Passionfruit cupcakes for Ange's 40th birthday

 I wanted to share with you some fun cupcakes I made for my neighbour Ange's birthday. When we were invited up the hill to join her for a birthday BBQ, I asked can I bring anything?. "No just yourselves" was her reply. Well I was brought up better than that, so I had to take something. I made passionfruit cupcakes, using Fresh-as passionfruit powder, added to vanilla cupcake batter,  I also flavoured my buttercream (under the fondant), with the same powder. The hot pink fondant icing is Satin ice pink, straight from the tub.  I cut the zebra design cupcake toppers from Wilton sugar sheets, using my Cricut cake machine with the designs cut from the Martha Stewart birthday cake cartridge. The 12 cupcakes are placed in a 12 hole cupcake box, with pink tissue, just to fill the box up and make them look a bit special.

I taste tested these - of course!.  And the passionfruit was sooooo good!. If you haven't tried the Fresh-as powders yet. i urge you to grab some and try them out, they have so many uses.

-->


-->

A birthday cake for Joy-Joy

This cake was made for a dear family friend who turned 70 this week and had her party last night. We couldn't be with her, so the cake was couriered to her. I had wanted to make the cake taller and include a "button tin" lid, propped up against the side, but I feared couriering that. The resulting design is an adaption that I felt would arrive at the other end in one piece and it did.

Joy (aka Joy-Joy) is a button collector, hence the tin of buttons, she also adores patchwork & owls. The lettering is done with the Cricut Cake machine, as are the owls. The cake board I really wanted to show, so that it looked like someone has placed a doily on top of a cake board, and placed a tin of buttons on top. The doily is also made with the Cricut. The buttons I made using these vintage and antique button moulds, I used pettinice in those - they are finished in different colours of lustre. Then I used this plastic chocolate mould and white chocolate melts, coloured with powder colour, to make a variety of buttons that looked like vintage plastic.

The cake is chocolate fudge cake, with chocolate ganache, covered in chocolate pettinice.

-->  The owls go round the circumference of the tin, interspersed with little butterflies.

Chocolate almond cake (gluten free)

I wanted to share with you all the recipe I used for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday cake last weekend. It was flour free (gluten free), Grandma Kiwicakes is not gluten intolerant, but we both love almond cakes and wanted to give this recipe a try.

I baked 2 separate cakes, so used double the amount shown here, as the cakes don't bake very thick layers. Each layer was aprx 2'' thick.

Ingredients

5 eggs

200g butter

200g sugar

200g plain almonds

200g dark chocolat

Method

1. Melt the chocolate & butter together, then mix in the ground almond. Set aside to cool.

2. Separate 4 of the eggs. Mix 1 whole egg and 4 yolks with the sugar. Blend this with the chocolate/almond mixture.

3. Beat the 4 remaining egg whites until they are stiff. Using a metal spoon, carefully fold the egg whites in to the chocolate/almond mixture.

4. Pour in to non-stick spring-form baking tin and bake at 175-180 degrees for 45-55mins.

I put my 2 layers together with a layer of ganache and then covered the cake in a very thin layer of ganache, to adhere Bakels Chocolate Pettinice before decorating using cut-outs from my Cricut Cake

-->

Grandma Kiwicakes birthday cake

Here's a pic of a cake I made this weekend - for Grandma Kiwicakes birthday. I used my Cricut Cake machine to make the paisley. Grandma Kiwicakes was pretty chuffed with it. I made a flourless chocolate almond cake, for no other reason, than I wanted to attempt something different and boy was it tasty.

Please tell me what you think of it.

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?

SPCA CUCPAKE DAY Today

Yesterday I baked up a storm,over 4 dozen cupcakes. I chose 2 flavours - pink champagne, with pink champagne buttercream (recipe to follow shortly) and German chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing. 

I had my cruelty free eggs at the ready (just the way I like them), purchased from the Whangarei Growers market on Saturday morning from Cackleberry Farms

Now the blue eggs in the back row are chicken eggs as well. Not duck as I first assumed. Such a pretty colour shell.

 I first turned my hand to two dozen chocolate lego cupcakes. 

Now you might be wondering what lego blocks have to do with animals..........................Well take a look at this little fellow. 

In our house, Bilbo has been known to munch on many piece of lego in his time, if it isn’t put away, he is likely to give it a good ole chew!  

Next up was pink champagne, this flavour is my new favourite. As the flavour was completely new for me, I did a test run 2 weeks ago and was thrilled with the results. I used my Cricut Cake machine and the Paper Pups cartridge, to create these.

I used white icing, which I painted with glycerine, to act as glue for the glitter (Glacier violet by Rainbow Dust). The cupcakes in my opinion don't photograph too well,,the subtle pink actually looked quite nice against the white- but in the photo the difference is not as noticeable.

I loved the poodles.

I'd love to hear what you made for the SPCA today.

Who needs the gym?

When you can shift 120kgs of Cricut machines in a day. We've wrestled 120kg (or so the freight man told us) worth of Cricut today. And for all you girls that have ordered one, here is proof they're on the way. Right I think I need chocolate now WHEW!

Never listen to your mother!

I have been on edge all day, listening for the truck in the driveway bringing the Cricut Cake machines. Grandma Kiwicakes said to me "Go and get your lunch - they won't deliver them at lunch time" WRONG!. Poor Grandma Kiwicakes was left to take delivery of all these machines, mats & cartridges, as they arrived 5 minutes after I left. Lunch is eaten, so I am no working like mad over the next few hours, to ensure all of these wonderful machines are dispatched today to all those that have ordered. ENJOY!

Everyone please be sure to send me photos of your Cricut creations.

Kiwicakes has the best customers in NZ!

Thanks to everyone that came to the big day out yesterday. And for all your well wishes, hugs and congratulations - oh and presents! (yes I got some of those too!). It's great to hear you think I am doing a good job. We kicked off at 9am and it was 4pm before we knew it. I snatched a couple of bites to eat during the day - but was run off my feet all day. My apologies to those I didn't get long enough to talk to. Special thanks to go the Waitakere cake club for putting on such a special day.

Some of you I was meeting person for the first time - Ree was kind enough to send me a copy of the photo of us taken together.

Here we are with our Cricut cake hats on

Doesn't matter how many times I watch this machine cut cut CUT!, I am still in awe of it!. I just know those of you that ordered Cricut Cake yesterday will be in awe of it too, when you receive yours in close on a weeks time.

Gumpaste tip I picked up.

Gumpaste as you know is notoriously hard and "gummy" to knead. I have found that "crisco" brand shortening (which has the consistency of margarine used straight from the container) is like nourishing hand cream for gumpaste. A quick smear over over the surface of the gumpaste before kneading and it is instantly more workable. This has proved remarkably useful for working with Cricut Cake.

Live Laugh Love!

This cake was a little bit of fun. Just perfect for an engagement cake or similar. The lettering was from the elegant cakes catridge and the heart border was from cake basics cartridge (which comes with Cricut Cake)

This machine is so addictive

Today was mouse free luckily (see yesterdays post). However I did find regular work got in the way of play time, and I wasn't able to get the Cricut Cake turned on until 11.30am. However the parcels must go out! Today was gumpaste day (yesterday was edible image sheets/frosting sheets). I am still slightly overwhelmed by the number of shapes I can cut, and as I'm still in test mode, I decided to cut out some shapes, that I had already cut in frosting sheets - so I could easily compare their properties. The posts of gumpaste will be updated here as time permits, as unfortunately for this blog, I still have a few hours work to put in tonight. However I do have time to share with you some of my day. This afternoon I had a visit from my lovely long time flickr friend Lisa who was visiting Auckland & Whangarei, on a short business trip. Lisa and her lovely husband Donald are the wonderful couple behind Denheath desserts in Timaru. If you have never tried their custard squares, cheescakes or E-squares, you simply must - do you remember the box Lisa sent me? (oh dear, I feel my credit card twitching, I feel a mail order coming on). I urge you to check out their website, their overnight service for awesome edibles is second to none and a great way to send a gift to a loved one, in another city.

I was able to show Lisa & Donald just what this wonderful machine can do. I am sure Lisa won't mind me sharing , that she was impressed with the fine filigree it can cut out.

Despite the fact I was late in getting to Cricut cake today, we still had time to break for afternoon tea, whilst this only consisted of store bought lamingtons, I thought I would surprise Grandma Kiwicakes and give afternoon tea, the Cricut experience. A daisy for each - and who could resist an edible lace doily for underneath.

I couldn't decide initially round or square doily?

In the end, I think square won!

One of the things that impresses me most about Cricut cake, is you can cut a daisy such as this from very tiny, going up in 1/4'' increments, right up to 12''. That's around 50 different sizes for just one shape!

So if you saw this cake photo, you could not immediately guess the size of the cake - it could be 4'', it could be 12''.

Ok so it's 6'' - this gives huge scope for custom favours, to match a cake, for any wedding party or special occasion

I said to my dear hubby Vaughan when I got home today - this machine is more addicitve than wine!

In the last few days, I have learnt an increible amount, about all things cricut, this is thanks in part, to the wonderful Audrey & Flo. Who have been very kind in sharing their vast knowledge bank with me. I'll be sharing more from Audrey & Flo, as we go along. Thank you ladies!