Rainbow coloured chocolate curls

 

These awesome curls were made by layering Wilton candy melts up in a plastic container (allow each one to cool before adding the next colour). Once set pop out your block - and curl away with your vege peeler 

This was part of a recent candy melt/chocolate demo at Kiwicakes

How to make your own custom chocolate bars, to make your cakes really pop

 Making your own custom chocolate bars is quick, easy and fun! And they will really set your cakes apart from store bought chocolate bars.
The examples above use chocolate moulds from Kiwicakes . You can either use pre-coloured candy melts OR colour your own white chocolate using candy colour oil based colours or powder colour. (You cannot use gel paste or liquid food colouring, as this will cause your chocolate to seize and make it unsuable)

You can mould them with or without sprinkles. As a single colour or marbled. The choice is yours.

A finished bar weighs less than 100g, making them quite economic to make.

Bars like this are often referred to as "bark" this is the Wilton Happy Birthday Mould, you can find them in other seasonal designs (which are not always bar shaped - but do consider other shapes). Simply melt your coloured chocolate, spoon in to mould, tap on the bench for a good ten taps, to ensure any bubbles trapped are popped. Then lightly sprinkle over your sprinkle medley and allow to cool. They will release easily once set

To create the marble colour simply place your dominant colour in the mould first, then add small blobs of other colours, and stir gently (I use a lollipop stick to do this).Do NOT use your candy colour to do the marbling, as once removed from the mould, the swirls of colour can come off on your hands.

If you're after a traditional bar shape. And you want sprinkles on the side that would normally have the lines where you break the bar apart, take care to look at the example below.

You cannot add just a little sprinkles to the mould, if you do, you will get the result as shown in my photo. as the melted chocolate allows the sprinkles to move around.

You need to pack them right in there and fill it right up.

The bars can be bagged and given as a gift, just like thy are. When placing on a cake, I find they look best at differing heights. You can simply break off a piece of one bar, to make it shorter. It is important when placing on the cake, to cut a narrow aperture for the bar to be pushed in to. If oyu push down in to solid cake, you risk breaking the bar. 

These little bars make an affordable take home gift, from your party, and can be made to match the birthday cake.

Having cake tins made in India

I have literally thousands of photos from my trip to India. They could never be one post. I shared many photos whilst I was in India both on the Kiwicakes Facebook page & Instagram - thanks so much to all those who commented and kept asking for more.

It was hard to decide which blog post to start with, rather than a chronological order for my posts, I decided to just pick a topic and leap right in

I travelled to India with the lovely Pereira/Mascarenhas family. Who I will be ever grateful to for welcoming me in to their family fold and taking such great care of me for the 2 weeks we were in Mumbai.

My sweet friend Florinda asked me "what do you want to do in Mumbai" my reply was always "I don't care, I am happy to do anything". I was not being polite, I was being 100% truthful, I really was happy to do literally ANYTHING as every sight sound and smell was new to me. Perhaps I should have said "I want to do it all". Florinda suggested I might like to have some cake pans made, from the man she has used for many years to make all her wonderful shaped pans I readily agreed.

We arrived in Mumbai just after Christmas day, above is the adorable home I stayed in for 2 weeks. (Pali Naka Bandra) I had the entire top floor to myself. My hosts Florinda & Leyland lived here for many years before moving to NZ.

So it was by Rickshaw we went to Florinda's "cake pan man" At Jyoti Tin Works. A ride in one of these Rickshaws is so much fun and costs between 20 and 40 cents NZ depending on how far you need to go (we could fit three adults across the back seat). I tried to describe the road noise to my kids on my return from India, I've never heard anything like it (including having been to Shanghai). The horns beep non stop, as in the never ever stop and there's hundreds beeping all at once. I had the biggest grin on my face the entire time. 

This tiny little store is located in a narrow alley way, we arrived at Friday lunchtime to find the roller doors down on every store in the alleyway and the lane was filled with men dressed in white thobe kneeling in prayer. I discovered this was to last one hour. We'd arrived just as they started, so we popped down the street for a spot of Sari shopping (more on that later)

As I cannot speak Hindi, I left my lovely host to order my two cake pans, they were to be ready the following week and I paid a 50% deposit. Both pans costs less than $20

The staff at Jyoti Tin Works were so friendly, I asked if I might take photos and they happily agreed (I found this the case, every time I asked anyone during my stay)

At the time of our visit they were making cookie cutters 

My pans we repeatedly not ready, and it was not until the last day of my stay that I was able to collect them. I took with me from NZ these line drawings, my pans did not go according to the paper plan.

I gave the line drawings on paper, and asked for them to be the size of the paper. The team at Jyoti Tin works took this as a guide (I think) - as this is what I received. 

However I took it all in my stride, I actually had no need of the pans, I just really really wanted to experience going to the cake pan maker to have them made. My host assured me, she had always received exactly what she asked for. The pans had not cost much at all, so I decided to pay my remaining balance and take them, as there was no time left for them to correct them.

When I ordered the fern cake pan, I'd had in mind to create a brush stroke style fern. As the exterior of my original drawing was styled to fit what I needed, my brush stroke fern came out a little chunkier than I wanted, however I wasn't unhappy with it, and it still looks like a fern. I've yet to try my kiwi, he may need a little work in the feet department, as they are far too long, but my basic outline is there.

I coloured the base of my cake with buttercream and coloured with Grey Progel.

 I really like how the Grey Progel tones perfectly with Rolkem Super Silver lustre, as you can see from my photo below, there's no need to paint the buttercream silver too.

I painted my chocolate brushstrokes once I had placed them on the cake by mixing Rolkem Super Silver with Rose Spirit to form a  paint.

Overall there's no mistaking this is meant to be a silver fern, albeit a little on the chunky side.

Mini chocolate bars cupcake decorations

These cute little cupcakes were super easy to make. I'd been dying to get my hands on some of the limited edition Caramilk by Cadbury, as it had been a favourite of mine as a teen. I teemed it with a Millionaires caramel drizzle over vanilla buttercream

To create the drizzle, I popped a spoonful of Millionaires Caramel in to a disposable piping bag and zapped in the microwave for ten seconds, I then snipped off the end and drizzled over the cupcakes. The larger you cut the hole in the end of the bag, the heavier your drip will be, I did both fine and heavy drizzles, to test out which I liked better. Start small though, as you can't go backwards if you cut the hole too big.

These are super easy to make, each little bar weighs aprx 7 grams, so you get a heap from one block of chocolate. I used this mould -5-with-chocolate-printed-on-each-square I melted the caramilk gently int he microwave and spooned in to the mould, Tap underside of mould gently on bench to expel air bubbles

 Lots of cute little bars just waiting for their cupcakes.

Red Velvet cupcakes in support of All Blacks rugby

I recently outed myself as a closet rugby fan. I attended the first Lions test match her in my hometown of Whangarei and have been glued to the TV ever since. Tonight the Lions take on the Maori All Blacks. I'll be perched on the edge of the couch screaming at the TV as all good rugby supporters like to do.

I seemed a good day for some rugby cupcakes. I'd been wanting to try the new Whittakers Full Eighty chocolate bars. Which consequently are very nice. Using Rainbow Dust edible metallic lustre dusts, I trialed "metallic dark silver" left, "metallic light silver" (middle) and "starlight silver saturn" (right) - whilst the beauty of each colour is hard to portray in the photo, my favourite was the "silver saturn". I dusted the lustre powder straight on to the chocolate and on to grey fondant silver ferns, made using this mould

I Wanted a black cream cheese icing for my red velvet cupcakes, so I first made a chocolate cream cheese icing to which I added black progel food coloruing . I find a good dark cocoa such as this one makes a nice dark buttercream/icing meaning you need less black food colouring to go from dark chocolate brown to black 

Recipe

125 grams softened buter

125g room temp cream cheese

4 cups icing sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa powder

6 Tbsp water.

Beat together butter and cream cheese. Add. cocoa powder. Add 1 cup of icing sugar at a time and continue to beat. Add a little water after the addition of each cup of icing sugar.

If you do not want chocolate flavoured icing, omit cocoa powder and add a good squeeze of lemon juice instead.

Because I'm 99.9% sure the Maori All Black are going to come out on top It's black icing atop red cupcakes for me today

Coloured Easter chocolate bark from Kiwicakes

I decided to make some chocolate bark using our Easter Sprinkle Medley. I couldn't decided between properly moulded bars of free form so I decided to try both. I melted some Wilton candy melts and half I spooned in to a bar slab mould and the other half I spread on parchment paper. Then I simply sprinkled over the medley mix and allowed to cool before removing from the mould or breaking in to pieces.

Any remaining candy melts can be simply spread on parchment paper, allowed too cool

Then broken in to pieces for remelting another day

I then packaged in to clear cello bags. These were super yummy to eat, the crunch from the sugar pearls and non pareils made it very enjoyable to eat.

By changing the style of sprinkle medley this would also be a fun idea for unicorn and butterfly parties, or even parties for adults. Which style do you like best?

Easter Bunny Cake fun tutorial from Kiwicakes

This cake was so much fun to make, and it made everyone smile that saw it.

I wanted to be a little different and use a white bunny, which I dusted with Rainbow Dust Pearl Blush Pink. You simply brush it on dry and it sticks beautifully. 

The cake was 6'' in diameter and is over 6'' high. I sandwiched the two layers together with millionaires caramel and then used Bakels white truffle to coat the cake. I went for a semi-naked cake look. I then added Rainbow Dust Caribbean Blue dust to more white truffle and mixed to form this lovely blue shade for the drip effect. I popped it in to a piping bag, first piping a ring around the outside and allowing it to drip. Once set, I then filled in the centre (if you cover the top and allow it to drip, you get too wide drips and too much dripping)

Before the truffle set, I sprinkled some Easter Sprinkle Medley around the rim of the cake - placing by hand some of the larger elements from the medley.

I couldn't decide at first on the final placement for my Easter plaque. In then end I placed it on the board.

I used some speckled candy eggs from the store, as well as dusting some plain white eggs (you can make these using this mould) with Rainbow Dust irridescent lilac fusion dust.

The shards were made by spreading melted Wilton candy melts on to baking paper and allowing to cool, then breaking up using my hands. Don't fret about waste, as any left over can simply be broken up for remelting another day

I used a sharp knife to cut a slit in the cake, then pushed the candy melt shards down in to the slit. It was certainly a quick cake to make, and a very effective finish with the help of some wonderful lustre powders and sprinkles.