Happy Birthday Sienna - beautiful blossoms

At the recent Cake and Craft show in Napier, I was joined by Stacey Johnson from Design at 409​ Stacey made some amazing display cakes for the Kiwicakes stand using a combination of Kiwicakes products and her special cake toppers. For those of you who were unable to attend in person and see these cakes up close, over the next few days I'll be sharing the photos with you here.

Stacey used a gorgeous handmade wooden topper to celebrate Sienna's birthday. The blossom are made using cutter & veiner sets  The super cute house uses the FMM more than a birdhouse cutter set. The trees use the FMM fluffy cloud set. And there's even the FMM picket fence cutter. The little butterflies are created with gumpaste using the butterfly plunger cutters. This cake was greatly admired at the show.

Frozen Olaf - no sign of letting go

At the recent Cake and Craft show in Napier, I was joined by Stacey Johnson from Design at 409​ Stacey made some amazing display cakes for the Kiwicakes stand using a combination of Kiwicakes products and her special cake toppers. For those of you who were unable to attend in person and see these cakes up close, over the next few days I'll be sharing the photos with you here.

Stacey used our lovely snowflake wafer paper for the bottom tier of this cake and topped it with one of her custom topper.

Yay Progel colouring really is my favourite

At the recent Cake and Craft show in Napier, I was joined by Stacey Johnson from Design at 409​ Stacey made some amazing display cakes for the Kiwicakes stand using a combination of Kiwicakes products and her special cake toppers. For those of you who were unable to attend in person and see these cakes up close, over the next few days I'll be sharing the photos with you here.

Stacey used progel gel paste colouring from Rainbow Dust for the vibrant colours in her cake. The Yay! cake topper was custom made by Stacey and really sums up how I feel about progel!

Frozen Olaf cake with cake lace for Gracie's birthday

This awesome Olaf, Frozen themed cake was made by Jenny here at Kiwicakes for her daughter Gracie's birthday recently. I think she did an amazing job, so I begged her for the photos for the blog. Gracie's full Frozen party will come in a second blog post soon.

Jenny used an 8'' hemisphere cake pan to make the top dome, which is covered in Satin Ice turquoise fondant icing. to get it nice and smooth be sure to use a cake smoother as it's a tricky shape. 

Our lovely range of blue cake drums work well with the Frozen theme, Jenny used a 12'' square board as the base. Then she placed a 10'' square cake on top, that she rough iced with royal icing using a spatula. The white cake is trim with a border of white fondant icing, in to which is pressed a design using a shell tool. The hemisphere turquoise cake is bordered with pearls from a bead mould 

Jenny tells me Olaf loves purple flowers, so our wafer paper purple flowers were perfect. 

These were alternated with Frozen edible cupcake images

Topped off with a Frozen candle

And covered in pearlised snowflakes using cake lace in the the Crystal Cake Lace mat

Jenny used pearlised white cake lace mix, then over dusted some with blue lustre dust from Rainbow Dust

Jenny's Olaf was made using white satin ice fondant, to which a little tylose was added to stiffen it. The pieces were glued together using edible glue

I thing Jenny did an amazing job. Gracie declared it "The best cake ever!"

Whatever your passion Kiwicakes will see you right

Did you know we've an ENORMOUS range of cookie cutters. Whether your passions, is owls elephants horses or anything in between we've got you sorted.

Kiwicakes new custom edible image printing as film strips

This cake I made last week for my gorgeous friend Vanessa who celebrated her 40th birthday on Saturday night. On top is a kettle bell (weight) for those who don't know what it is. This cake was paired with red colorflame candles that burn red when lit. I used our newedible image film strip service to create this cake. The cake is covered with Satin Ice fondant and has gumpaste roses added

Bronchiectasis Foundation launch here in Northland 7th April 2015

Yesterday was a very special day here in Northland with the launch of the Bronchiectasis Foundation the Culmination of a dream of Esther Jordan-Muriwai. Yesterday would have been Esther's 25 birthday. Sadly she passed away 10 months earlier. Family, friends, health professionals, dignitaries and the Governor General, Lieutenant General Sir Jerry Mateparae acknowledged her courage and determination during the launch event.

Katie pictured above also has Bronchiectasis. You may remember Katie from December 2013 when I made her 10th birthday cake for Operation Sugar. (you may also have seen her in Countdown supermarket ads, the local paper and other Bronchiectasis awareness campaigns)

Earlier this year the Whangarei Cake Guild had the pleasure of meeting Esther's parents Camron and Ana. They came along to one of our monthly meetings and told us Esther's story of bravery and perseverance living with this terrible illness. I had tears in my eyes listening to Esther's story and immediately my mind went to my young friend Katie, as she battles with Bronchiectasis every day. Esther's parents asked if as a club we'd be prepared to create a cake for the launch of Esther's dream the Bronchiectasis Foundation. Of course as a club we all wanted to help. The stunning cake you see is a group effort from many members. I was proud to get involved, in fact I was bursting at the seams to help. Kiwicakes donated the cake supplies needed to make this cake. Every member had a different job. Mine was to cover and emboss the cake board (using an impression mat). The Whangarei Cake guild was represented at the event yesterday by Anne & Megan, who both contributed to making the wonderful cake (Megan baking & covering, Anne was one of the rose makers and cake transporter - many other members helped to produce this stunning cake).

You can read more about this wonderful event and Esther's dream here in a Northern advocate newspaper story
You can watch the story on Seven Sharp TV Show here and see the lovely Katie being interviewed and on Maori TV here
If you want to know more about Bronchiectasis you can check out the Northland support group facebook page here 
Photos used with permission - Lisa Reed.

Elina Prawito - Satin Ice Artist of excellence

On Monday I travelled to Auckland to see Elina be presented with her Satin Ice artist of excellence chefs jacket. Elina is the first person in New Zealand to be awarded this honour. You can check out Elina's work on her website here and her facebook page here The Satin Ice website has a lovely profile on Elina which you can read here

Elina gave us an awesome demonstration on how easy it is to make the ice cream cupcake. I love the clean simple lines of her work, which are so often hard to achieve. She made it look do easy!

Here I am with Gobake's newest team member Kirsten and Elina of course!

Button Cake - a quick and easy celebration cake

This button cake was easy and fun to make. I started with a selection of our buttons moulds and made rainbow coloured buttons using Satin Ice fondant to which I added a little tylose

I made the buttons one morning and used them later that afternoon. I used royal icing to adhere the buttons to the cake. I began by placing 2 large buttons for each colourway on to the cake, to create the wavy line the buttons follow, then filled in each colour from there. This was to ensure I had even graduation between the colours. This cake was displayed last year at the Go Bake Cake expo in Auckland.

This style of cake looks just as stunning with other shapes such as butterflies or flowers instead of buttons.

Love cake - with silver dragees

This LOVE cake was displayed by Kiwicakes last year at the GoBake Cake Expo and we've had it on display here at Kiwicakes for some time. I've often been asked how it was made....... SO here's how!. It's a 3 tier cake, covered in black Satin Ice fondant. The centre tier and the cake board edge are covered with diamante wrap (which you cut to required width with scissors). The love topper can be found here, we've quite a selection of different words in our diamante topper range here at Kiwicakes.

The edges where the two tiers meet were spread with black royal icing (just do a small section at a time, or the icing will set before you make it around the circumference) Over the top of the royal icing, a selection of our Greek dragees were applied. Over the top of this I sprinkled 2mm silver cachous to fill the little gaps. I used the Wilton Decorator Favourites pattern press set, to press in the patterns on the top & bottom tier, which I then piped with black royal icing and adhered dragees to. The black fondant drop tier border around the base of the cake was created with this mould.

This cake was very well received at the expo, it looks super complicated, but actually was very easy to produce.

Gumpaste - Vintage fabric look flowers

I often get asked how I made the white flower shown here on the ruffle cake above (The cake features on our current facebook Kiwicakes page cover.) It's very quick and simple to make.

You can take any three sizes from the FMM 5 petal rose cutters (there's 6 sizes in total to choose from) and a little gumpaste.

Roll your gumpaste out thinly, place on to fondant shaping foam, or foam pad  and using an XL ball tool gently rub around the edges to slightly ruffle.

Transfer to thicker foam and press down in centre to cup.

Transfer to flower forming cups (dust the cups with cornflour so they won't stick). allow a few hours for each layer to dry, before adhering the layers together using edible glue.

The 3 layer flower on my cake had a simple pink fondant button glued in the centre, however you can create any decorative centre you wish. My last photo (above), shows how more than 3 layers of petals can be used, to create a more full looking flower. The flower can be adhered to the side of the cake using royal icing or melted chocolate. It's reasonable heavy, so you need something substantial to glue it on with. Have fun!

A special first birthday for Antonin - Poppy Bakes

This small cake was made by my daughter Poppy (11 years) for a family friend Antonin who was turning 1. The family is French/NZ and the wee character is Petit Ours Brun (little brown bear, from a french story book). Poppy was the one specifically asked to make his cake. She decided she wanted to make cupcakes as well. As Anotnin loves bananas, she decided to make a banana cake.

The cake was covered with a layer of Bakels white truffle, which I thought would be easier for Poppy than making ganache. I stepped in and leant a small hand to help her achieve a flat-ish finish. It was then covered in Satin Ice fondant. The little figure was modelled from Satin Ice fondant to which tylose had been added.

The cupcakes have small motifs on top that frequently appear in the story lines. The cupcakes are finished with easy frost  using a 1m tip

The little cake sat next to a cupcake stand at the birthday boys home. We used a simple cardboard cupcake stand, the way these cupcake stands fit together allows for a picture to be slotted in easily, it is held in place as a topper.

Both the cupcakes and the birthday cake we well received by Antonin, it was so much fun watching him eat birthday cake.

Plants Vs Zombies cake for my wee friend Spencer

I get the pleasure of making my wee friend Spencer's cake each year, you may remember his 4th birthday cake I just came to the shock realisation he will shortly be 6, so I thought I'd best share his 5th birthday cake with you. I made Spencer a simple sheet cake. Which I covered in green Satin Ice fondant.

The I used a checkerboard stencil and dusted green lustre over the squares, to make the playing squares of the game.

I tore some areas of the fondant, and filled the holes with ground up oreo cookies (creme filling removed) to look like the holes the plants grow up out of.

The grass is piped with buttercream icing using tip 233

All of the plants, potatoes and zombies are made from Chocit brand chocolate modelling paste. I found this much easier to use than fondant for modelling such small pieces.

The no#5 candle is from Kiwicakes

The flower pot is made using this mould

The characters on this cake were a ton of fun to make, and in Chocit did not take long at all.