Cute fondant Penguin figurine tutorial

How cute are these penguins?. This tutorial was designed for us, by Lisa from The Whole Cake and Caboodle. Click on the photos to enlarge, and you can print the pages, for step by step how to.

Isomalt Snowflakes with Cake Lace

Whether you are making snowflakes for a Frozen cake, or for a Northern Hemisphere inspired Christmas cake, Cake lace trapped inside isomalt is just so pretty!.
The photos speak for themselves, however if you're wondering how it was done

(1) spread cake lace on to snowflake lace mat and allow to dry

(2) Pour melted isomalt over lace snowflake slowly, so that your snowflakes don't join together. Allow to cool
(3) spritz with glitter if desired

(4) peel away from mat - spray with edible glaze, to help fight the humidity

Cookies for a Cat Lover

A friend who is a great cat lover was having a birthday what better than cat cookies. Here at Kiwicakes we have a great range of items for animal lovers including lots of cat cookie cutters

 A dilemma which one to choose  I finally settled on this one a Sitting Cat

I used this biscuit mix we stock, it keeps its shape very well and doesn't spread during baking.

All directions are on the packet and it is very easy to use.

I used half a packet and that made a full oven tray of biscuits . I cut the biscuits out as instructions and thought I knew better and shifted some of my biscuits to fit more on the tray which distorted my shape slightly.I would not recommend this, I would use two trays next time .

The biscuits are baked at a low temperature and hold their shape well. Instead of Icing I used Renshaws Marzipan. I put this on while the biscuits were still warm to help it stick.

I chose this cat wafer paper. We have an extensive range of wafer paper printed designs at Kiwicakes

I  traced round the cutter and stuck the wafer paper down using Sugar Glue

All bagged up and ready to go with the cutter tied round the neck of the bag as an extra gift should the birthday girl like to make more cookies for herself.

I think they got the seal of approval from the birthday girl's cat Phoebe, here she is keeping warm on this cold Winter day.

I hope this inspires you to try your own cookies We have over 600 cutters etc click here  for our full range

So this is me

I recently had my portrait taken, wearing makeup no less!. And for anyone that knows me, will know this is likely a once a year occurrence. However this all came about when I was invited to an event "Celebrating Hardworking Woman" for business woman here in Whangarei. It was an event run by Nikita Parker with proceeds going to "Look Good Feel Better"And the gorgeous Minette took our photos.

So with this lovely photo in hand, I thought I would tell you a little bit about myself
I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister and furbaby owner.
I wear glasses and can't manage without them.
I am not a follower of fashion, I live in jeans - I do not enjoy shopping (unless it's for kitchen gadgets, cake toys or good food & wine, then I LOVE Shopping!)
I love to travel. My favourite places to visit are OLD, I love museums and galleries.
I live, breathe, eat and even dream about cake. When visiting new places my first stop is often to do with food or cake related.
I hear all too often "I just don't know how you do what you do - how do you have time". I could laughingly say it is due to not wearing makeup and not co-ordinating my outfits. But the truth is I have an amazing support network. My long suffering husband has at times been both mother and father to our children whilst I've travelled throughout NZ and overseas to cake shows and cake related events. And Grandma Kiwicakes, whom many of you know and love has been my rock not only in business, but with the family too. And here at Kiwicakes I have a great staff that have been with me for years - I'd be lost without them.
I read A LOT and if I have a good book in hand, I've been known to be unable to put it down. I don't have a favourite genre, if it's good I'll read it.
I love to cook and take great pleasure pottering about in the kitchen.
I love discovering new restaurants and eateries
I strive to shop locally, whilst I have been known to make an appearance at the supermarket, I am a regular at the local butcher, Bin Inn, Co-op and markets. I prefer old retro to new items.
My fitness regime is pretty much non existent, but I walk a few kilometres every day with our wee dog. The rest of the time you'll find me glued to my computer, doing everything behind the scenes that is needed to run Kiwicakes.

Custom sprinkle medleys now available at kiwicakes

 Three months ago I started on the lengthy process to offer Custom sprinkle medleys at Kiwicakes. AND NOW THE SERVICE IS HERE

It’s been a lot of work, the ingredients document was like writing a small novel. And I am so thankful for the wonderful Hayley who created the awesome custom medley photos (I don’t envy her laying all of those sprinkles out in straight lines).

We’ve sourced extra wonderful sprinkles from around the world, to extend our already awesome sprinkle selection. And a complete overhaul of our kitchen shelves was needed to create space, for each colour.

Some wonderful Kiwicakers agreed to be my custom medley testers, so I could try to iron out any wrinkles in the service, their medleys have been mixed and delivered.

I can’t wait to get mixing for you! Click herehttp://www.kiwicakes.co.nz/711-sprinkle-medleys to find out more about the service 

Pretty unicorn cookies

 This lovely step by step tutorial comes to us from Lisa at The Whole Cake and Caboodle 

Using a unicorn cutter from Kiwicakes. Lisa baked sugar cookies, to which she added fondant horns, shaped by hand. Painted with Rolkem Super Gold, mixed with a little rose spirit to form a paint 

Using the cookie cutter. Cut out fondant icing unicorn, then remove the horn and mane using a knife.

Glue the fondant to the cookie using  edible sugar glue and mark the ear and nose hole with a veining tool. The line for the mouth is cut with a knife.

These photos show the steps to pipe the mane. They are random squiggles of royal icing (which sets hard allowing cookies to be bagged) using Wilton tip #16

The eye can be drawn on with an edible marker pen, or painted with a brush and edible black paint.

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.