21st Camogie Cake

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes | Tags: 21st cake, baking, birthday, cake decorating, camogie, cooking, hurling, party | 1 Comment »

I also made a 21st cake this week, I had a busy one to say the least!

This cake was chocolate cake with chocolate icing..

I covered each tier with roll out icing and cut out and stuck on different patterns..

and then stacked them on top of each other…this was the tricky part!

Random cactus in the background..

So then I made little star things to go on top and left over night to dry..

Then the next morning I began to build the little Finbarrs camogie girl topper and stuck in the stars!

Then I just cleaned it up a bit and it was good to go!

I actually find “normal” cakes a lot harder to do that the more…eh…novel cakes…but I suppose the practice is no harm! This one was a big improvement from the first tiered cake I made for my sister’s 21st…read about that nightmare here!

I might take a little break from cakes for a while…I have so much going on these days I’m having to choose between cake or sleep…and I’m tired dammit!!

Anyway as always, there’s more pics of this cake and others in the gallery! Enjoy!

A look at the tools..

Posted: March 10, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes, cupcakes | Tags: baking, cake, cake decorating, cooking, cupcakes, tools | Leave a comment »

So I get a lot of people asking me “how do you make those cakes”, and to tell the truth it is a painful mix of intense cake technique research and studying, and sleepless night after sleepless night filled with cake related torture…

Well not really.

As you can probably tell from reading the blog that most of the cakes go through the same process, I find actually baking the cakes the biggest pain in the arse, the decorating is the easy part!

I get most of my ingredients from just normal shops and try to get stuff in bulk in wholesalers ( i know, i know, such a business woman!) and I tend to just learn as I go..I also learnt a good bit from the programs Ace of Cakes and Cake Boss (oh Food Network what would I do without you!)

I get most of my food colourings and tools from specialist cake shops but i get a few bits here and there off eBay like sculpting tools and cutters!

So here’s a lil look around my cake decorating stuff..

These are some of my paste and liquid food colourings and some edible glittery thingys..

These are my basic tools, I don’t even really use all the pink ones but I got them in a set of eBay for like a 5er so you can’t really go wrong, especially when I saw in a shop almost the exact same set for €30 and no way was I gonna spend that much on cake tools, that money could be put towards much better use like new shoes or food or something..

I got this set of cutters in Ikea a while back, its come in very handy for loads of cakes..

And these are just some other random cutters I have that come in very useful..

And this is a box where I keep all my left over bits of coloured icing rather than throwing it out, once its kept airtight its usable for ages so saves a hell of a lotta time when trying to mix colours! I just take a bit here and there rather than going through the whole colouring and kneading process every time I make a cake, it’s so much easier to have it pre coloured and just ready to go. The foil and plastic in the box is just to prevent the icing staining each other!

Then I keep everything all together in these boxes to keep ‘em outta the way and tidy(most of the time!)

Here’s just a quick shout out to all the mammys reading, I hear a lot of mammys like the oul blog! I get “oh my god my mam loves your cakes!” at least once a week…

Well that was a lot of rambling, till next time!!

Cat x

Confirmation Cake

Posted: March 9, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes | Tags: baking, biscuit, cake, cake decorating, communion, confirmation, cookies, cooking, icing | 2 Comments »

I made a cake for a Confirmation this week!

It was a chocolate biscuit and malteaser cake which I made into a book-ish shape..

Max eyeing up the biscuit cake from the corner!

Which I then covered in chocolate icing so the roll out icing would have something to stick to..

then I covered it with roll out icing…

and decorated!

Taadaaa!

Burger Cake

Posted: February 14, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes | Tags: baking, burger, cake decorating, cakes, cooking, food | Leave a comment »

So I decided to make a burger cake for my good friend Catherine for her 20th birthday. That girl loves burgers.

This was also my one year “cake-aversary” as the first big cake I ever did was for her 19th…oh look here it is now!! *click here* Oh how time flies!!

Anyways, I planned to make the ‘bun’ part of the cake out of chocolate cake and the ‘meat’ part out of chocolate biscuit cake, my friends are so damn picky so this way I could keep them all happy

So then I just iced the cakes with chocolate and vanilla icing..

Then covered them with coloured roll out icing..

I got new icing which came in a huge block which I spent soo long kneading to try get it soft, but then my right arm and hand went into spasm and I thought I was having a stroke or something…I was halfway up the stairs to let my Dad know I was dying when it faded away so it was grand in the end. False alarm. (-see these are the types of problems I face when making cakes, they rarely have anything to do with the actual cake haha!)

Where was I?

Ah yes, once everything was covered I then just started to assemble the cake!

It was looking kinda pale at this stage so I painted it with some food colouring to give it a bit more life!

And that’s all there was to it!

Pics in the gallery!

Horse Cake

Posted: February 2, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes | 1 Comment »

Soo I was asked to make a horse cake for a 10th birthday party, now I’m not much of a horsey person, so I had to do a bit of research into their shape and colours and all that. So I spent some time Googling “horse”, “pretty horsey” and “lovely horse”, so much so that my Google ads switched from baking to horse rider and trailer insurance. That’s alotta Googlin’.

I can confirm that this and only this was the main source of my inspriation.

So anyways, to begin, I cut vanilla cake into a basic horsey-esque shape, if you can call it that.

I then covered it with vanilla icing and then roll out icing.

Meanwhile I also covered the head with icing which was made out of “Crisp Rice”, aka, Rice Krispies’ simpler Irish cousin.

What do you mean it doesn't look like a horse?!

I then started to assemble the horse and began hand painting with food colouring and gave it some hair.

Finally I added some details like a rosette, some flowers and writing.

And thats all there was to it!

More pics in zee gaaalllerrryyy!!

Alice In Wonderland Cake

Posted: January 12, 2012 | Author: Catherine | Filed under: Baking, Cakes, cupcakes | Tags: 21st birthday, baking, cake decorating, cakes, party | 2 Comments »

I was commissioned to make an Alice in Wonderland themed cake for a friends joint 21st birthday party.

I drew out an original idea but decided to cut back on alotta the details to save me some time…i’m only human!

So it started like all cakes do..cake+icing= iced cake.

I then had the daunting task of trying to get one to stand on top of the other while putting wooden skewers up the middle…but with the help of Susie I managed!