Princess Tiara Fondant Birthday Cake

My niece Alaena celebrated her 5th birthday last Sunday. She's a pretty, young lady who loves looking beautiful! So I knew she would love a girly tiara cake full of sparkle and fluff!


I baked two round American Chocolate cakes. The bottom tier was 9" and the top was 6". I covered the tiers with purple and pink fondant.

The tiara is hand made from gumpaste. I initially intended to use a plastic toy tiara, but couldn't find one! I had no time to go around searching, because we were busy with house renovations and also a close friend's wedding. Thus, I made the tiara, without knowing if it would harden right and turn out okay. Luckily it turned out fine, though I had to use 3 toothpicks for extra support.

I also only had 2 hours to assemble the cake, as we had partied till 3-4am the night before, after the wedding dinner! Thank goodness for toothpicks; an essential and oh-so-flexible cake decorating tool! (If you look carefully you can see that the cake is also slanting a bit! I had no time to rectify that!)

The whole cake is edible except for the toothpicks, the pink fur trim at the bottom, and the dowel rods in the bottom tier which is used to support the top tier.

I love the overall look of the finished product.

Ben 10 Birthday Cake

My nephew Marc celebrated his 6th birthday on Sunday. I seldom make cakes for boys, because my children and my sisters' children are mostly girls! The girls outnumber the boys by 2:1!

So anyway, Marc loves Ben 10, so I went on the internet to find some Ben 10 related pictures.

The kids tell me this guy is called "Grey Matter". He's one of the aliens Ben 10 can turn into. I just picked him because he's the easiest to make!! The others have too many arms, eyes, e.t.c.! I made this guy from fondant and he has a toothpick in him for a little support. For the eyes, I had the help of my handy food markers.

I made a 6 inch round chocolate cake, which I covered in white fondant. I wrote "Marc 6" instead of "Ben 10" by cutting fondant free-hand. The black outlines and filling-in was done with royal icing, because I find tinting fondant black is just too much hard work!

I also made 6 chocolate cupcakes and covered them with a simple fondant 'omnitrix' design. One for each candle.

Bittersweet chocolate ganache

I made a chocolate ganache out of Cadbury's Old Gold Dark Chocolate which has 70% content of cocoa. It was luxuriously rich and delicious. The only thing is it isn't sweet, so if you prefer your ganache a little sweeter, you'll have to add a bit of sugar, or use a chocolate which has less cocoa content.



Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache
Ingredients:

200g Cadbury's Old Gold Dark Chocolate (70% cocoa)
1 cup (250ml) whipping cream


Method:

• break chocolate into small pieces
• melt chocolate in a bowl fitted over a pan of simmering water
• allow chocolate to melt without stirring
• when completely melted, remove chocolate from heat
• allow to cool slightly
• beat cream into chocolate until well mixed

The consistency of the ganache hardens upon cooling. Therefore, if you want to cover a cake by pouring fondant over, you can do so while it is still slightly warm.

If you want to pipe the ganache however, you can refrigerate it awhile for it to firm up. Be sure to place a layer of cling film over the surface of the ganache to prevent a crust forming while in the fridge.

Trust me, if you love dark chocolate, you'll simply adore this!

Macarons

Gosh! Look at these? Aren't they the most precious cookies you've ever seen? The gorgeous colours and the perfectly smooth round mounds are simply exquisite! I found this pic from www.champagnemacarons.blogspot.com.

No, of course I did not make these perfect creations! They're just so breath-taking I wanted to share with my fellow sweets junkies. You can get the recipe here if you want to have a go.

These are macarons, a french almond cookie. From what I've read, they are rather challenging to make. But they're just so beautiful, I absolutely have to try making them one day.

When I do work up the courage, I will make them and you'll definitely see it here... unless of course they end up looking like blobs of poop, then I'll just pretend I never tried!! :P

*swoooon*
These are from www.savethedatewp.blogspot.com