A Very Dr Seuss 1st Birthday Party

You might remember back in 2011 I blogged about our gorgeous friend Jess and her cake making venture 'Rosy Cakes', since then Jess has been very busy baking and decorating countless cakes, being Mum her nearly 3 year old Molly and Solomon who turned 1 this week - and was the reason for the amazing Dr Seuss themed party Max and I went to last Saturday!

As you can see Jess not only has a flair for making and decorating amazing cakes but for creating fabulous parties! I loved how balanced everything was, the different heights of everything on the table and how the colour scheme of red, white and blue ran through everything from the blue lemonade to the families co-ordinated outfits. The backdrop for the food table was simple but so effective!

Jess made delicious chocolate cupcakes with bright blue buttercream, cake pops and marshmallows (dipped in white chocolate and covered in blue sugar crystal) on gorgeous blue and white paper straws, there were also some healthy choices with popcorn and grapes served in paper cupcake cases with Dr Seuss stickers on the front. I also loved the mini milk bottles which were jazzed up with some bakers twine, paper and more Dr Seuss stickers!

My Max and Jess' Molly will be turning 3 in a few months time and this party has me feeling inspired to get on with planning Max's next party - which I have been informed will be dinosaur themed! What are your favourite kids party themes?

If you want to keep up with what Jess is working on check out her Facebook page, I am constantly blown away with what she comes up with!

If we didn’t have birthdays,
you wouldn’t be you.
If you’d never been born,
well then what would you do?
If you’d never been born,
well then what would you be?
You might be a fish!
Or a toad in a tree!
You might be a doorknob!
Or three baked potatoes!
You might be a bag full of
hard green tomatoes.

Or worse than all that…
Why, you might be a WASN’T!
A Wasn’t has no fun at all.
No, he doesn’t.

A Wasn’t just isn’t.
He just isn’t present.
But you… You ARE YOU!
And, now isn’t that pleasant!

- Dr Seuss

A huge thank you to Jess for sharing her photos with us and a big happy 1st birthday to wee Solomon xox

Christmas Tree Cupcakes and An Update

I am feeling a bit time poor at the moment (I will explain more at the end of this post) but wanted to get into the kitchen to whip something Christmassy up so these were the perfect solution. I had seen variations around and thought they were cute and seemed simple enough. For the cupcake I used my tried and true ‘Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake’ batter and placed it into 16 brown cupcake papers – which look like the base of a tree and baked at 180°C for about 15 minutes (or until they can be lightly touched and spring back).

While they cooked and then cooled I used fondant icing to make the little stars to go on top. To do this cut a piece of fondant off the block it comes in and warm it between your hands, once it has reached a workable consistency you can add a few drops of yellow food colouring (you could also use pre-coloured fondant or leave it white and dust it with edible glitter) and kneed it through so the colour is uniform. To cut the stars you need to dust you work surface and your rolling pin with cornflour, roll your fondant out to about 0.5cm thick and cut your stars, placing them on non-stick wax paper to harden so that they can be stuck on top of your trees. These could be made in advance and placed in an air-tight container.

Once your cupcakes have cooled ice them with a buttercream frosting, you could do plain vanilla or something a little more festive and use a peppermint flavor. To do this you will need:

150 grams butter (softened)
2 - 2½ cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (or ½ teaspoon peppermint essence)
A few drops of green food colouring

Cream the butter until it is pale in colour then sift in your first cup of icing sugar as well as adding 1 tablespoon hot water and your essence, beat until combined and then sift in your remaining 1 –1½ cups of icing sugar until you get the desired consistency and add your colouring. Place your frosting in a piping bag and use a Wilton 1M tip or similar to frost each cupcake so it resembles a tree.

To decorate place coloured chocolate drops or the little edible silver balls so that they resemble decorations around the tree and top each cupcake with a star.

 
Enjoy giving these and lots of our other fantastic recipes a go! Feel free to share what you have been up to by leaving comments here, Facebook, or email us – we love hearing from you. I really want to find the time to give the Candy Cane Cookies Mel posted yesterday a try.

Also while I am here I will give you a brief update on what is happening with me – Shane and I have sold our house and are moving to New Plymouth in February 2012 (I will elaborate on this in the new year), we have to be out of our house late January so I will be very busy packing, trying to catch up with our gorgeous friends and family as well as caring for Maxie - who is also having a big 1st birthday extravaganza before we leave, that I am organising on top of everything else! All of this doesn’t leave a whole heap of time for baking and blogging but I promise to do my best to share anything that I get time to bake.

Before I sign off I thought I would share with you an updated pic of Max – he is 10.5 months now (can you believe it? I can’t!).

 
So from me and my family to you and all of yours, Merry Christmas! Have wonderful days with your loved ones xx

Decadent Chocolate Celebration Cake with Swiss Buttercream

The picture above is of a recipe featured in the current issue of ‘Foodtown’ magazine.  Upon seeing it I instantly fell in love and had to make it!  I had the perfect excuse as it was time to make a cake to celebrate Max’s ‘eight month birthday’.  I envisioned a cake just like the one in the magazine except with duck egg blue frosting and a cute mint green teddy bear sitting on top instead of a rose.  However, it didn’t quite work out as I had planned; the frosting was fantastic (albeit a little too sweet/buttery for my palette), the colouring on the other hand was more green than blue (and yes I definitely used blue colouring but as I wanted a soft blue I didn’t use enough) and the cake tasted fantastic but was a wee bit of a disaster – with a collapsed middle :-(

I think I know why that happened and can give you pointers on how to avoid it.  For starters the recipe calls for you to divide your cake batter into three 15cm round cake tins or one 22cm tin, which is what I did.  I would recommend taking the 15cm option as I found using the 22cm tin meant the cake was becoming overcooked on the top and sides.  It also rose a little too high and started to collapse and although my skewer removed cleanly after the recommended cooking time it was a little fudgey in the middle.  This resulted in a two layer cake as opposed to three after levelling it off because of it collapsing.  If I decide to make this again I will get my hands on some 15cm tins.  If you want to use a 22cm tin I would drop the oven temperature by 10°C and cook the cake for 70 minutes.

Ingredients:
Cake:
spray oil
cocoa for dusting
60 grams of 70% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup hot water
1 ½ cups flour
1 ¼ cups cocoa
1 ½  teaspoons baking soda
½  teaspoon baking powder
½  teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 ¼ cups caster sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
¾ cup butter milk

Swiss Buttercream:
1 ½ cups caster sugar
4 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
300 grams butter (soft but not runny)
colouring and decorations of your choice

Method:
Preheat your oven to 160°C.  Line and spray the bases of three 15cm tins (or one 22cm tin with baking paper.  Spray with oil and dust with cocoa, tapping off the excess.
Place the chocolate and hot water into a bowl and stir until the chocolate is melted.  Set aside to cool.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a separate bowl and set aside.
Place eggs in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on a medium-high speed for 3-4 minutes until pale and thick.  Gradually add in the sugar, oil and vanilla essence.  Beat well.  Add the buttermilk and beat until combined.
Fold in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Add the chocolate and gently fold together, be careful not to over mix.
Place batter into the prepared tin/s.  Bake in a preheated oven for about 40 minutes (or until your skewer removes cleanly) – the recipe recommends baking a 22cm cake for an hour (see my notes in the introduction to this recipe).  Once cooked, set aside to cool in tins.

To make the buttercream, place the sugar and egg whites into a heatproof bowl and place it over a pan of simmering water (do not allow the bottom of the bowl to touch the water).  Stir continuously until the sugar is dissolved, about five minutes.
Remove the bowl from the heat and place the egg white mixture into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on a medium-high speed until the mixture is cool, thick and glossy white.  Add vanilla essence.
Gradually add the butter, mixing well after each addition until it has been absorbed into the egg white mixture.  Add a few drops of colouring and mix until combined.  The buttercream should have a whipped cream consistency of whipped cream.

To assemble, cut each cake into three layers.  Spread or pipe the buttercream between each layer and top of your cakes with decorations of your choice.

The cake batter, my collapsed disaster, the meringue base for the frosting, cake done, teddy bear topper.

My favourite part of the cake was actually the teddy bear topper.  I used this video tutorial to learn, although I made my teddy a little bigger.

And for those who are interested – here is an updated picture of my little monkey, enjoying the spring weather with his Mumma!

Rugby Fever Hits Baking

The Rugby World Cup kicked off in New Zealand on Friday and it seems most of the country has caught rugby fever!  Max turned 7 months old yesterday so as promised here is his (rugby themed) cake.  I really need need to fork out for some gel colourings if I am going to use fondant for things in the future as your standard liquid food colouring from the supermarket only creates pastel type colours.

 
It is quite difficult to get pictures of Max with the cakes at the moment (unless I hold him and his grabby little hands), so here is a picture of him taken right before we left for a trip to the Auckland viaduct (with approximately 200,000 other people) to celebrate the opening of the tournament.

 
Unfortunately there is no new recipe to share today – it is just an ‘Easy Peasy Chocolate Cake’ hiding under there.  But I should have something new for you in the next week.

Baptism Bakes!

Little Max was Baptised over the weekend so I was brave (okay – maybe cheap… Have you seen what cake shops charge for two tier cakes!) and made my first two tier cake covered in fondant.

It’s not perfect but I was happy with it, I loved the colour (I had to colour the fondant myself) and it tasted good which is the most important thing.  It was chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache butter cream.  I used a cookie cutter to make the cross and piped Max’s name with royal icing, which was used to secure the ribbon to the cake as well.  The cake also doubled as Max’s four month cake as part of my on going project to do a cake for him every month to improve my skills so I can make him a really awesome first birthday cake next February.

I also made little thank you favours for our guests, little short bread crosses which I sprinkled with blue and white sugar to jazz them up a bit!