I've had another extremely busy weekend (and week building up to it)! With a wedding in the Blue Mountains followed directly by a Kitchen Tea back in the Sydney CBD, it was always going to be a logistical challenge.

I did have an amazing (and rather cold) time away outside of Sydney on Friday evening and Saturday before hastily fitting in a morning bushwalk on Sunday morning before the drive back to Sydney. I was exhausted. The wedding was beautiful and very much what the bride wanted.

So was the Kitchen Tea - the cake, which I had completed by Friday morning, turned out well too! We were supposed to have a cake topper as well but my dear friend forgot it. No matter, flowers to the rescue and as she had already prepped everything, it was really easy! The cake was delicious just in case you were wondering! Very happy with how it all turned out.

It was a great afternoon (despite the dreary wet weather storming outside) at Doltone House opposite Hyde Park. Lots of laughs, competitiveness and general fun. Really enjoyed myself and was quite impressed by the service.

I'm at a point in my life ("career"; the day one) where I'm not quite sure if I'm staying or if I'm going so this lucky girl (and boy) were extremely fortunate to be able to catch me in town to do their wedding cake. It was a case of 'maybe' for a long time!

4 mega tiers of Vanilla Coconut, Chocolate Peppermint and Mocha Caramel cake sandwiched with lashings of buttercream (a request from the bride.. she really really LOVES buttercream). The waiter who took the cake off to the kitchen where they promptly butchered it (I was livid) carried the cake as though it weighed nothing... hats off to him because I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a good 20 odd kg?!?!

And the flowers, oh they were so pretty: blushing brides with yellow chrysanthemums, billy buttons, baby breaths, lavender and roses. It made having to get up at 5 AM with minimal sleep so worth it!

There have been a few things I've come to a realization with in the past few months. It's probably been simmering on the back burner for a long time but it's kind of come to fruition with my time away from home and not having baked it so long. And the main one that stands out is: I would not want to do this full time and for a living. As much as I love baking and doing it in small doses, I don't think I'd enjoy it if it was anything more.

So this cake was a lot of fun and it made me realize that I still had it in me to pull something out of the proverbial hat. And I still loved (almost) every minute of it. But I was so stressed that the cake would fall over or something would go wrong and I just don't ever want to be responsible for something bad happening to the cake!

In short: time permitting (and that's not a lot of time), I would love to do more but here and now, I have other things I also want to do with my time...

Hello Friends!

It certainly has been a long time. This one feels like a practice cake as you can see the drips are well not really drips... more like blobs. I knew I'd be busy back home but not entirely sure how busy!

This was a small chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream and random lindt balls, kit kats, salted caramel popcorn and walnuts on the top for a last minute birthday bash.

Make sure you tune in to the cake that comes next!

Ohayo from Tokyo!

This has got to be one of my most the most crazy things I thought I could pull off: limited space, limited resources, no electronic equipment (I did buy a set of cheap egg beaters, they literally died after 5 minutes), NO OVEN!

But world had gotten around the Tokyo office that I baked for fun and as a leisure thing (I wonder how that happened?) and so a challenge was set that I should bake a cake for our boss' birthday. I am always up for a challenge so over 3 nights in my tiny apartment where my 'kitchen' was made up of a sink, one induction burner, a bar fridge, about 50 cm x 50cm of bench space and a tiny microwave oven, I set to work.

I love their 100 yen shops - got my spatula, whisk and cake board and box there so at least some things were easy! My sister had shipped over some plain flour, Cadbury chocolate, cocoa and sugar for me - if you lived in Japan for a few months and tried to buy these items, you will quickly understand why I had them shipped over... $$$

So this was it...! Had to cake the layers individually three times due to the size of the oven. All these constraints really tested my patience :) But we got there in the end, three yummy looking, still moist layers of chocolate cake. Then came the buttercream and butter is about 4x the price in Australia and without electric beaters, I was beating for a l-o-n-g time. Again, excellent patience practice training.

Assembling the cake... another wonder how I managed with such limited space and using the butter knife that I had in the apartment, it kind of came together. I wasn't going to come up with any fancy design and again, the abundance of confectionery and snack items in Japanese shops is a wonder because it literally made the cake look beautiful - just by throwing on as much chocolate, biscuits, sugar, pocky sticks and wafers on the cake as I could and trying to get some 'height'.

Anyway, I called it a success... and it was definitely a yummy cake. But it also encouraged me not to attempt it again in my time in Japan. Thankfully, there was lots to do anyway so I was more that okay not to bake but to sight see. An experience of a lifetime in this little kitchen and I would not have changed any part of it.

For those of you who don't know, I am on hiatus aka, shipped my operations to Tokyo, Japan. No seriously, apologies in advance but I will not be taking any orders until August 2016.

This was another special birthday - my old man's 60th. 

And we had a BIG party (it's said that the organisers of the party never enjoy themselves. I can see where this statement comes from as the stress and the planning is quite a challenge. However, I'd like to think that I did enjoy myself).

I was so excited as we were having enough guests to warrant a dessert table. I've always wanted to do one but I also knew that it would just go to waste and usually guests will be too full to want to pick at the sweets. I'd decided long ago we were going all out - and on top of the gazillion other things I was overseeing, I did a small dessert table with a strawberry & ferrero tree, flowers, cake pops, chocolates, jelly shots, macarons and of course the CAKE!!!

An impressive 6 layers of chocolate cake soaked in kirsch with coconut, glace cherries and spiked ganache. It was so moist and yummy! We had a lot of cake leftover.... but everyone wanted to take some home! Yay, it didn't go to waste.

The day was hot too so I had to pick items that could stay out without melting or deteriorating. Not such an easy feat.

We also had a pig on the spit. It was delicious. The kids loved the balloons and the bubble machine (so did our crazy welsh corgi). So tiring but so worth it. Happy Birthday Dad!

Three tiers of red velvet and white chocolate mud cake at one stage I thought was going to melt and just make me cry (like the time Maxxie ate a corner of my huge chocolate cake that was for a customer the next day when he snuck into the house...).

My third collaboration with Chau who comes up with all these briliant ideas on how to save the cake. PHEW. She helped me with the toppers and all of those expensive white and light pink M&Ms you see cascading down the cake. I love the toppers - even more so because the bride is taller than the groom which I think is a pretty accurate representation! (Sorry Michael hahaha).

I was really happy with the way this reception venue cut the cake. It was very neat and plated very nicely with both flavours on every plate (this didn't happen at my cousin's wedding which was a sticking point for me). And the top tier has been wrapped up and saved for the freezer. I wonder how many couples actually end up eating it?

300 perfect macarons resulted. Don't ask me about the failures!

And of course, there's never enough work around so I have this BRILLIANT idea that I would handpaint with gold all of the white macarons. That just added another 4 hours, no big deal.

I always envisioned that packaging and wrapping boxes would be fun. It is, when you have about 10. When you have 150, it's kind of time consuming and tiring (like 5 hours of time consuming). But I was really happy and proud of the final result. They all looked so good and were so delicious. Pistachio (made from real nuts roasted, toasted and ground) and White Chocolate Raspberry Surprise (again, homemade raspberry jam from raspberries).

Would I willingly do this again? Probably not. Unless you're like a really really really really good friend. And you asked nicely. And preferably NOT in the middle of summer. Please, my stress levels are high enough already!

A cute little cake just before the official start of the Chinese Year of the Monkey! 

Another one where I had a stress attach over the humidity and heat throughout the week. I'd even remedied the ganache in preparation for this weather but it was still so soft! So it was 10 minutes in the fridge, 5 minutes, repeat until it was all piped. I had to give the fondant an extra 12 hours of rest to try and dry it out a bit more but it didn't seem to make a huge difference there either!

Summer, you and I have a love-hate relationship. I love you when I'm at the beach. But I want to kick and scream and ball my eyes out when I have cakes to make! The last few days have been 35+ and this is not cake baking and decorating weather.

Please be kind to me this weekend.

Sincerely,

Super stressed baker.

It's like a crown of flowers and macarons on a cake. I reckon I could put this on the 'wish list' when others want to make a cake for me. :)

To give up my day job... or not? 

I wish I was there to see this cake being cut! Stunning centrepiece fit for a garden party.

Definitely one of my favourites to do ever! Three cakes, three different sizes and a matching theme. I would gladly do this for birthdays, engagements, weddings, you name it. It all just looks so majestic and elegant and stunning. Fit for any occasion...

Here we have red velvet cake, golden butter cake and white chocolate mud cake topped with oreos, raspberries, macarons, meringue, lavender, rose petals and a whole bunch of beautiful flowers and a couple of rings of rosemary. It's rustic and so summer!

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Officially the first cake of 2016: God Bless Zoe! And she was just the c-u-t-e-s-t little girl!

And I have to say that I am so happy that it was a cake for a girl! If you look back at cakes I've done, boy cakes are definitely more often requested than girl cakes. I hope that's not saying something about Australia's population...

Okay, so I really like pink as well and Caz (Zoe's awesome mommy) had great eye for detail in what she wanted - I love it when people know what they want as it definitely makes my job easier. So really, all I had to do was bring it to edible cake life.

As with anything else, the decorating is the most fun. I like the baking bit too (to me, it is therapeutic) and the stuff in between are just steps in the process. Not boring but not necessarily fun either. Constructing the cake... now that's fun and the sense of accomplishment at the end of every cake makes it so worth it. 

My favourite bit here? The pearl cross and the flowers around the cake. Kind of whimsical and beautiful at the same time. Helps bring everything together and I think so much more appropriate than the big gumpaste roses or flowers you see on other Christening cakes. They remind me more of wedding or engagement cakes rather than Christenings and cute things for young ones. 

These may be the prettiest cupcakes I've made in a long time. Rose cupakes in ivory, pink and purple and they are just so pretty and beautiful and delicate looking that I wouldn't blame anyone if they didn't want to eat it!

Bomboniere cupcakes for a few close friends of the Bride and Groom at their wedding dinner just before Christmas.

Every year, I move into December with this feeling of trepidation. There is this tangible knowledge that the days until Christmas are numbered (not that they weren't before but there is now this sense of urgency) and with everything else happening around, time is so precious and short.

Fruit cake, gingerbread and christmas hampers!!! I look forward to planning, packaging, building and gifting these edible gifts every year but not so much the work that goes on in between... heheh! ;) Have I ever mentioned I'm a lazy baker? And as usual, I overestimate the amount of time I have and the number of hours that I (don't) need to sleep!

So this year, with my calendar completely overrun, working until midnight several nights per week doing my "real" job, a few social catch ups since coming home, normal orders and everything else that goes on in life, I managed to come up with most of the things I'd planned...There's always next year to do all the things you didn't right (new year's resolution?)?

So I came up with about 8 gingerbread houses, 12 hampers, a few hundred cookies, biscotti, gingerbread people / reindeer (or tribemen) and santas, shortbread, blueberry jam and salted caramel jars. 

However, my absolute favourite this year was my pavlova tree!!! It was sooo pretty and delicious and quintessentially Australian... everyone loved it! Who knew egg whites and sugar could be so much fun...

It's been awhile and I must apologise! Times flies when you're juggling too many things.

I've had a few pretty cool requests coming through since arriving home (did you miss me?) and I was even responding to emails during my few weeks in Tokyo. Having the opportunity to stay in the middle of the city (smack bang near the Imperial Palace) really opened my eyes to how small the living conditions were.

My studio apartment had no oven, just a little microwave oven that would probably at best allow you to make a 6-inch cake. The next few months will certainly be a challenge for me!

And so, my first weekend back in Sydney and home, I was tasked with a 50th birthday cake with Southern Comfort as the theme. I'd always been fascinated by the wine barrel cakes and it is on my to-do list as soon as that opportunity comes up!

Anyways, here's a very simple version of a bucket-inspired cake. With real bottles of Southern Comfort and Minties as ice cubes. How I do wish we had the confectionery selections in Tokyo though, then I would definitely have been able to source some clear coloured lollies for ice cubes in the short time (and budget) that I had.