nom nom nom. Italian Meringue and just a little torched. Urgh.... it's probably like liquid gold through the Sydney Storm. But I wouldn't know... I gave it away :(

Haven't made a custom-cake in a few weeks so it is very exciting to get back into it! ;)

I had eagerly done my research on gummy bears and more specifically the little mascot. Apparently, there is a song and TV show decided to it??? Not sure if that's available in Australia but we have the Haribo Gummy Bears in the shops everywhere. Yummy. Got a bunch of them left over and if I was younger, I would totally make vodka bears out of them!

Made a 1.5 batch of vanilla cake today. Decided to be clever and used two baking tins to bake the bigger cake so that they baked and cooled much quicker. It worked! And it just so happened that I put all three cakes in the oven at the same time and they all took the same amount of time to bake - so was perfect. Happy with the result. Even happier with the thin perfect layers that I cut from them. There is just something about thin layers of cake.. more delicate, elegant and refined.

Not long into the cake prep, I realised that what i was most looking forward to was actually just to stick the gummy bears onto the cake (duh... the easiest part!). And as I hadn't really planned ahead, I had to make Mr Gummy Bear as the cakes were cooling. Luckily, it's cool and dry today so the fondant held its shape quite well. And thanks to toothpicks, Mr Gummy Bear is sturdy and intact. And he was quite easy to make too. Chucked in butter, icing sugar, passionfruit and homemade lemon curd for some tartness into the kitchenaid and out came some delicious buttercream... :) Easy peasy!

I amaze myself sometimes... all up, this cake didn't take long at all. I fluffed around a bit this morning and took my time baking the cake but it was only probably another 90 minutes or so to assemble the cake and make Mr Gummy Bear. Efficiency makes me happy.

Recently had this discussion (it's come up many times for myself) at work. Macarons or macaroons? These French beauties are macarons. Those Australian blobs of coconut cookies are macaroons. The only thing they have in common is the egg whites! 

I came up with the idea to make Irish Cream (aka, Bailey's) ganache. I wanted to actually use white chocolate to do it with but all the posts I've read online and research pointed to dark chocolate. So I started with that. I think I was a little heavy-handed with the liquor. It was quite... fragrant. But it was really nice. Will definitely use and add to my flavour list!

Egg yolks are a forgotten ingredient in making macarons. And this time, I decided to make some lemon curd to use up some of the yolks. We have some beautiful lemons in the garden so it was perfect. And even better by putting them in our macarons. Tangy and sweet. Now to think about what to do with the rest of it! Delicious on scones, I know!

Also made our "signature" Salted Caramel Macarons. 

A tip though... Macarons are temperamental morsels. Always measure your ingredients with a scale. Whip up your egg whites slowly and don't forget to add the sugar into the whites as they foam up or else you will ruin your batch! Was too busy talking today and completely forgot about adding sugar into the egg whites until I had already made my macronage. It was a bit late by then. Total sacrilege! Ended up with these crater looking almond cookies. But hey, they taste good with coffee. ;)

I always end up with pink macarons! And yellow for Lemon Curd :) 

Packaged and ready to be gifted to lucky recipients.