I tried to be really really organised this year. Planning lots in October for the December season. Mostly because judging from the past three years, I know how hectic it gets. How little time I end up with and on top of a quarter-end (year-end) month... planning was a necessity.

Funnily enough, I've already been to 3 or 4 Christmas parties and it is only the second week of December. So I thought I'd share what I've been doing to date. And I will need to post as I go because there's lots and lots and lots more!!! On top of the regular orders...

Sugar cookies: Snowflakes, snowmen & angels. These was painfully slow to make. The cutters I had were from Nordic ware but they were just so fiddly because of all the small arms and heads and legs. It was a really warm day too so each angel and snowmen made me increasingly frustrated!!!

 

I made a ton of houses last year that it was like my own city. This year... I decided to have make a few because I have other plans. And they are cute as I reckon! They've all got names on them unfortunately so get in early next year if you'd like one!

Took one to my friend's house for their annual christmas party bbq (I cannot believe that 12 people can consume so MUCH FOOD). Anyways, it was a total winner and everyone loved it. Yay!!! I've actually never deconstructed a gingerbread house myself so it was lots of fun. And I love gifting.

A more-ish cake - it was our contribution to a cake day fiesta. And it was sold within minutes! :D

It was the week of lots of cake orders at work (by that, I mean myself and the other resident baker at work were both delivery cakes for colleagues!).

I made this super cute fantasy land princess cake for one of my colleague's daughters over the weekend. The figurines are plastic - their choice so that they could have a keepsake of the occasion. I love the mushrooms! It was no where near as much work as the LoL cake but still required some decent TLC.

I make no secret about it. I like my cakes to have a good height. And by that I mean a good inch or so higher than the usual cake tiers that you find in cake shops. I think it makes it look more grand and less stingy... to put it lightly.

So I always have 3 or 4 layers in each tier. Just like in this photo (excuse the non-straightness of the cake slice... it was cut with a butter knife) but you can distinctly see the 4 layers of cake with 3 layers of white chocolate ganache and raspberries between each layers. Very happy.

Another shot of the League of Legends cake. Thank you to one of my godbro's friends for taking this. Looks amazing!

If you have a teenage or young adult male living in your household or even within your circle of connections, then more than likely you would have heard of the game League of Legends that seems to take over the internet world and zap smart kiddies into playing online for endless hours forgetting pretty much all else - sometimes including the basic necessities such as eating and sleeping.

So I was a little surprised that Leonard (who is my godbrother per say) actually approached me to make his cake in advance. Well, all he said was "I want a massive cake". Yup, thanks for the details! At first, I was going to go a basketball cake... maybe with a jersey and a 3D basketball sitting on the top. Then I thought, well, I did the soccer ball cake a couple of months back, let's take it up a notch.

I spent a few hours on the web browsing. There wasn't much available. Oh-oh... I was on my own. There are hundreds of LoL characters (called "champions") in the game. As you can imagine, I would have picked the easier ones. :P I like to save time! And already this was taking lots and lots of my time!

I knew he was having a big party. Teens these days seem to have a lot of friends.

So as usual, I tried to be prepared and used the Sunday before the cake to do all the figurines. Estimated time: 6 hours.

I came to realise awhile back that I like to make cakes for the outcome. Sure, all the steps along the way matter (duh) and sometimes those steps are therapeutic (especially after a busy day doing the 9-5) but my favourite part is sticking the figurines on and watching the cake come to life. More detail, more wow.

I didn't have so much fun today rolling the fondant. I'm not a huge fan of fondant and the smell of the sugar today made me a little queasy... :S I couldn't wait to wash my hands and be rid of the smell. Too bad the most fun bit takes the least amount of time! I thought it was quite clever to use dessicated coconut for a grassy effect (that means I don't have to whip up green buttercream! Score!!) and make basic icing in green to spread along the cake so everything would stick. Made the perfect amount of figures, trees, flowers and mushrooms. Very happy and very proud. :)