Mini flower cakes

Last week while I had some time on my hands, I decided to make some mini cakes decorated with fondant.  I love working with fondant and just think it looks amazing on cakes, but I don't use it too often.  The base for my cakes was simple vanilla cakes iced with butter cream, i wanted to do something quick so i could focus on the decorating.

For the first cake I just cut out three different sizes of flowers and then planned to cover the entire cake. I've seen this idea a couple of times and just think it looks beautiful. I totally underestimated how many flowers I would need, so I just had to improvise.  I covered the side of the cake completely and then dotted the last few flowers on top.  I was so happy with the way it turned out, and when I put the finishing dusting of glitter on it I was sad that I hadn't made it for a specific reason other than to sit in my kitchen and get eaten!

The second cake was inspired by an idea I saw on Pinterest, I loved the flowers so decided to attempt to make them using my scalloped edge cutters. I also underestimated how many flowers I would need for this cake, but this time round I couldn't just improvise. Luckily they're so quick to make so I cut out some more rounds and quickly had enough flowers. I also discovered that these flowers can easily be made while talking on the phone! Once I had enough flowers I secured them onto the cake using some pearl pins that I had, and the sides of the cake just got a couple of spots to finish them off.

I was so happy with how both the cakes turned out and had just as much fun taking photo's and sampling the final product!

Every dog bone has its day!

My latest baking challenge came by default and not design.  Nowhere on my list of things to bake was 1000 individually branded biscuits shaped like dog bones! 

I was midway through icing a chocolate cake when I got the call to confirm the order and quantities.  After calmly accepting the order, I put the phone down and in an equally calm manner, without thinking what I was doing, placed a large spoonful of chocolate icing in my mouth.  Once I registered what I’d done, I justified the icing in that it helped me think straight.

And so the game of logistics began.  After a highly entertaining conversation in Woolworths explaining to the cashier why it was that I needed  12kg’s of flour, 5kg’s of sugar, 30 eggs and 10 bricks of butter, I was ready to go. I had 6 days to make 1000 biscuits, which I broke down into 200 per day giving me an extra day should something go wrong. 

200 biscuits per day was completely doable and the baking turned out to go faster than I thought it would.  The time and patience came in individually packaging each biscuit.  I don’t have the most nimble fingers at the best of times, and after a couple of upside down and angled bows I can now tie the perfect bow in my sleep.

By Thursday the biscuits were done, each in a cellophane bag with a Sprinkles sticker, divided amongst 19 beer boxes and ready to go. 






My final challenge on Friday morning was to transport the biscuits to Pretoria.  Despite my initial conviction, I now know that 19 beer boxes definitely can’t fit into a VW Polo! After some car juggling, taking a wrong turn, and one fallen down box of biscuits (none broken) my biscuits where handed over. On delivery, the first comment I got was, ‘Flip, that’s a lot of biscuits’.  ‘Um, I know – I made every single one!’

     

It might not have been one of my goals, but at least now the challenge of making 1000 biscuits in 5 days can be added to my list and ticked off!