Communion and Family Day Cake

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Michelle

Last weekend I made a cake for a First Holy Communion. I was honoured to be asked to make this cake as the occasion is a very special day for those that follow Catholic beliefs. I was also happy as it meant a new challenge! Thankfully they had an idea of what they wanted the cake to look like so that saved me some time of researching and making decisions.

As soon as I found out about this cake I asked the lady at cake decorating training for a suggestion about how to make a goblet. Yes a goblet! It was the one thing that scared me about this cake. She suggested wrapping a plastic cup in fondant, because nothing (in the cake decorating world of Perth!) was drying due to the weather. I was hoping that is what she would say!

This cake was my 8th cake in 6 weeks, throw in a few cupcakes, some chocolate modelling and everything else and I was starting to ache! I made the goblet, the cross and rosary on Monday and then painted them on Wednesday. Thursday night I made the cakes. I made a 2 layer cake this time, instead of one big cake as I was a little scared of ruining it. I had had a couple of silly mishaps over the past month. Then on Friday I covered the cake, made the Bible and added it all together. So I felt this was the least onerous cake I have made because I started early! Saying that, I did sleep all of Sunday to recover from the previous 6 weeks!

Now this was an extra special cake because it was also the little boy’s 7th Family Day. Now what is a Family Day you ask? Well this little boy was adopted and it was 7 years to the day since he joined his beautiful family. I remembering meeting this little boy for the first time at Dome café in Kalgoorlie about 6 and a half years ago. I was left with this smiling baby while his mum and another friend went to order coffees. He was such a happy baby and he has turned into a beautiful boy who knocks people over with his brilliant smile!

I do hope he liked his cake. His mum wrote to me and said “Michelle, you should have heard all the ooh-ing and Ahh-ing over your cake last night!! Everyone thought it was amazing! And it tasted divine, too, even the icing. I usually don’t like that kind of icing to eat but it was delish!”

What an awesome hobby I have! I have fun making the cake, learning new techniques, playing with new tools or ingredients and then I get beautiful responses like that I hope you like the cake too!

Cake Decorating 101 – Cupcakes

Posted on August 24, 2013 by Michelle

A couple of months ago I did a short training session on how to make a fondant penguin (see post http://michelleslabyrinth.com.au/wordpress/how-to-make-a-penguin/ ) for a TAFE course I’m doing called ‘Training and Assessment’ [Certificate IV]. The next assignment for the course was to do two consecutive group training sessions and I asked for some volunteers at the end of my penguin blog post. Six lovely people volunteered and I held the two training sessions a couple of weeks ago.

Like all beginnings, whether it’s what cake to make, or what theme to write a story about, the hardest part is deciding what to do! I booked time out in my calendar, arranged for an assessor to come around and then that was it. Every now and then I would try to think about what to do the training on, but nothing came to mind. The training sessions had to be consecutive, between 40-60 minutes each and of course something that I could do! But all I could think of was blank, blank, blank!

I’m always checking out cakes, felting projects, fantasy dolls on Facebook. Sometimes I share things that resonate with me on my Michelle’s Labyrinth Facebook page – there are a lot of brilliant artists out there! One day I was scrolling through the Facebook pages I follow and I saw some cupcakes and l had a light-bulb moment – I could make them and train my volunteers on how to make them! Here is the photo I saw from Facebook page Creative Cake Academy ( https://www.facebook.com/CreativeCakeAcademy ).

In preparation I Googled how to made grass out of fondant, I did some shopping, I designed my session plans and the night before my training session I made some cupcakes. Six dozen of them! For two dozen of them I made red velvet ones because I hadn’t made them before and wanted to try them. They do come out quite red and I thought there was a little bit of a spice to them. The cake mix also looked a little too much like blood! Just thought I would share that if anyone needed some nice tasting blood! LOL!

Six dozen cupcakes is the most I have made in one go. It was fun!

The first training session was how to colour fondant and cover cupcakes with fondant. These three cupcakes were my “Grab Attention” part of the introduction.

The second session was creating cupcake decorations and manipulating fondant into shapes and animals. These were my “previously prepared” cupcakes!

I had a lot of fun teaching these cupcakes, and was so happy it all seemed to fall into place. My learners let me take photos of their cupcakes and I was extremely impressed with the results. So here are the cupcakes everyone made!

I have two more assignments on delivery (as opposed to design and assessment) for this TAFE course but I do not think I can do them on cake decorating. I think I am going to have to rely on my excel (or even all of Microsoft office) and accounting skills.

However I am continually trying to learn new things and today I did a chocolate modeling course and these were the outcome! I quite like my little chocolate guys

Michelle's Labyrinth

So thank you so much for my assessor and the learners who came to my Cake Decorating training session. I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I did

I Love Paris in the Springtime

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Michelle

I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.

I love the song I Love Paris by Cole Porter, whether sung by Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra. Whenever I think of Paris I sing this song, so you can imagine that I sang it a bit over the past couple of weeks as I made two Paris themed cakes!

A couple of months ago I was reminded it was one of my friends 40th this year. She said she wasn’t going to do anything special, so I planned to make her a cake and take it to craft. Her birthday would be 2 days before my sister’s, who was turning 30, so I thought I could make them sister cakes, cakes of a similar feminine theme.

Of course the next problem was what theme to make these two cakes. My youngest sister is easy to make cakes for, but what about my friend. I had made some frangipanis in cake decorating class, so I wanted to incorporate them, so that was my starting point. Another friend asked what she liked, and I know she likes similar music to me and travelling (the word “travel” is even in her email address!). She has been saying how she wanted to go to Paris next, and my sister loves France, so that was it, a Paris cake!!!

I can’t believe my baby sister is 30! She seemed to like my cake and I was pretty happy with my frangipanis. Yay I heave learnt something at cake decorating class! I also included a J’aime le Chocolat piece because my sister and I love chocolate! While I made my sister’s cake I watched Chocolat, I love the movie (Johnny Depp!!!) and the book is amazing too. Michelle's Labyrinth

I was finally a good girl and prepared the frangipanis, Eiffel Towers and Arc De Triomphe a couple of weeks before the cakes, so the couple of days before all I needed to do was colour them, make the cake and cover them. It doesn’t mean I still didn’t stay up late the night before the birthday celebrations to finish them.

I made my sister a fruit cake and it was one of my best. I made a few interesting cake errors recently and I was very happy this one turned out so well. I forgot to put milk in my niece’s birthday cake, forgot eggs in the vanilla cupcakes I made for my training and then my friend’s 40th cake was either cooked too long or not enough. I guess half a bottle of brandy and lots of cherries helps

I had left over cupcakes from my cupcake training (still need to do a blog post on that, I’m already in trouble with a friend who came because I haven’t blogged about it yet!!), so I also took them to my sister’s birthday for those that didn’t like fruit cake. They seemed to go down perfectly, and the photo reminded me of looking down Champ de Mars (the gardens between Avenue Anatol-France and Av. Pierre Loti) towards the La Tour Eiffel.

My friend’s 40th birthday was on the Wednesday and I was making her cake for Saturday. On her birthday I sent her a birthday message and she said she was on a complete high – her husband had bought her tickets to…. PARIS! Can you believe it? I am so happy for her! And I certainly cannot believe that I had a Paris cake planned!

Since I wasn’t happy with the taste of the off-cuts of the vanilla cake I made, I bought cream on the way to my friend’s. They were all very nice and said that it tasted good, and I did think it tasted okay with the cream! Thankfully!

I did take advantage of the news that my friend was going to Paris and bought her this case. I thought the cake and case complimented each other well. I was also impressed how different the two cakes looked with the different coloured frangipanis.

My husband and I were lucky to have visited Paris in 2001. It is such a beautiful city. I love the different architecture, and the gold statues and roofs around. I like that the buildings were not too tall and you can see the Eiffel Tower for miles away and use it as a point of direction as we walked around and explored Paris. But more about that another time in a travel blog. I hope my friend has the most amazing time in Paris! Michelle's Labyrinth

I really wish I could have watched French Kiss again while making one of these cakes, but I saw only a few weeks ago. I love the movie and how Meg Ryan keeps missing seeing the Eiffel Tower. And I love the part where she is in the plane singing “I hate Paris…” but that was just because she hated flying. So I will leave you with the whole I Love Paris song… Until next time

Every time I look down on this timeless town
Whether blue or grey be her skies.
Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears,
More and more do I realize:

I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.

I love Paris every moment,
Every moment of the year.
I love Paris,
Why, oh why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near.

Michelle's Labyrinth

This is not the greatest blog in the world, no. This is just a tribute…

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Communion and Family Day Cake

Cake Decorating 101 – Cupcakes

I Love Paris in the Springtime