Neapolitan cake

There's so much more to Neapolitan than the ice cream we grew up with as kids. Back in the day, vanilla and chocolate were the predominant flavour options. We hadn't heard of cookies and cream, goodie goodie gum drops or salted caramel yet. Neapolitan added a touch of exoticism, even if we didn't really like it. Hokey pokey was another whole level of excitement for kiwi kids.

Birthday time calls for a special birthday cake. I wanted to use my Fresh As freeze dried strawberry powder to bake with and Neapolitan cake came to mind. After unsuccessfully searching for Neapolitan cake recipes, I decided to double and modify the standard Edmonds Cookery Book butter cake recipe. It's incredibly versatile and produced three layers for turned out to be a very large cake once assembled and decorated.

Neapolitan cake

Ingredients

• 300 g butter, softened
• 3 t vanilla essence
• 330 g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 420 g flour
• 2 T baking powder
• 375 ml milk
• 1 t freeze dried strawberry powder
• pink food colouring
• 2 T cocoa

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease and line three 20 cm sandwich cake pans.
2. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla essence together until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down sides of the bowl and beating well after each addition.
4. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture.
5. Add milk gradually to give a soft dropping consistency.
6. Divide mixture into three equal portions (about ~568 grams each) as follows.
   Vanilla cake: Pour one third of the mixture into a prepared pan.
   Strawberry cake: Pour one third of the mixture into a separate bowl. Add freeze dried powder and enough pink food colouring to achieve your desired colour. Pour into second prepared pan.
   Chocolate cake: Add cocoa to remaining mixture and combine thoroughly. Pour into third prepared pan.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cakes are cooked when a skewer comes out clean and cake shrinks a little from the edges. Cool for 10 minutes in pans, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Assembly
Assemble cake layers with chocolate on the bottom, vanilla in the middle and strawberry on top. Spread buttercream in between each layer before icing and decorating the whole cake.

Decorating
Decorate any way you choose. I made 700 g of strawberry buttercream by adding one tablespoon of freeze dried powder and food colouring to a standard buttercream recipe, then decorated the cake with fondant ruffles in the same order as the cake's layers. The finishing touch was fondant roses using my new easiest rose ever cutter.

Neapolitan cake with fondant ruffles

Strawberry, vanilla and chocolate layers

Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition 2016

Just next to one of the most popular Pokémon Go hunting spots in the Hutt, the Dowse Museum was once again host to the annual Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition and Exhibition this weekend. The exhibition is a great source of cakespiration and a celebration of the many hours of hard work that go into cake decorating.

I really enjoyed this year's 1950s rock and roll theme. Think juke boxes, diners, music and lots of dancing. It allowed for bright colours, black and white themes and a kind of design simplicity that really appeals to me.

Here's a selection of my favourite cakes from this year's competition. They weren't necessarily category winners but caught my attention in one way or another.

At the diner

Angry bird
made by an 11 year old
My nephews would love this.

A celebration of Grandparents Day
These figurines are beautifully detailed.

A funky handbag
made by an 11 year old

A celebration of music
I love the effect achieved using just black and white fondant.

Realistic cakes usually freak me out
but this one wasn't so scary.

A celebration of rock and roll
This is my people's choice nomination.

Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition 2015

The Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition and Exhibition was on at The Dowse this weekend. This small exhibition of competition entries provides great cakespiration for the sugarcraft minded, expert decorators, or wannabes like me. There were also goodies to purchase on the way in and out, so I managed to add a few more silicone moulds to my collection of decorating stuff.

There are 18 different categories ranging from formal wedding cakes to miniature cakes, floral sprays, painted plaques and various novelty items. There was a bit of a pirate theme going on in many of the categories and thankfully only two minion cakes. I was sad to see many yellow labels saying "damaged in transit". It must be gut wrenching to spend hours putting in such care and attention only to have your masterpiece not quite look as you'd intended it to.

Here are the cake designs that particularly caught my eye.

I like the use of embossing to create a textured fabric look.
This cake was decorated by a 10 year old.

I love the interwoven edging around this cake.
This is the cake I most wanted to reach out and touch.

This clever macaw was too cute to pass by.

A simple and effective design,
beautifully decorated by yet another talented 10 year old.

A pirate chest of treasures.

This is the perfect cake for someone who sews or is a craft expert.
I gave this cake my vote for the people's choice award.

A very detailed sewing machine.

White chocolate mud cake

Every baker needs a go to chocolate mud cake recipe. Mine is the decadent chocolate cake that has never once let me down. But what about white chocolate? Well, I think I've found it. I've made this white chocolate mud cake twice now and it's worked perfectly both times. It's super easy and made by hand - you don't even need a cake mixer.

I decorated this cake as a surprise present for my friend's 40th birthday today. There is a layer of passionfruit buttercream hiding beneath the fondant. Her delighted reaction to the inside and outside of the cake confirmed that I'm onto a winner with this recipe.

White chocolate mud cake

Ingredients

• 250 g butter, chopped
• 200 g white chocolate, broken into pieces
• 1 1/2 cups (330 g) sugar or caster sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup (140 g) self raising flour
• 1 3/4 cups (245 g) plain flour
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 t vanilla essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Lightly grease and line a 20 cm cake pan.
2. Melt together butter, white chocolate, sugar and milk in a medium sized saucepan over a low heat. Keep gently stirring to combine but do not let the mixture boil.
3. Sift flours together and blend in chocolate mixture with combined eggs and vanilla essence.
4. Pour into pan. Bake for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours until cooked when tested. Cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.
5. Frost with buttercream frosting or white chocolate ganache. Decorate with white chocolate curls or fondant.

Raspberry marshmallow frosting

I have made a new discovery and declare it to be my current baking obsession: raspberry marshmallow frosting. This stuff is magical! We call it sticky icing, for  reasons that become immediately obvious once you make it.

The original recipe comes from Gran's Sweet Pantry and is three times this size so I have written it out with adjusted measurements. A single recipe will easily ice a standard cake. A double mixture will also fill it with some left over. A triple mixture means there is plenty to ice a cake, give away to other bakers and still have some left in the fridge. You can use any flavour powder (such as the Fresh As freeze dried ingredients range) or essence. I've topped lemon cake and banana cupcakes with raspberry marshmallow frosting with great results.

Raspberry marshmallow frosting (aka sticky icing)

Ingredients

• 1 egg white
• ½ teaspoon cream of tartar
• ½ tablespoon flavoured powder (or essence)
• 170 g sugar
• ¼ cup boiling water

Method

1. Whisk the egg white, cream of tartar, flavour and sugar together slowly in a mixer.
2. When fully combined, pour the boiling water in while still mixing slowly.
3. Turn the mixer up to a higher speed and whip until soft peaks form. Leave to cool before frosting cake or cupcakes.

Raspberry marshmallow frosting
aka sticky icing

The mixture goes firm in the fridge and softens again (but holds its shape) when at room temperature. It is best used within hours of making it, especially if you want to pipe frosting onto cupcakes. It is delightfully sticky and unbelievably yummy!

Keep calm and bake cakes

I have this poster on my notebook at work. It's a great daily reminder about how to live.

I'm the first to admit, though, that keeping calm is sometimes the hard part. I've enjoyed a busy weekend of baking. Father's Day yesterday meant that I got to make banana cake with chocolate ganache for one family and sour cream lemon tart for the other, along with the masterpiece that I had been planning for weeks as an early birthday present for my baking buddy.

Although the process is still quite challenging and time-consuming for me, I do enjoy planning, baking, assembling and decorating cakes (or cupcakes). I can assure you that I won't be going into the cake decorating business - at least not any time soon! However, my arsenal of baking toys and slowing-growing repertoire of skills means that I am starting to be more ambitious in my attempts to make something that looks as good as it tastes. I thought about my notebook as I was carving and stacking a cake on Friday night. What advice did I really need to remember right now?

My plan for this weekend was to create a handbag cake resembling something along the lines of the cover of the Planet Cake decorating book and this step-by-step tutorial. I think I came close(ish).

Someone commented that it reminded them of all the birthday cakes she'd made her kids years ago. I may or may not have raised an eyebrow or two at this point and asked about her use of fondant and creating 3D modelled cakes. "Oh no, they weren't anything like that, but it's all the same kind of thing." Sure it is.

Red leather handbag cake

Leather textured back

Finishing touches

Keep calm and bake cakes: Advice to self

• Use the revolving cake turntable you bought. It's there to make your life easier and you always regret not getting it out of the cupboard while you're halfway through the process of twisting the cake board around on the kitchen bench to line up roughly where you want it.
• It takes a truckload of buttercream to cover a whole cake, especially if it has layers. That's usually a little bit more than you think you'll need.
• You can sometimes get away with applying a crumb layer of buttercream like you're smoothing concrete. For all other times, remember how you were taught to apply buttercream properly (ie, not like concrete).
• Do anything that requires attention to detail in natural daylight, just like a top professional cake decorator told you to. This is not always practical advice, though ...
• Take the same professional cake decorator's advice and turn flaws into features. You're probably the only one who knows why certain decorations have been placed where they are.
• You're going to be busy for a while, so set aside twice as long as you think you'll need, make good coffee, crank the music up and enjoy it.
• You'll always find red or black fondant stains somewhere on your face hours after using it, so check a mirror occasionally.
• No matter how much you make by hand from scratch, the first thing people will notice (and comment on) when you show them photos of your masterpiece is the two pieces of liquorice you bought at the last minute to accessorise.
• Even though it may not turn out looking how you imagined it might, it will still (hopefully) taste good.

Piping workshop at Stiletto Studio

Following on from our fondant flower making course, we have once again spent the last three weeks in the company of Becs at Stiletto Studio. This time, the work involved practising different piping techniques to decorate cakes. I discovered that slapping basic buttercream frosting onto a dummy cake speeds things up immensely; it's easy to be reckless when you know nobody's going to eat what you've made!

We began with buttercream piping. After admiring rose frosted cupcakes for years, I was both thrilled and slightly put out to learn that they are incredibly easy to make using exactly the same piping technique I use on my own cupcakes but with a different nozzle. Who knew?! I'm definitely adding this one to my decorating arsenal. I also really liked the 'rope' border, created by piping overlapping S shapes.

Buttercream roses with piped 'rope' border

Next up was royal icing. I've piped numerous chocolate filigrees over the years and that technique is similar with royal icing. This time, we learned how to create a brushed embroidery look by piping an outline in royal icing and using a flat brush to drag the icing inwards. I think using a smaller brush would have resulted in a tidier effect here. The rest of the squiggles ... well, I was running out of time and had plenty of icing left over to use up. ;-)

Brushed embroidery flowers ... and some random squiggles

By request, we learned how to pipe royal icing roses. I actually got the hang of this after a few attempts and can see myself doing it again on my own cakes. There are two different techniques here: one involves making a layer of three petals near the top of a glob of royal icing, then adding five and seven petals beneath in two more layers. The second technique (in the middle) is basically a continuous spiral of icing around the centre that opens further out each time you add another layer underneath. I've grown quite attached to my roses so bought the tip to try making them at home.

Finally, we experimented with different stencils. Basically, the technique resembles slapping on concrete and smoothing it with a darby. I think it will work better on fondant than buttercream as I found the layers of buttercream stuck to each other, leaving a messier finish. Also, stencilling or decorating onto the side of a cake is not as easy as it looks!

Stencilled peacock feather with royal icing roses

Thanks Becs for lots more learning and laughter. I'm now dreaming of cake designs and getting really excited about planning all the cakes I'll make for upcoming special occasions!

Fondant flowers at Stiletto Studio

Last year, we met the lovely Becs from Stiletto Studio when she was teaching an introductory cake basics decorating class. Becs got us excited enough to feed our baking addictions and set us on a path of more adventurous cake decorating - one with a steadily increasing incline in skill level. We get together every so often to have fondant flower making sessions and practise however much we can remember from her classes, all the while accumulating far too much baking and decorating equipment. Well, everybody needs one vice, right? ;-)

We have just finished a four week course in advanced flower making, which followed on from where our introduction to fondant flower making left off. The great thing about fondant flower making is that most of the flowers we make come in a huge range of variations, so there is no 'one' way of doing things. (Well, that's what Becs tells us and it makes us feel better about the creations that don't quite look right.) And so we took a big breath and started experimenting with making bigger flowers this year.

We began with a dahlia built up around a little polystyrene ball in the centre. Several layers were cut out and glued around the ball, then the outer detail was added with individually attached rolled up horn shapes, gradually building out into a wide, flatter flower. I'll be honest in saying that I found this one quite fiddly; we didn't bond. The dahlia is probably not one I'd make again but it was good to practise adding layers to make a bigger flower.

Dahlia
(We haven't bonded.)

Next up was the ranunculus. Again, this flower comes in many variations and I like the warm, bright colours. The technique was similar to that of the dahlia, building layers around a small, fondant centre and gradually opening the flower up and out. I'd definitely make the ranunculus again. This one actually made it onto a cake!

Extreme chocolate raspberry cake with fondant ranunculus decoration

The next two flowers were made progressively over two sessions to allow time for drying and hardening during the process. The peony is another flower layered around a polystyrene centre. I made mine progressively get lighter by adding more white fondant to the fondant I'd already coloured and I like the way it adds some texture to the final product. Like the dahlia, the peony is a little bit too fussy looking for me but others have made all the right oohs and ahhs when they've seen the photos ... or they're probably just humouring me. Oh well! ;-)

Delicate pink peony

Finally, it was a starburst lily. These are deceptively simple, with each petal threaded with flower wire and left to set over a glass before painting on the detail. Then, the lily was tied together with floral tape, something that is surprisingly a lot easier than it looked.

Stunning starburst lily

Check out the Stiletto Studio class timetable and information as well as some of Becs's amazing cake creations. The classes are highly social, practical and lots of fun for wannabe cake decorators of all skill levels.

Decorating with chocolate at Martha's Pantry

I was very excited to celebrate my 5th blog birthday last night at a Decorating with chocolate at Martha's Pantry session. What a delightful evening - complete with chocolate blog birthday cake!

Hosted by Martha's baker and decorator, Maria Moran, we got to practise a range of simple yet effective chocolate decorating techniques.We began by making a piping bag out of baking paper. Luckily, Maria had taught me how to do this a few years ago when I learned cupcake decorating at Tempt so I had a slight advantage. It is a really useful skill to have; chocolate filigrees have became my emergency decorating solution when time is tight and chocolate melts are in the pantry.

A potentially dodgy gingerbread man

Next, we experimented with piping melted dark chocolate onto a gingerbread man biscuit shortbread snowflake biscuit. Here is where less is more: it doesn't matter if you still have more chocolate in your piping bag. Sometimes it's better to just stop and step away from the table, otherwise decorating disasters can happen. I had to give my gingerbread man striped pants as his buttons started to look very dodgy once I piped him a belt! ;-) Thankfully my snowflake was a lot less risqué.

Shortbread showflake

We had a go at piping white chocolate outlines onto baking paper and flooding the shapes with dark chocolate. This is something that I know works well in theory but I simply haven't developed the knack for. Maria then showed us how to dip chocolate truffles and end up with round balls instead of slightly oval slabs with the chocolate all congregating towards the bottom. Her Pandoro brownie, cranberry and nut truffles are something I'm keen to try making this Christmas.

We finished up with Maria effortlessly showing us how to cut a cake into three horizontal layers before filling and icing it with a deliciously glossy dark chocolate ganache. She made it look so simple, but I can assure you from experience that there is no way I can cut a cake into straight layers without making a terrible mess and/or breaking one or more pieces, meaning I have to glue it together again with buttercream or ganache. I look forward to my cake leveller arriving from Kiwi Cakes!

Maria expertly piping chocolate onto a biscuit

We got to take home a goodie box of treats with our names beautifully written on them. And, finally, the icing on the cake was getting to harass meet Mrs Cake on our way out the door. Her Tim Tam truffles are legendary in our household!

Many thanks to Donna from Feast and Vine for organising another great foodie event and Martha's Pantry for being such welcoming hosts.

Flower making at Stiletto Studio

Following on from a great cake decorating class at Stiletto Studio a couple of weeks ago, a friend and I spent Wednesday night learning how to make pretty flowers out of gum paste and fondant. I have got back into making decorations for cakes and cupcakes since going to a session on gum paste flower making a few months ago. I have a box full of silicone moulds, gel colours, plastic palettes and various tools for decorating that all need using. Just as well Becs came along with her awesome cake decorating classes to get me inspired!

Frangipani (before applying yellow lustre)

We started out by making one of my favourite flowers: frangipani. For me, the beauty in these tropical flowers come from their simplicity - plain white with a smattering of yellow (or pink) and they positively radiate sunshine. Frangipani will definitely become part of my flower making repertoire. *happy sigh as I reminisce about my trip to Samoa several years ago*

An evil looking chrysanthemum 

Next, we used a daisy cutter to create endless layers that would form a chrysanthemum bud. These flowers are too 'busy' for my liking, but it was good having a go at creating them. This one needs several more layers and I imagined it coloured in deep orange and burnt red tones ... but I am seriously reminded of Little Shop of Horrors when I see flower petals folding in on themselves like this one. Don't you think it looks a tad evil? ;-)

A beautiful, elaborate rose in egg yellow

By far the fiddliest flower to make was an elaborate rose. It involved building up three layers (and a few extra petals) around a bud attached to a wire and ruffling the edges of each layer with a ball tool. The finished product is simply beautiful but this will take a lot more practice for me to master - very much a 'special occasion' decoration.

Much simpler to make, but just as effective, is the anemone. I don't know if they come in this shade of blue but I was feeling bold and loved how the colour looked on such a big piece. We finished off by learning a much simpler technique for making roses out of seven little balls of gum paste. Although mine looked like a set of rolled up towels (maybe the white colour didn't help?), I think this is a rose I can master in time.

Flower collection.
From the top: blue anemone,
frangipanis
chrysanthemum, fancy rose, easier rose

Once again, Becs was in fine form as our teacher - endlessly patient and great company during a four hour hands-on session. She has really helped me unravel much of the mystique around cake decorating and I have come away with lots of ideas to try, given my very limited skills and creativity. I have most definitely got the cake decorating bug and had yellow and blue hands the next morning to prove it!

Cake decorating at Stiletto Studio

I had a weekend of almost non-stop baking last weekend – just how I love it! Fifteen spicy vanilla cupcakes for a Halloween party, two small madeira cakes to decorate and 1.5 kg of buttercream frosting to cover everything in sight. Icing sugar was everywhere!

A while ago, a friend and I came across a Grab One deal for cake decorating sessions at Stiletto Studio in Johnsonville. Naturally, the classes sold out really quickly so we felt lucky to be able to buy vouchers for a beginner's cake decorating course as well as a session on flower making. Check out some of the display samples made by Becs Lake, the owner of Stiletto Studio.

Stiletto Studio display cakes

We began by learning how to make a bow out of gum paste. Each half is formed separately by folding a rectangle of gum paste like a concertina then folded over so the ends meet before being left to dry separately. Now, I don't know why but I all I could think of as I was shaping my bow (and watching it dry) was "ears" – the resemblance was uncanny. The middle of the bow was formed later once the sides had firmed up enough to place on our cakes. This simple technique would look great in any colour and will now become part of my limited (but growing) decoration repertoire.

Now it was time to throw some buttercream around. It’s not as easy as it sounds! We learned the correct technique to layer our levelled cakes (mental note: must buy a leveller) with buttercream before covering them with fondant. I got to play with a cake turntable, which has now been added to my *want* list. I’ve already had experience with colouring fondant and gum paste (and sporting multi-coloured dyed hands afterwards to prove it) so decided to stick with a white base and ribbon, adding colour and texture with the decorations I was creating. This time, the fondant didn’t fall off my rolling pin in the dramatic way it did during the last decorating class I attempted and I was pleased to have a (relatively) smooth finish.

Having long been sold on the miracles of silicone moulds to create decorations, I wanted to experiment with techniques that I hadn't tried before. The bow was a good start and it got me thinking about creating a kind of 'present' look for my cake. I had a go at using a cute rolling tool to create ribbons out of some Regalice ready rolled fondant I'd bought. I loved the result and so had to buy the tool – yes, more stuff for my baking collection.

Then came assembling the decorations on top of the cake and setting them in place with water. Tylose paste could also be used (depending on what you are sticking down). I discovered it wasn't as easy at it looks to paste down a straight ribbon of fondant!

Becs is great teacher, allowing just the right balance of demonstration and hands-on practice time. She's patient and happy to respond to cries of "help!" during class. It was great to be able to play with all her decorating tools and experiment with new techniques. We are very much looking forward to the flower decorating class in a few weeks’ time and would highly recommend her decorating classes for everyone from absolute beginners to those who have already had some cake decorating experience.

The finished product!

Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition

As an amateur baker and aspiring cake decorator, I have always held a fascination for edible art of the sugary kind. I've had a go myself at some small scale decorating and have built up an arsenal of barely used decorating equipment that I always intend to put into action ... some day. This weekend, the Wellington Regional Sugarcraft Competition and Exhibition is on at The Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt. If ever I needed inspiration to sort out my baking boxes, this exhibition has come at the right time!

There were some truly amazing edible creations across a whole range of categories. The attention to detail, particularly in the miniature cake categories, is incredible. It would be a shame to eat objects of such great beauty ...

Here are some of my favourites from the exhibition. If you are looking for some cake decorating inspiration and are in the area tomorrow, I'd certainly recommend checking it out.

My favourite floral display

The winning floral display

A very clever 'cheese' cake

Picnic basket - my pick of the competition

Pigs' feast, created by a 9 year old

Wise owls made by a creative 8 year old

Exquisite detail on a miniature dragon and castle

A beautiful teapot

Basket of flowers

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