The first post - Many Cakes in One!

First post? Why yes it is!

Being the elder one, I thought I should be the first...

Just kidding! I was just more keen on showing our previous cakes than Hayley. They are a bit sloppy, and are still dusted with icing sugar - but we are still proud! Our first attempts and they didn't fail.

I'm hoping this will be a foray into Hayley's & my skills, creativity and experience. I felt that it was important to show where we started, so in the future we can come back and see how far we've come.

The first cake was a massive challenge. It was my little sister's 13th birthday. Now, my sister has an intolerance to preservatives - which means that mostly all junk food (And some healthy food!) were out. This was a bummer for her, because it's hard. All the no preservative foods are expensive! But, we still made a cake for her - a preservative and colour free cake!

Hayley was the one who did most of the work on this, and who suffered the most stress! The cake was just a vanilla, preservative free cake iced with plain royal icing - no colours! Arrowroot biscuits became the roof and the front pathway. All the lollies are from a brand called "The Natural Confectionary Company" and they had no preservatives or artificial colours and/or flavours. So they were used to decorate the cake. At this point we didn't know how to make use of marshmallows to make preservative free fondant.

The cake was gobbled down and was delicious! A great young kid's cake.

The second cake began with an idea from a series of Cake Decorating magazines that Hayley subscribed to. It was our chance to begin our hobby - or future business, perhaps?

At first, the colour didn't mix well into the fondant, but it turned out to make a really nice effect and so we kept it. The icing sugar wasn't dusted off, and we had no tool to smoothen the fondant over the buttercream. It was a marble cake with chocolate buttercream. I tried to border the cake with Royal Icing, however, the mixture was too runny and so it blended together, removing my "awesome" peaks.

This was a great lesson and experience for the both of us, as we learned a lot of new techniques and recipes.

The next cake is from the next magazine in that Cake Decorating series, with a little twist from Hayley:

The M&M cake! Soooo good! We tried to do a pattern on the top and the sides. The sides got tedious, so the pattern lasted... well, only one-quarter of the way and we just stuck them on with royal icing. We used tooth picks to smear a tiny amount of royal icing onto the fronts of the M&Ms and stuck them on the cake. A few times we accidently put them back to front... so a few M&Ms were shown.

The cake was a victoria sponge with chocolate buttercream to sandwhich and coat.

The fourth cake, the last one, was one I did on my own. Why? Because it was a flippin' surprise birthday cake for Hayley's 18th. I agonised over the fact that I couldn't get Hayley to help me. It would have been neater and more well done if she were there with me:

This was so stressful for me, yet a great and innovative cake. If implemented well, it would have been an amazing cake. Hayley loved it though, nonetheless. Basically, the heart was made of two flavours. The diamond shape of the heart used a square tin and was chocolate. The "bum" part of the heart was a vanilla, round cake. I needed two different tins as our heart tin was way too small for the party!

I ran out of red food colouring for the chocolate buttercream, so it only sandwhiched all the cake parts and covered the top. The sides are just non-coloured, chocolate buttercream. I then made my own edible, strawberry glitter. (Of which I shall share a recipe in the future) The glitter was so yummy, but the buttercream kind of over powered the strawberry glitter - so, in the end, no strawberry was tasted. But that was fine! It was really difficult trying to cover the whole cake in the glitter, but I managed it with the help of my aunt.