"Hoot Hoooot!"

And here it is, my first cake of 2012, "Hoot the Owl" for Kendra's first birthday! Unfortunately I didn't make it to the party myself as I work Saturdays, and the bakery gets very busy in the Summer holidays... especially on the weekends!  Hoot's head was Cherry Ripe mud cake, and his body was an experimental Caramel mud cake.  The caramel needs a little work in my opinion... tasted more like butterscotch to me. Overall, though, I was really happy with the job I did on this one!

Kendra's Christening

I've just delivered my first cake for the year... my little niece Kendra turned 1 earlier this week, and at her mum's request I made her a "Hoot the Owl" cake (of ABC Kids "Giggle and Hoot" fame) for her party tomorrow. Photos yet to come, but in the meantime, here's one of the missing "cake files" of 2011... this was for Kendra's christening back in May.

Happy 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! After a hectic and often stressful 2011, I'm hoping to get back into doing cakes again in 2012.  I've almost finished my Cake & Pastry certificate... no more practical classes or exams, just some Food Safety assignments to do in the upcoming semester and I'm done! I know I put a lot of pressure on myself to excel at TAFE, so a lot of the stress I've been through was self-inflicted. Even though all I need to do in apprenticeship terms is pass, I'm not the kind of person that is satisfied with "just passing"... I definitely come from the "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well" school of thought!

So, about that rather sad looking number of blog posts in 2011... yes, it was a rather lean blogging year. I still have quite a few cakes that "missed the boat" so to speak. I'll try to catch up over the next month or so, but my Facebook page is always up to date if you'd like to visit and browse my albums.  Most of the cakes I did last year were for family, as I stopped taking orders from the public due to being over-tired, over-stressed and over everything.  But I'm far happier where I'm working now than where I was this time last year, and the bulk of my TAFE work is behind me, so it's all systems go for 2012!