Mission Accomplished!

And there goes another time warp... but for me, that's a GOOD thing! If I haven't been posting on my blog, that means I've been busy and gainfully employed. But there is a very good reason I decided to make a rare appearance today. I quote from my very first blog post on the 1st of August 2009...

"With Cameron’s third birthday rapidly approaching, and his birthday cake to be my first serious attempt at decorating since I began to explore the world of edible art, now seems like as good a time as any to start documenting my quest to become a pastry chef slash cake decorator."

Cameron is now seven, so more than four years have passed, and I am very happy to announce that my quest is complete... as of today, I am a qualified Pastry Chef! I know there are huge gaps in the actual documentation of said quest, but once I actually started my apprenticeship and was working full time, blogging fell by the wayside as life became busier.

My journey had some rocky patches, but thankfully I found the right employer at the right time. I am now staying on at Exquisite Cakes in Cessnock as a full time "pastry chef slash cake decorator" ... just like I wanted to be!

Toy Story

It's August again already!  I started this blog four years ago today in the lead-up to my son's 3rd birthday, which was when I started taking cake decorating seriously. This time last year I'd decided to put my blog on the back-burner, and Cameron's 6th birthday cake missed the boat... before he turns 7, here's the 'Toy Story' cake I made for him last year...

After the dramas I had getting Rapunzel together for my daughter Rebecca's 4th birthday earlier in the year, I decided that I needed to simplify things so it wouldn't be such an ordeal. After all, that's the reason I had to stop taking private orders while working full-time... work was already tiring, and having to come home and do even more cake work became too stressful to be enjoyable.

Cameron wanted a 'Toy Story' cake, so I decorated a simple rectangle to make Andy's bed. It's a bit rough by my standards, but the birthday boy loved it and that's the main thing. Oh, and in the lead-up, when I realised I was cringing every time I thought about modelling Buzz and Woody, I decided to cheat and buy plastic toys. After all, Rebecca got a Rapunzel doll to play with after her cake was done with, so it's only fair... well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!!!

Exquisite Cakes

After three long months of unemployment (it felt like three years!), I hit the jack-pot... six weeks ago, I starting working at Exquisite Cakes by Lennert in Cessnock. Being Newcastle-based it's a bit of a drive, but worth every minute to finally be doing the kind of high-end patisserie and cake decorating work I really wanted to do. I've even designed and decorated two wedding cakes for advertising in Your Hunter Valley Wedding Planner magazine, and very much looking forward to seeing my work professionally photographed for the first time.

And now that I have my Saturdays back (well, mostly... just a half-shift every third Saturday now), I'm joining the Cake Decorators Guild of New South Wales. I used to be a member of the Cake Decorators Association, but stopped going because I had to work Saturdays at my last job and couldn't make it to meetings. In the meantime, the Hunter branch of the Association had folded and the ex-members formed a Newcastle branch of the Guild. It was great to catch up with some familiar faces yesterday, and I look forward to future demonstrations and opportunities to broaden my range of decorating skills!

Tinker Bell's Garden

Happy 5th Birthday to my beautiful daughter Rebecca!

Position Wanted...

Now, that distraction I mentioned while writing up the posts about my Show cake...

On the 1st of August last year, I wrote a post basically "signing off" from my blog.  I had decided once and for all to stop taking private cake orders, as my full-time bakery job was very tiring and I didn't have the time or energy to come home and do even more baking and decorating. I stated that it would be my last blog post, unless circumstances were to change again in the future.

And so, if the fact that I'm posting again would suggest things have changed... that would be a yes. The bakery I was working at has experienced a down-turn in business, and when it came to job cuts, I drew the short straw. I am now an out-of-work 3rd year Apprentice Pastry Cook. I was happily working away on the flowers for my Show cake while on annual leave in late January and early February, and then went back to work only to have the rug pulled out from under my feet... finding out my last shift would be, most inconveniently, the day before my entry had to be delivered to the showground.

Part of me felt that for my family's sake I should have dropped everything and started intensive job-hunting the day I found out. But in terms of time and money, I had already invested so much in my Show entry, I didn't want to abandon it either. Display cakes aren't cheap to make... polystyrene dummies, kilos of icing,  colour/lustre powders, wires, ribbons, boards, pillars, supports, and the Show entry fee itself, it all adds up. And despite the impressive haul of trophies and ribbons I received there are no monetary prizes, so no way to recoup any of the cost... right at a time when my family could least afford unnecessary expenses.

Obviously, I decided to go ahead with the entry... but that doesn't mean I didn't feel guilty as hell for doing it. I might have bailed on last year's Show entry when I realised I'd left it too late to get started, but this year I'd already progressed much further by the time the job blow came... past the "point of no return," so to speak! It's been a tough few weeks, but what's done is done... and I think that the Best In Show result certainly proves I made the right decision.

Anyway, Show's over. Now to deal with the employment situation... I'm back on the job-hunting warpath! As for whether or not I start taking cake orders again, that will depend on whether or not I find a new job fairly quickly. If a couple of months go by and it's not looking promising, I will definitely consider it. Until then, I'll keep you posted!

Best In Show!

By now the Newcastle Show would be winding up for another year... and I was stoked beyond belief to receive not one, not two, but THREE ribbons and trophies for my cake entry! I was awarded first place in the Novice Wedding Cake class, the Champion ribbon for the Best Judged Novice entry, and because I out-scored all the Open Class entries as well, I was also awarded the Open Class Champion ribbon and Best In Show card!

Not a bad haul for a single entry, and only my second time ever entering the Show! However, I did cop a bit of criticism from the judges on the marking sheets, but it wasn't unexpected... I knew there were flaws, but considering the distractions going on around me at the time, I'm happy to have even gotten an entry together at all. And while I was a little disappointed that I only scored 78 and 80 (out of a possible 100) respectively from the two judges, it's also encouraging that I was able to pull off a Best In Show effort, and still have plenty of room for future improvement!

Forget Me Not!

Because I'm most definitely still around! This year's Newcastle Regional Show kicks off today, and once again I've put an entry in the Novice Wedding Cake class. After being awarded second place in the same category in 2011, and piking out in 2012, I'm BACK... bigger & better than ever in 2013! Here she is... a 4 tier 'Victorian' style tower of roses & forget-me-nots!

There's no denying I love making realistic sugar flowers, but in 2011 I learned the painful lesson that I can't rely on my flower making skills alone to get me over the line. The winning entry that year was a brightly coloured Indian theme wedding cake with no flowers at all, but it had spectacular piping detail on every tier and beautifully modelled bride & groom figurines on top. In 2012, I had an entry planned and got as far as starting to make the flowers, but crashed and burned when I realised I'd left my run too late. I visited the show anyway to see what my competition would have been, and the Novice Wedding Cake winner had just one flower on the top, but hours upon hours of work in drapes, frills, stencilling, and other detail.

So taking away what I'd learned over the last two Shows, this year I set out to prove that I'm not just a 'one trick pony.' I figured that if you need heaps of work on the cake itself to impress the judges, what if I do heaps of work on the cake and THEN pile it to the roof with gorgeous flowers??? Once again I stuck with roses, because that's still what I do best. The original plan also included freesias and baby's breath, but here's where I admit that time got away from me yet again. The forget-me-nots happened to be the first batch of filler flowers I made, so they had to play 'support act' to the roses on their own or I risked running out of time to get enough work done on the cake itself.

Having said that, I had a massive distraction crop up in the last few weeks (but that's a story for another day) and honestly, I'm stoked that I still managed to put up as good an entry as I have. Although the 'vision' came together pretty much as planned, the execution wasn't the greatest... much of the decorative work was a rush-job done just last weekend, and the 'casual' look of the flower arrangements was achieved by hastily poking semi-random holes in the dummies and sticking in flowers and ribbons wherever they fit the night before delivery to the showground.

As impressive as it may look to the untrained eye, I know how 'thrown together' it really was toward the end, and the judges will probably have picked holes in it too. Even so, this is still by far and away the most spectacular cake I've done since taking up the craft... and whether I've won a ribbon this year or not, I'm still seriously proud of what I've achieved!

Signing Off! For now, at least...

It was three years ago today that I started this blog! I've learned so much and come so far... I'm almost half-way through my pastry cook apprenticeship, and I've made some pretty amazing cakes along the way. But things change, and unless circumstances change again in the future, this will be my last entry. I've made several attempts to get back into doing cake orders, but I'm done with the on-again off-again thing.

After much soul-searching in the last few weeks I have decided that it just can't be done in my current circumstances. My full-time bakery job is physically demanding and extremely tiring, and the last thing I feel like doing when I get home is more baking and decorating. The last few cakes I've done, I've wound up so stressed and exhausted that it's hardly seemed worth the effort.

However, this doesn't mean I'm giving up on decorating altogether. I still hope to compete (at least in the Newcastle Show, if nothing else) and I have every intention of continuing to learn and practise my craft as time and energy permit. To those who have followed my journey, thankyou and farewell... for now!

Let Down Your Hair!

And finally, Rebecca's "Rapunzel" (from Disney's "Tangled") cake! There were delays in getting her together due to some unforseen family circumstances, but it was worth the wait to hear the squeals of delight from my darling 4 year old daughter when she was finally finished.

I found this tutorial about a month before Rebecca's birthday, which was a HUGE help. The only doll cake I've done before was a fairly simple buttercream job, but for this one I pulled out all the stops... as I tend to do when I make my own kids birthday cakes! When I'm only paying ingredient costs and my time is my own, I love to take the opportunity to challenge myself and try out some different techniques where possible. I've mostly shied away from decorative piping and working on the sides of cakes... for Rapunzel, I piped a freehand lace pattern on her underskirt and the border and corset strings on her dress.

Butterfly Cupcakes

My beautiful daughter Rebecca is every bit the "girly" girl... she loves fairies and butterflies. And she loves pink. And purple. So these are the cupcakes I made for her to take to day care on her 4th birthday... chocolate cupcakes with piped Italian buttercream and modelling paste butterfly cut-outs.

I can actually thank Rebecca for finding the piping technique I used on these cupcakes. The week before her birthday, I was watching random decorating tutorials on youtube, my little girl wanted to sit on my lap, then after each video she started picking which one she wanted me to watch next.  One of them happened to be a clip showing a few different ways to pipe on cupcakes, including this technique... it uses a zig-zag motion with a petal nozzle to create the ruffle effect.

That's So Magical!

A year over-due, but here she is... Sesame Street's favourite fairy, Abby Cadabby!

Time keeps Marching on...

Bugger... so much for getting back into blogging this year. I completely missed February, it's almost the end of March already, and I'm running out of time to post pictures of a cake that I still feel absolutely terrible about missing. My daughter Rebecca turns 4 this week, and I never got around to posting pictures of her 3rd birthday cake.

March 2011 is kind of a blurry patch in my memory... my first apprenticeship placement had fallen through, and I was working at Snows Patisserie (which only turned out to be a  four week stint). I'd been planning to enter the Newcastle Show, but after losing my job in February I was worried about the expense of dummies, icing and other supplies. I ended up going ahead and was quite happy with my flowers, but the cake itself was a bit of a rush job as I was running out of time... unfortunately it showed, and was reflected in the judges' comments. 

Then I had to back up from Show stress with Rebecca's birthday the following week... I made her an upright 3D "Abby Cadabby" cake. And the week after that I lost my job at Snows, which triggered a pretty major personal crisis. I felt destroyed, and started having doubts about whether or not I was cut out to be a pastry cook... and in the midst of all that, I never got around to writing up a post on Rebecca's cake.

Fast forward to March 2012, and history has repeated itself to some extent... once again, I left it too late to get my Newcastle Show entry organised. But this time, when I realised I was headed for another case of "nice flowers, shame about the cake" I decided to quit while I was, well, behind. After seeing the entries at this year's Show, it's really hit home just how much more I still have to learn. I rely too much on my flowers... the winners always have amazing decorative work on the cake itself.

So, long story short... I WILL have photos of Rebecca's last birthday cake up before her NEXT birthday. And  "lesson learned" that competitive cakes aren't something you start a month out from the competition. I've already started planning and sketching ideas for next year's wedding cake... watch this space in 2013!

"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!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

So I'm coming up to exams in November, and the pastry cook I work with is awaiting the arrival of his new baby.  Waiting, waiting, waiting... theory exams come and go without incident, then it all comes down to my final practical assessment on the 29th. My boss had wanted me to skip TAFE when the pastry cook had his week off, but sorry... no-can-do this week.

The Wednesday before my prac exam, wet weather and slippery conditions caused a certain mishap on the road that left my car with an unfortunately remodelled bonnet.  OK, stay calm... it's my day off tomorrow, we can take it to get assessed straight away, then take it from there.  Ahhhh... nope. Later that evening I finally get the text I've been sweating on for weeks... pastry cook and his wife are coming close to heading for the hospital.  Goodbye day off, hello getting the whole family up at 3am to take me to work in what was up until now our back-up vehicle.

On my own at work, stressing about the sudden change in transport situation (yes, my poor old car got written off), AND trying to stay focussed on exam preparations... they say things come in threes!  Many thanks to my wonderful father, though, for volunteering to get up at crazy hours of the morning to drive from Morpeth to Mayfield to pick me up and take me to Salt Ash for my 4am start from the next day onward so we didn't have to drag the kids out of bed every morning... and as if that wasn't enough already, my dad also did the leg-work in finding us an awesome car to replace the one we lost.

All's well that end well, though... we now have a MUCH better family car than we had before, my prac exam went really well, and although we're still ironing out a few problems at work caused by a staffing re-shuffle that didn't quite work, life is slowly getting back to normal. Oh, except that the day we picked up the new car my computer chucked a wobbly and decided not to work the next morning.  And our lawn mower died yesterday.  But you get that... just when you think it's safe to back in the water, so to speak!

Last Christmas

And yet another month flies by... speaking of which, before the bells start jingling for THIS Christmas, here's what I made for my family last festive season.  I happened to catch an episode of Poh's Kitchen with Emmanuel Mollois, who made a gorgeous looking Yule Log... the recipe and video can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s3063678.htm

The log had a heart of vanilla barvarois wrapped up swiss-roll style in a sheet of sponge with chocolate mousse and pistachio almond praline.  Unfortunately something wasn't right with the recipe for the chocolate coating that was supposed to go on the outside (you can find my colourful expression of annoyance at this in the comments under the recipe amongst those of others that had the same problem); suggested changes to the recipe have been added since, but I haven't tried it again.  I was still up at midnight on Christmas Eve improvising with a ganache that I made from the last of the chocolate and cream I had left in the house.  All's well that ends well, though... my logs (eventually) looked and tasted amazing, and were a hit with the family.

At the time I was still working at the now-defunct 321 Patisserie, and we had a French pastry chef working with us making yule logs (or Buche Noel, in his native tongue) for the shop.  He always put meringue mushrooms on them, and after a bit of Googling I found out that mushrooms were a traditional decoration for yule logs, as they are meant to resemble a log that's fallen over in the forest.  I added some holly made from modelling paste, and a dusting of icing sugar for snow.

Finally, a cross-section of one of the cut logs... it was most suitably rich and delicious!

And now that 2011 is three quarters over, that FINALLY wraps up 2010!

Now, where was I...

And just when I decide to make an effort to get back into blogging, my long on-its-way-out network card finally gave up the ghost.  Internet access... you don't realise just how much you've gotten used to having the world at your fingertips until the door slams shut on them!  Anyhoo, back in the dim dark final weeks of 2010, I struggled on while battling depression to finish the last couple of orders I had on the books before taking what was to be an indefinite hiatus.

The string of first birthdays continued with another combined birthday/naming in a fairly similar style to the previous one...

... and my third 'Upsy Daisy' cake  She is proving to be one popular little lady! I could have done a fourth by now, but declined a recent order because of the afore-mentioned work/family/health life-balance issues.

There was to have been one more cake before the year was out, a 60th birthday cake for the mother of an old school friend... however having also suffered the devastating effects of depression, my sympathetic friend offered to cancel her order to make my life a little easier.  You know who you are... thankyou.

Project McQueen: Part 6

One last thing just HAS to be done before he goes on the board...

... a comparison back to the toy I used as a reference model. Quite happy with the likeness!

And finally on the board... on his actual birthday, only a few hours before family were due to arrive!

Happy 5th Birthday to my favourite little boy!

Project McQueen: Part 5

OK... wheels & spoiler added, details piped... time to show off with a 360 rotation!