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.