Show Time!

"Blue Moon" ... my first ever competition cake won second place in the Novice Wedding Cake category in the 2011 Newcastle Regional Show!

Valentine Cookies

Surprise the one you love this Valentine's Day with a gift pack of delicious home-baked cookies, beautifully hand decorated with strawberry and chocolate flavoured icing. Free pick-up from Newcastle NSW, or mail order anywhere else in Australia.

Half dozen:  $8 pick-up or $13 mail order

Full dozen:  $15 pick-up or $21 mail order

Payment by Direct Deposit preferred... please email kyliescakes@netspace.net.au or visit http://facebook.com/kyliescakes for account details and/or other payment options.  Orders must be received by 4th February for mail order, or 10th February for pick-up.

Happy New Year!

Well, January is nearly over already, but Happy 2011 anyway!  Yes, I know, I've been MIA for a while... let's just say life's little roller coaster took a few unexpected twists and turns over the last couple of months and leave it at that.

As usual, I have a bit of catching up to do... firstly I'm happy to report that I did REALLY well in my first semester of Retail Baking at TAFE.  Out of five subjects I passed the two ungraded ones, and achieved Distinctions in all three graded modules.  I'm still working at 321 Patisserie in Argenton (almost half-way through the first year of my Pastry Chef apprenticeship), and we have another store opening soon in Warners Bay.

I also have a few photos to add from late last year, but at this point in time I'm taking an extended hiatus from doing cakes at home.  Going back to full-time work took a bit more out of me than I had anticipated, so for health reasons I've stopped taking cake orders for now.  However, I'm thinking I might come out of hibernation to do a small run of Valentine cookies and see how I go with a 'one-off project' ... I'll post details soon.

Purple Lilies

Okay, so I'm taking a break from doing cakes at home at the moment, but as it turns out we're doing a wedding cake at work this week!  We don't actually have that much cake decorating gear at the patisserie, so I figured it would be easier to make the flowers at home than lug all my gear to work... but having said that, I'll be packing myself a bit of a tool kit to take with me for the rest of the week to work on the actual cake.

So these are my purple 'fantasy lilies.' For the uninitiated, 'fantasy flower' is a cake decorator's technical term for a decoration that looks like a flower but doesn't try to resemble any particular variety of real-world flower and/or doesn't attempt to be botanically correct. These lilies certainly aren't... I just copied the picture of what the customer wants!

Winnie the Pooh Cake

The last cake from before my study break was a first birthday cake for Mia, whose christening cake I did back in May.  The plastic figureine was supplied by the customer, and the cake design was modelled off one of the "suggested use" pictures from the ad for the figurine.

First Birthday/Baptism Cake

I'm currently on a short "cake break" while I focus on my TAFE assignments and upcoming exams, but just a quick catch up of the two cakes I did earlier this month... firstly a teddy bear cake for a little boy's first birthday and baptism.  The teddy was modelled to resemble 'Bear' the birthday boy's favourite toy.

Black & White Wedding Cake

I'm almost three months into my apprenticeship and life is STILL a blur... the last cake I had on the books before the job opportunity came up was also my first real wedding cake, and it was two weeks ago!  As usual, better late than never...

I had a slight hiccup the night before the wedding due to my underestimation of how much fondant it would take to cover a 16 inch square board... two trips to the supermarket and several covering attempts later, I was finally able to stack the cakes.  It was a much later night than expected getting it finished, but I still "made it to the church on time," so to speak!