Bickies!

Dear all,

I had a bickie moment, went for 3 of my favourites to help my mum out with some visitors. Big success!

 I baked these little gems at home, filling the place with the best smell ever!

And then I used my mum's beautiful cake stand for presentation. Shortbread fingers, mocha shortbread rounds and German strawberry jam cookies.

And we had beautiful weather to boot. Yum yum yum!

xoxo Jennifer

Sad to say goodbye

Dear all,

My gym closed recently, and I miss it dearly (consider all the cake tasting I do ;) ). I couldn't say goodbye without cake of course, so I made the gym owner a carrot cake. The photo collage was made by a good friend (I'm rubbish at that sort of thing, leave the cake to me, that's all) and printed on frosty sheet.

Going to miss this place and the people!

xoxo Jennifer

Gingerbread house

Dear all,

For my mum's birthday I made her a gingerbread house! I've never made one before, it was so much fun! And tasty too (says my mum, I didn't get a chance to have any). It was something I wanted to do because she was the one that gave me the mould but also, my parents are moving, so a gingerbread house seemed especially appropriate!

Here it is.

The basics of house-building: the pieces! Including a mummy, a daddy and... a tree. And then gluing time. I made my own royal icing for this, easier than expected and perfect for gluing the house together.

The first bit was a bit tricky, but the icing dried quick enough and really there was no danger of 'collapsing', so I went ahead and put the whole thing together in one go. Walls first, let that dry, then I put the roof on. Which I let dry before moving on to candy decorations.

I used a combination of the left over royal icing (of which I had tons!), cake decorations and candy I got in town to make the decorations.


My dad bought a boat because the new house is on the water - so I made a little fondant boat to go with the house. How cute is that!?

All done, I built a house! I wonder what next week will bring...

xoxo Jennifer

Zebra birthday

Dear all,

Sometimes I bake cakes with a certain person in mind, like last week, and other times I bake cakes because I want to try out new techniques (and I think the recipient will appreciate it!). This week I thought I'd take a 'walk on the wild side' and bake a zebra cake for a friend's birthday. It worked a treat!

So what is a zebra cake? It must surely involve stripes, and it wouldn't be a cake of mine if that didn't apply to both the inside and outside. So start with 3 colours (because a 2 coloured zebra would just be boring, no? hehe).

I went for a 'punk' zebra because I figured that would suit my friend: so black, white and pink! The black mix has cocoa in it, the pink mix simply vanilla batter with pink colouring. And then off you go, scooping the mixes into the middle one at a time.

This results in lots of rings of colour which eventually form the stripes. What this looks like you will see below, and above is also my black and white fondant zebra pattern.

So black white and pink stripes it is, punk zebra! With a big bow on top!

I love making these fondant bows, such a show stopper (and not that difficult to make, but shhh). The finished product didn't only look fantastic, it was extremely tasty. Very good cake mix that I will surely come back to. And I've already had a request for another zebra cake, so definitely a success!

Next week I'm building a house. Stay tuned!

xoxo Jennifer