Here are a few pictures of some cakes that I have made. I always like making cakes, as I am usually making one because we are celebrating some family event – like a birthday or an anniversary. Some are pretty standard, others tend to be more elaborate such as the birthday cakes for Joseph.
One of my most challenging cakes! Special request from Joseph for his 14th Birthday! The round base is a vanilla sponge and apricot mousse filling, and the airplane is devils’ food cake and homemade marmalade filling. Both cakes were coated with a vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, then covered in homemade fondant.
This is a White Mountain Layer Cake with Homemade Marshmallow Buttercream for my sister-in-law’s birthday. Orange curd between the layers and some cinnamon in the buttercream.
These are the bowling cupcakes I made for Joseph’s 8th birthday. Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache icing, and fondant bowling balls and pins.
This was a fun cake to make for Joseph’s 9th birthday. We went to Famosa Pizzeria for a pizza making party, so we obviously had to have a pizza cake! Cake was just a good rich chocolate cake with a vanilla buttercream. It was topped with fondant crust, buttercream tomato sauce, fondant mozzarella cheese and fondant pepperoni. The crust was painted with some colouring to appear baked.
Sometimes you just make a cake for fun! It was blueberry season so why not make a blueberry upside down, this was made by Joseph.
I was very honoured to make some cakes for our good friends milestone birthday (I won’t say which one). She loves lemon, so we kept it simple with a lemon pound cake with some candied lemon peel.
This was a fun cake to make for my wife’s boss. Dark chocolate cake with a cherry Swiss buttercream filling, covered with chocolate Swiss buttercream. This was topped with some fondant then dark chocolate drizzled over the top.
Another birthday cake, this one for Joseph’s 11th birthday. He wanted a map of the world. Having a geography background I thought this would be a piece of cake! Well my desire for things to be accurate and making the continents out of fondant proved challenging. You can certainly tell it is the world, but I took some license with the coastlines. The cake was a chocolate vanilla marble cake, covered with orange Swiss buttercream. The oceans and continents all made out of fondant.
This Bûche de Noël is made with a chocolate genoise and orange Swiss buttercream inside, with the bark being a chocolate Swiss buttercream.
Through all my years of baking it took a long time until I made fruitcake for Christmas. This one contains all sorts of dried fruit, and walnuts, with the only candied fruit being homemade candied orange and lemon peel. It was liberally bathed in cognac and dark rum over a number of weeks. I was even able to convince non-fruitcake eaters to enjoy this one.
Fig Apricot Date Cake (AKA FAD Cake). A delicious “pound” style cake with dried figs, apricots and dates baked in a bundt pan. Can be a great dessert or a nice daytime snack.
Chocolate Chiffon cake with Rum Swiss Buttercream. I made this for my brother’s birthday, he likes rum and chocolate so it made sense to put them together in this cake! For an added decoration it has some Rum Truffles around the edge.
