Polka Dot Daisy Bee Cake Adventures

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 18, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’m so obsessed with cake decorating at the moment. The weather has been way too hot to really bake properly without things melting but for whatever reason I just keep doing it anyway >_>

My latest cake creation was this daisy bee cake.

It uses a technique that I’ve been wanting to try for quite a while: hidden designs. I decided to just go with an easy version for my first time and did polka dots.

I’m not going to do a full recipe but this is basically how I did it.

To begin with I made a pink raspberry cake and cooked it.

Raspberry cake!

I removed the outside and mushed up the middle. It was totally delicious and soft!

Then I smooshed them into balls. I tried not to press them too hard so the texture of the cake didn’t change too much.

Next I made the yellow lemon cake batter.

Once the lemon batter was in the tins I pressed the raspberry balls inside so they were floating as different levels.

I was using a new cake recipe and they rose far more than expected!

While the cakes were cooling in the fridge I made the decorations.

The daisies were pressed out of sugar gum paste.

Then I painted the centre of each one yellow by hand using food coloring.

Once the cake was ready for icing I made some green butter cream and coated it.

It was so hot that day that the butter cream kept melting so I had to put it in the freezer every few minutes to reset. After it was hard enough I covered it completely with daisies. I also made the little bees for the top out of modelling chocolate. Their wings needed to be more solid so they were out of gum paste too.

Poor bees, they were very melty too! I think it’s not really possible to do good work with modelling chocolate in the Australian Summer if you don’t have air conditioning ;_;

So anyway the point of this cake is that when you cut into it and you cut through the raspberry balls you will get a cool polkadot pattern.

Delicious!

Now I’m a bit more confident with this idea I’d like to branch out more into other designs like leopard print or stars/hearts/whatever.

Poor decapitated bees XD

I hope you enjoyed my cake adventures!

Ultimate Floral Rice Crispy Squares

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 10, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

A while ago I wanted to test out all of the decorating supplies that James had gotten for me so I set out to make epic rice crispy squares. EPIC!

I had way too much fun decorating these!

The decorating part was really more important than the eating part of this project but let’s start at the beginning anyway!

Basic rice crispy ingredients:

60g Butter
1 packet of marshmallows (250g)
7 cups of rice bubbles

Melt the butter in a pot and then stir the marshmallows in on a low heat. You can see they will gradually melt. Keep stirring until it’s a big mush of goo and then add the rice bubbles gradually.

Make sure to work quickly or else it will get too hard to stir.

Pour it out into a greased pan and leave it in the fridge to set. I like to smoosh the top down hard with another pan to get a really clean finish.

Once it’s set, take it out of the pan and cut it into little even cubes.

It can be very difficult to cut though so be carful.

From here I basically decided to turn each square into a little cake. To make a smooth surface I iced each one with buttercream and put it back in the fridge.

While they were cooling off I made the marshmallow fondant. Marshmallow fondant is basically marshmallows and a really large amount of icing sugar!

I microwaved the mashmallows until they melted and then put them in my mixer with a cup of icing sugar.

You pretty much continue adding icing sugar until it starts resembling a dough.

Done! Don’t forget to dust the surface you’re going to use with icing sugar so it doesn’t get all sticky!

I separated it into 4 pieces and added a different flavour to each. I used raspberry, lime, lemon and rose.

For each cube, roll out a piece of the fondant.

And lay it over the cube.

Pinch the sides and press them into nice crisp shapes.

While those cool in the fridge it’s time to make the bigger decorations! Most of the decorations I made were out of sugar gum paste and made using these little press stamps.

All you need to do is press them into rolled out fontant/gum paste/whatever and then shape the leaves a bit more if you like.

Easy!

I also made piped icing roses. I did a full tutorial on them here.

Now to put it all together, I used royal icing around the edges of each cube and then added a heap of flowers haha!

I also covered them in edible glitter… because… glitter.

They were incredibly sweet and the 35C heat made them quite melty but it was a really fun project to practice my skills on!

They took quite a while to make… so here are a billion photos 😀

White Chocolate Baked Cheesecake Recipe

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 7, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

For last Billy Idol Day/Christmas I made white satin cheesecake for our desserts and it was one of the best cheesecakes I’ve ever had. Seriously White chocolate and cheesecake = total win.

My recipe was based on this recipe from the KitchenAid website with quite a few changes along the way.

You need:

Base

Packet of chocolate Digestive biscuits
150g unsalted butter, melted
⅓ cup (80g) castor sugar

Filling

1 block of white chocolate
500g cream cheese, softened to room temperature
⅓ cup castor sugar
1 tbs cornflour
3 eggs
A little lemon rind and 1 tbsp juice
2 tsp vanilla extract
500g vanilla yoghurt

Let’s get baking! We are making the curst first.

Put the biscuits into a food processor and crush them into tiny crumbs. Mix in the sugar too then pour in the butter to hold it all together.

I decided to make them in little jars rather than as a large cheesecake (more on this later) so prepare your pan/jars and preheat your oven to 160C fan forced.

Spoon some of the crust mixture into the jars and press it down a bit. Pop the jars into the fridge to cool the crust.

Make sure you have comfy shoes to bake in!

Ok, let’s get the filling ready!

Break the chocolate into chunks and melt it.

Beat the sugar and cream cheese together until they’re smooth and light. Add in the corn flour and beat again for a few seconds.

Add in the eggs next and mix thoroughly.

Add everything else (lemon juice, vanilla and yoghurt etc) in and mix very gently.

Lastly add in the chocolate and give it one final mix. The batter should be light and about the consistency of yoghurt.

Take the jars out of the fridge and fill them with the batter. I layered the batter with more crumbs on top so you didn’t have to dig all the way through to get it. I also added some edible glitter… because I can.

Once you are ready to put them in the oven you need to prepare a pan to put them in. You will need a pan which is as deep as the cheesecake. Put them in and then fill the pan with water so it is level with the top of the cheesecake (don’t get water in the actual jars though!). This water protects the cheesecake and makes sure it is baked evenly. My pan wasn’t deep enough because the jars were very tall so the tops of my cheesecake were a bit tough whereas the parts protected with water was DELICIOUS.

Bake them in the oven for around 45 minutes then turn off the oven and open the door to let it cool gradually for another hour or so. After that, pop them into the fridge to cool properly.

Now just add some decoration and enjoy! Try to stop at eating just one, it’s pretty much impossible!

You can add in jams, berries or anything else for a flavour kick but I love the flavour of baked cheesecake plain. It’s delicious!

I want to make a really big one again now! Let me know if you try it out!

Epic White Chocolate and Raspberry Chocolate Cake Recipe – Cute Food

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 14, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

First cute food recipe!! I made this cake for Celina’s birthday. I had promised her to make a Black Forest cake as she couldn’t eat any when they were in Germany. The thing is neither her or myself actually like cherries… So this is bastardized Black Forest cake… Which is actually mostly white. And delicious.

You need:

Chocolate cake mix
Eggs
Milk
Raspberry flavour
White chocolate
Cream cheese icing
Raspberries
Whipped cream/cream to whip

So I’m cheating for a lot of this cake by using pre-made ingredients because it’s more about the decoration than the cake making part >_>

Mix up your cake mix and pour a little bit into the cake pan, just enough to cover the base.

Sprinkle raspberries evenly into the cake base and then pour in the rest of the cake mix.

Bake the cake and then repeat with a second layer.

Put the cakes aside until they have completely cooled.

Now we need some whipped cream for the middle. Pour the cream into the mixer and start whipping, start adding a little sugar at a time until it puffs up into delicious fluffy peaks. Make sure to taste it along the way to make sure it’s not too sweet… yeah that’s the reason to taste test it >_>

Place the first cake on to the cake tray and pipe a line of cream cheese icing around the edge, this will prevent the whipped cream from seeping out the sides. Then spread whipped cream all over the top.

Place the second cake on top of it and chill so it’s nice and firm.

Now ice the entire thing with pre-made cream cheese icing. Be nice and generous with the icing and make sure there are no gaps.

With the cake setting in the fridge grate up a bunch of white chocolate into tiny pieces to cover it with later.

Now is a good time to make the other decorations too. I decided to use my new Daiso chocolate tray and I made some chocolates filled with raspberry filling. Basically I made each half by melting chocolate in the trays and chilling. I then mixed icing sugar with some crushed raspberries and sandwiched them together.

This next part is a little tricky. Take the cake out of the fridge and cover the entire outside with the chocolate shavings. To get it on the sides I used a spoon and kind of just threw it on. At the end I dusted the extra off the cake stand so it looked cleaner.

Now it’s time to decorate. I put the rest of the cream cheese icing into a piping bag and went around the bottom edge to hide it. I also did a ring around the top and then extra swirls on top. I added in the filled chocolates, some extra raspberries and the rest of the raspberry filling on top.

And that’s it, it seems very simple when it’s all written down but it looks really impressive!

I only have one cake pan so I had to cook each half separately, if I could do them both at once this really wouldn’t have taken that long to bake. And it looks freaking awesome!

Having things turn out so cutely makes me really happy!

Now for the second most important part… The eating!

It’s certainly not even close to being a traditional Black Forest cake but soooo yummy. I love raspberries and I love white chocolate so this for me is much better!

Let me know if you try it out!

How To Make Icing Roses

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 10, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

Ok so you guys know I’m obsessed with cake decorating at the moment. So much so that James went and bought me a BUNCH of supplies for Billy Idol Day, extremely awesome… except that it just makes me want more and more and now I’m custom piping my own icing roses… #obsession.

So I figured I would show you guys how to do it because it took me a little while to get right.

This is the end result:

To do this easily you will need the correct piping tip, it should look like a thin tear drop.

You will also need royal icing or butter cream (this will be squishier in end result though) and a “flower tack”. A flower tack is a round piece of metal with a nail in the bottom, this is what you pipe the rose on to. I tried making my own or just using the bottom of a cup to pipe onto but it really is a pain in the butt so I would really suggest just spending the $4 and buying one or else you’ll probably have frustrating results like I did XD

Rose on the tack:

You hold the nail and spin it as you work making it easier to control the end result.

Ok so let’s get started. You want stiff royal icing but no so stiff it can’t be piped easily. Place a small square of baking paper on the flower tack. You can hold it in place with a little bit a of icing.

Pipe a big round lump onto the middle of the baking paper. This will determine the shape and height of the rose so make it fairly tall and big. You can see my icing was a little too dry for the middle section below so it showed cracks.

Holding the piping bag with the thin part of the tip upwards pipe a little circle on the top of the middle lump. This will form the bud of the rose. It’s much easier if you rotate the tack rather than trying to rotate the piping bag.

Ok let’s start making some petals. Make the first petal over the join in the middle bud. To make the petal, pipe with the thin side of the icing tip upwards in a large upside down U shape. The thin part of the tip will make the tip of the petal look feathered and more like a real petal so you shouldn’t have to do much work at all.

Add the next petal in the same way overlapping the end of the last petal.

You can see from the side that these petals are really quite high up on the middle ball. This is good because it leaves room for lots of petals.

Continue making petals around the outside in this same way, overlapping the previous one.

The more petals you make the more it will look like a rose. If you find that it’s melting a bit then you need to use thicker icing next time.

Looking good!

Keep going with the petals until the thick bottom of each petal is touching the baking paper. You can keep going to make it huge but this is a nice size.

Once you’re done, remove the baking paper from the tack and leave the roses to dry.

And that’s it! It sounds really complicated but once you understand the basic motion of making a petal you can do these really quickly. After some practice, a rose like this takes me around 1-2 minutes.

Cuuuute! Learning how to do these yourself is great because you can match the colours to whatever you’re making perfectly as well as saving money from buying them pre-made.

Super happy that I can do these now! Let me know if you give it a try!

Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

A Cute Food Obsession- Lazy Inspiration

by VioletLeBeaux | Jan 29, 2014 | Baking

Part of my Lazy Inspiration idea was to take more of an interest in the food I was eating. Partially because I was to be a bit healthier but also because I like details and I beautifully presented food makes me happy to look at. While yes this kind of thing does take more time to prepare, it makes me happy and inspired so I think the trade off is worth it!

It can be as simple as putting my coffee or tea in a cuter cup and taking a moment while I drink it to enjoy the details. Or as complicated as making marshmallow cupcakes. One thing I’ve been really enjoying is making a bento for lunch because it gives me a better variety of foods than just reheated pasta over and over again… pay no attention to the reheated pasta in the following photo… >_> Having the pre made spaces in the bento makes me think more about portion sizes and what should go in each. For the record, these are soba noodles, not pasta. Totally doesn’t count. Worst kitty face ever on that tomago btw but there’s always something to practice! James has been joining in my attempts to do latte art, he called this one “I wish I had 10 arms to hug you with” but all I could think was “Human Centipede”. I’ve been obsessed with buying little kitchen items for presentation too like these cute little paper straws. I wish I’d bought them before James made these smoothies, they would have been perfect! My favourite things to decorate are always going to be cakes but I’m starting to use all of the cake supplies that James bought me for Billy Idol Day in other things as well. I made kitty cupcakes for Kim’s birthday! In terms of savoury food my absolute favourite at the moment is James’ invention of “Bibimbaffles”. Basically it’s rice in the waffle iron until it’s delicious and crispy. YUM YUM YUM! Real waffles are of course delicious too! I didn’t think paying more attention to the details of my food would make much of a difference to my overall levels of inspiration but it’s really gotten me more interested in baking and general kitchen decorating. I’ll be doing a series of cute food tutorials and recipes every month so hopefully it will inspire some of you guys too! The first one we’re going to do? White chocolate and raspberry cake! YUM!

Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

Subscribe to the VLB newsletter for a full list of downloadable tutorials!

Explore…