It's my birthday and I'll bake if I want to!

Today is my birthday :)

The loving man that my husband is made it quite clear the day before my birthday: I was not to bake a cake for it. He had plans to bake something special for me, and he's a pretty good baker (even if he doesn't then make cakes adequately pretty after baking them). He said that on my birthday, surely a husband was allowed to show love and consideration and make something for me, for a change...

But secretly I figured that he probably just wanted his cake on my blog.

Well, I was onto his game, and there'll be none of that.

If you've stalked my blog as extensively as, well, I have, then you'd not be surprised at what followed... One time he absolutely forbade me to bake cupcakes for a gig that he played at last year, so I baked over 200 just to show him that he doesn't own me! ... Or something like that ;)

Now, to be fair on myself - when he told me not to bake for my birthday, I'd already baked the two bottom halves and had the entire cake planned out in my head... It would have pink. It would have silver. It would have stars bursting forth like one of those aliens from those movies where the aliens burst out from people's stomachs. It would be the cake equivalent to the Fourth of July, even though we don't do that in Australia; and near where I live- if it's not fireworks in the middle of the night, it's people setting fire to cars...

Sometimes when I make cakes or cupcakes for people, and they don't know exactly what they want, I ask myself: "What would I want if I were them?" I asked myself this same question when making my cake, and though the answer in my head was "something awesome", I figured that my birthday was a good excuse (not that I need one anymore) to try new things and further develop the skills that I'd already been teaching myself...

Upon arriving home and seeing what I'd spent the day making, my husband concluded that however delicious his proposed flourless chocolate cake was going to be (and it is very delicious because I've had it before), it would have lacked the Nyan-cat star-background quality of...

"Exploding Cake 2013"

Here's a step-by-step of the exploding star cake-decorating process:

I had two 7" sized chocolate with pink swirl cakes put on top of each other with jam, and then cut out a 7" pink fondant circle and spread it on top.

After covering the cake with white fondant, I used my biggest star cookie cutter as a guide to cutting five sections that would curl upward and outward to show the pink that was underneath.

I cut out stars, stars, and more stars of all different sizes. Some were pink, some were white, and some more were white that I knew in advance I was going to paint silver. I separated ones that I would be putting on sticks to be part of the explosion... And cut out my age to be part of that as well - you only turn 28 once, after all :)

I carefully pulled back the five parts of the open star, and with some rolled up glad wrap and sugar glue, stuck the corners down over the glad wrap so that the fondant would keep its shape overnight. I then started attaching the pink stars to the outside of the cake.

After painting some white stars with (looks like nail polish, but isn't) silver edible paint, I attached them around the cake as well, including one in the middle of the top of the cake for the sticks to stick into to (hopefully) not look as messy as sticks out of just the pink... But, because I didn't try the latter, I have no idea how they compare!

Once the glad wrap was no longer needed, I cut the sticks to various lengths, and poked them into the silver star on top of the cake!

Ka-Boom! Exploding Star Cake:

Funnily enough, my beautiful friends surprised me with a birthday cake, cards, flowers, and singing, so I haven't had a chance to cut this one yet!

And as it sits waiting to be cut, I had an idea for some cupcakes, planned out in my head, and started measuring and mixing ingredients to make them...

My husband, bewildered by what he was seeing me do, right next to a <quote> 18 foot exploding cake that we haven't cut and eaten yet <un-quote> asked me: "Nat... Are you baking again!??"

"Uhhh"

.

.

.

To be continued...

I love, you love WATERMELON!

After arriving back from our holiday in America, we went to our family's farm in Jindabyne for a few days to recover from jet lag before starting real life again back at home and work. Within a day or two, we were reminded how lovely two weeks away from not having to worry about getting to school on time, making sure clothes are clean, rooms are tidy, arguing with those who refuse to eat their dinner but still insist they deserve dessert, and refereeing sibling quarrels was!

It was nice to be back, though, and as per usual, the drive back to Sydney included a stop off at the Lolly Shack in Cooma. It is at this very place that I had found my absolute new favourite lolly!! Each time we go there, I get these lollies, and each time, I have the intention to save them for cupcakes... But, each time they always rapidly disappear in the car before we make it home, and I don't get the chance!

Well, this time, I made sure they didn't all get eaten (perhaps buying twice the amount I usually do was the key), and made these watermelon cupcakes!

Pink cake batter sprinkled with chocolate chips*:

Covered with a layer of uncoloured buttercream icing:

Then green buttercream icing piped on top:

And a watermelon lolly to garnish!

Sliced in half, this is what they looked like :)

* Depending on how big/heavy they are, some chocolate chips just sink to the bottom of the cupcake as they bake... While these ones were light-ish, I still sprinkled them just to make sure.

Just needed to remind my children that this didn't count

as a serving of fruit! :)

I like being a mum.

Mother's Day: A day that celebrates mothers and motherhood.

For some, it may be a sad day as they remember the loss of their own mother, or even the loss of a child... For many others, it is the one day of the year that makes this incredibly hard, tiring, stressful, repetitive, and constant job of raising children all worth it... Those 5-10 minutes in the morning of being appreciated for all that they do for their families!

I find it a great privilege to be a mother, but also an overwhelming responsibility, because not only do I need to be confident that my children are healthy, safe, and well looked after - but their future is almost completely in parents' hands! The opportunities we allow them to have, the ones we can't afford to give them; the education we try to make sure they get; the amount of technology they are or aren't exposed to; the way we talk to them; the way we discipline; the habits we allow or don't realise actually come from the parents; the routines we do or don't set up; the way we do or don't encourage them, etc, are all factors in who they will grow up to become... It is sometimes a scary thing!

As a stay-at-home mum, I am obviously the main carer for my children. I do honestly love having this role! It means, though, that my kids see a lot of me - which includes both the good, and the bad. There are so many things that I still need to work on in myself, even before children are thrown in to challenge me and keep me awake at night... The pressure to remain calm, consistent, rested, fair, loving, available, nurturing, encouraging, and to stay on top of the housework... Is a target that I don't just miss - I barely make it to the board!

The confrontation of my daughter screaming at her younger brother exactly the way that I would is just one example that reminds me that we are not perfect; our children are not perfect; the world is not perfect; and our own parents were not perfect, either...

In a generally thankless and assumed role of being a mother or housewife, it often takes just a simple "thank you" or "I love you" to brighten a day and feel appreciated for all that you do when it seems to go un-noticed... It is with this (simplicity) in mind, that I made some simple, -packet mix- chocolate mud cakes to share with my own mum this Mother's Day.

I also found a use for leftover Easter eggs (that didn't involve eating them)! I used them to curl up the sides of some pink & purple fondant flowers. When they were dry, I simply added a silver cachous to the middle of them:

Placed on top of the mini chocolate mud cakes (made in ramekins), I thought they brought out just the right amount of colour that was not too overwhelming... They were simply simple.

I'd like to thank my mum for the amazing gift for Mother's Day she gave me this year - one she may not have realised was so important to me and has actually been on top of my wish list for a while:

A sleep in.

I want to urge other mums out there to enjoy your children! They are such a blessing, and there are so many women who would love to have this huge, overwhelming, exhausting, thankless, but incredibly rewarding role of being a mother... Saying that, you are also you - and I may be generalising, but as mothers we don't often allow our own needs to be met before our family's... Rest is important, and so is having hobbies and some time out now and then to recharge, or to just get through a bad day!

On that note, I'm going to go and do some more baking! :p

You know those times when...

1. You miss that prime opportunity to shower and do your hair in the morning because the kids woke up earlier than usual and / or because you spent the morning making icing and decorating cupcakes.

2. You get your toes and the bottom of your pants wet from walking through the grass in thongs on the way to drop your kids at school... Which means you needed to change (again!) when you got home.

4. Your 3-year-old refuses to change out of his dirty Ben 10 t-shirt, that he has on backwards, and that he's been wearing since yesterday afternoon...

5. You arrive at play group with the cupcakes you managed to ice earlier in the morning, to find out someone had already volunteered to provide morning tea... And brought cupcakes.

6. You get out your keys to open the front door, realising that you were meant to go to the shops on the way home, and if you went now, you'd miss that prime opportunity for your 3-year-old to have a 'rest'.

7. On the way home from school, the librarian chases you from the school gate, because you've left your 3-year-old behind while you started to walk home without him.

8. You go to the bedroom in order to calm down from being cranky at your children during the madness of 5-6pm... You download and start playing Candy Crush Saga to see what the big deal is with everyone getting so frustrated on Facebook about it. You find it actually pretty fun, and not as bad as you'd believed to think.

9. Until you fail a level 3 times, and are told that you now have to wait 20 minutes until you can retry the damn thing.

10. You realise that you hadn't taken any meat out for dinner, so had to come up with a quick plan that doesn't involve going to the shops with the kids that you may still be cranky with...

11. You are so relieved when your husband comes home, offers to cooks the made-up dinner you didn't have time to make because you got carried away playing the candy game, and gets the kids ready for bed while you write a blog post...

12. You imagine yourself the lucky winner for Mother of the Year, purely for leaving your youngest child at school while you started walking home.

So I got a little bored / impatient / creative today...

This morning I was asked if I'd be able to make a two tiered wonky cake for a friend's 30th in a couple of months! Wow. What a great pleasure that will be. Not only was I a bit chuffed that she thought of me to make it, but I was also a bit nervous, because cupcakes are the main things I make! The cakes I made over the weekend for church were seriously the first big cakes that I'd made and covered with fondant! ... Like ever!

I googled and YouTube'd a few things relating to what she wanted, and became really excited about making this big cake for my friend (what it is will stay a secret until that post)!! I could visualise me making it, and, of course, it turns out perfectly without any flaws :)

But just to be on the safe side, I should probably get some practice in making a tiered cake first! I decided that I would attempt one for my birthday which is later this month... Which will give me time to shop for ingredients, and try a design or two with fondant, and still time to tweak

Then, I looked through some more pictures, and instantly forgot that I was supposed to wait! ... And I made a cake.

I got out a small round tin, and a ramekin and baked a chocolate cake! Using strawberry jam (as another friend suggested I do with the church cakes over the weekend), I attached the white fondant and spread it on. In my mind, I had warm coloured fondant flowers all around the cake, and the same coloured M 'n' Ms to go in between the tiers... Which worked out well, because I had plenty of them left over! (or was that the reason I chose those colours?)

With the cakes covered, I made royal icing to attach the M 'n' Ms, and to also cover the rough gaps where the cake tiers joined (I think covering the cakes before they're attached might be a better way to try next time). I was still happy with the way that it looked so far, and I knew that I'd be able to cover up at least most of the flaws!

With the line of royal icing, I placed the M 'n' Ms around, one by one, in pattern... Which then didn't leave that much room to have flowers all around as I'd imagined, so I decided to just put one flower (made with all the colours) on top:

I thought this was a nice, simple cake, without being too busy

with colours or patterns.

A good start to practicing with tiers!

Then in walked my husband home from work, confused, and wondering why I had randomly made this cake as he believed I was waiting until my birthday to make a 'trial'! ... Oops. Got a bit carried away!

He then suggested he could take it into work tomorrow for his colleagues... Phew! I really hadn't thought of what would happen with it once I'd finished.

Just another reason why I love him :)

Back in (Blue & Green) Business!

In what seems just a faint memory now, my husband and I have indeed arrived back in Australia from our little vacation in America!

We had a fantastic two weeks abroad without our children, and then one week at our family's farm with them. It was an amazing holiday. My husband did an excellent job organising everything to fine detail,

and we can't wait to do it again (... eventually)!

But, we'll probably take our kids with us next time ;)

While I work on the post about the holiday, 3 weeks without baking was a long time, and so I seemed to have dived head first (which is the best way to dive, really) back into the baking scene without hesitation!

Today at Ropes Crossing Church, we celebrated our 2nd birthday, marking 2 years since we've been meeting inside a building... So I made some cakes :)

This actually was a first for me - because I usually make cupcakes! This time I decided to try and make a big square cake... Which then turned into two big square cakes. I had this idea on the aeroplane on the way back from America (as you do), and visualised exactly what I wanted it/them to look like. A blue and green marbled cake (similar to what I made for church's first birthday), covered with white fondant, and then the RCC logo made with M n M's on top! Brilliant, right? Sadly, this amazing idea didn't come to me while we were walking around M n M's World just a few days prior, which had an entire wall of different coloured M n M's that I could have gotten just the colours I needed from!

Thankfully, my husband separated the M n M's packet that we did get into

the colours that I needed, and the colours that I didn't...

To remind you again of the church logo:

With a dodgy attempt at cake #1, I'd worked out how much batter I needed, and that it took approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes to bake each cake. To make things a bit 'simpler', I made one cake green, and one blue (rather than trying to marble them both).

I had never covered a cake with fondant before - I'd only watched it on YouTube and thought that it looked fairly straight forward... And it was, really. I measured the cake including the sides to see how big I needed to roll the fondant, then marked the spots on my bench top with sticky tape in each corner, and then drew a big dot on the tape with permanent marker. I covered the cakes with a thin layer of buttercream icing, and then carefully placed the rolled fondant on top and smoothed it out. Sure, there were a few rough patches and uneven parts, but I knew that the M n M's would cover those anyway! :)

I was so excited that this idea for the top of the cake was going to work! After practicing with the layout, I piped some melted chocolate to the cake so that the M n M's would stick... Using a mixture of normal sized, and mini ones, I did my best to re-create the church logo.

Afterwards, looking at so much white left on the cakes, I added a thick ribbon of coloured fondant around the base of each cake (blue around the blue cake, and green around the green).

I was very happy with the results from my first go at making a big cake and covering it with fondant! Sure, it took 3 times as long in the oven, but I thought they turned out well, and with the compliments of how nice they both looked and tasted, I didn't want to tell anyone that I used packet mix from ALDI... But now that the celebration is over, I can share that secret :)

Cutting the blue cake!

And the green cake!

Happy Birthday to Ropes Crossing Church!!

I love being part of this church family,
even if I sometimes use it an excuse to bake :)

Red, white, and blue mice...

The last few weeks of a school term is generally an extremely busy time for us... Which is probably one reason that I haven't posted yet this month. I've also just recovered from having the flu last week, and, well, potentially it could also be because my husband and I have been preparing and getting organised for an upcoming holiday!! We've been married for 10 years, and going on our first overseas adventure to celebrate! ... Without our children!

So, with the stress and exhaustion of organising the various things we've needed to do for that, mixed with life in general & three kids, I sadly haven't had much time to bake any cupcakes, not to mention blog about them (actually, the only thing I've been creative with recently is in ways to entice the kids into going to bed a bit earlier)!

This week has started extremely well*, and today I felt the motivation (and that I'd tidied up the house enough) to bake! ... Not only did I bake and decorate cupcakes, I went a bit mad and baked some banana & blueberry muffins as well, which were delicious.

But, back to the cupcakes! I figured in excitement and preparation for our holiday, it would be appropriate to base them on where we're going for our anniversary...

Which is... AMERICA!

And while we're in America, we'll be staying at... DISNEY WORLD!

< insert squeal of excitement >

So. While I was at our local cake shop a couple of weeks ago, I purchased a few of those tiny little toothpick flags. American sones, because at least I knew (at the time), that even if I just did plain icing slapped onto some cupcakes with those flags on top - they'd still be themed!

... But then as I had these chocolate cupcakes made, and started thinking hard while preparing what I'd be using to decorate them, I came up with Mickey & Minnie Mouse (to represent Disney World, of course). They were incredibly easy but quite effective and (well, at least I thought) CUTE... They were also a lot easier than I imagined they would be! I used chocolate melts (unmelted), red fondant, and white fudge frosting. I used a circle cookie cutter to cut the fondant, and then cut that circle in half, and pressed them onto the cakes. I didn't even need/use icing!

Here's photos, step-by-step of what I did to make them:

Sure, they're missing some faces, but you can still tell what they are!

And then I remembered... I still had those little toothpick American flags, so needed to use them somehow! So, with some blue & white buttercream icing, and a small star piping nozzle, I made some "Oh my gosh, we're actually going to America!" cupcakes to go with the Mickey & Minnie Mouse cupcakes.

And here's a shot of them together:

And potentially a slightly more 'artistic' photo of them all together:

The countdown has been on for a long time for this holiday, and though at the time it feels like aaaaages, it's really gone by quickly, and one more day (no matter how slow or fast it feels) is one more day closer to seeing** Mickey & Minnie Mouse in the flesh***!!

* I think that I am one of those rare people who like Winter... I do enjoy 'daylight savings' as well, but when you have a 3 year old who (when it's nap time) claims "No, it's not dark yet", then you can imagine the excitement when it's now dark at 6pm, instead of 8pm!! ... And also, as part of me recently trying to lose a bit of weight before our holiday by squeezing some exercise into the days, I've been waking up at 6-6:30am to go for a walk or a jog... Again - I'm excited when I can now see where I'm going because the sun is up when I get up!

** N.B. Not tasting, which we've just done...

*** "Flesh" = Fur.

I was reminded of two previous posts while making these Disney World/America cupcakes... First, my daughter's Disney party last year; and second, when we had a couple of friends of ours from overseas stay with us and were 'on vacation'... :)