Facebook Page Referral Competition

Due to Facebook's rules and regulations, I have to run my referral competition from here.
We are trying to reach 700 (or more) likes on our page, and therefore we are having a referral competition.
The (adelaide) person who refers the most new "likers" to our page will win one dozen vanilla cupcakes.

What to do if you're the referrer:
1. Post a link to this blog post on your Facebook wall
2. Tell your friends to check it out and to follow the prompts to help you win one dozen (12) cupcakes.
3. If you are announced as the winner (this will also be announced in a blog post due to Facebook rules), send me an email and we'll sort out all the details.

What to do if you are being referred:
1. Head on over to http://www.facebook.com/thecakeshoppe
2. "Like" the page
3. Post on the wall, stating who referred you.
(4. Become a referrer yourself by following the prompts above, to be in the running to win the cupcakes yourself)

Only Adelaide referrers are able to win the price. Pick up preferred, although delivery can be arranged for our standard delivery fee ($1.50 per kilometre return, with a minimum fee of $20). Price is not redeemable for cash. Price may be used in conjunction with another full price order. Price can NOT be used together with another discount offer. Price must be redeemed before June 30th 2012.

Our 500 Facebook "Likes" competition

As promised on The Cake Shoppe facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/thecakeshoppe?ref=ts ) , here is your chance to win 12 chocolate mud cupcakes with Swiss meringue buttercream (pick up only).
To be eligible, you need to live in South Australia or donate them to someone in SA that are willing to pick them up.

So the competition will be as follows...
There will be 5 questions.
All the answers can be found on the Facebook page.
Post your answers in the comment section below.
The first person to answer all the questions correct will win.
Remember to leave your full name (as it appears on Facebook) so that the winner can be announced properly.

Here goes.

1. What's our email address?

2. Which mud cake flavours are currently listed on our page?

3. Which cupcake is in photo #5 in the Cupcake album?

4. What flavours did we have for tastings at the 2011 Mclaren Vale Wedding Expo? (Hint hint... these are the free tastings given out on the day... Not the displays...)

5. How many finger portions will you get from a 10 inch round cake?


Good Luck!

The Mclaren Vale Wedding Expo 2010

On 18th April I was so lucky to be able to participate in the Mclaren Vale Wedding Expo. A brand new expo set up at 5 beautiful locations in Mclaren Vale.
Being my very first expo I was...well... petrified. I had done some research before hand, and had armed myself with around 400 samples of cake for the brides and grooms to taste. The flavours being white chocolate mud with raspberry, dark chocolate mud, and lemon sponge.

We were three cake decorators that had set up in the kitchen at Chapel Hill - The Retreat that Sunday. The other two had been doing cakes for many years, but they were both lovely and made me, the "baby" of the group, feel very relaxed and welcome. My gorgeous friend Charlene, lent me some white tulle and fairy lights that was placed around the table, I also brought my trusted laptop used to display a slideshow of some of my cakes.

The display cake was a two tiered, butter-yellow creation covered with little, white five petal blossoms. I wanted something cute and sweet, and I think it fitted the bill perfectly. The sugar paste trimming on the bottom tier suffered a bit during transport, and had to be patched up, but no one really noticed. I also made some yellow and white cupcakes which was decorated with frangipanis, but forgot to take a photo of them. I will however be getting some professional photos from the day shortly, so I will post those as soon as I can.

All in all, I must say that it was a really great experience, and I can't wait to be part of next years expo!

An abundance of cuteness

I love a lot of things. My family, my cakes, travel, and maybe a bit more prominent at the moment... Babies (see www.lifeofmarit.blogspot.com for explaination). Babies make me go all gooey inside, and I just adore them, or as my husband would say, I am obsessed with them.

When a beautiful friend of mine announced her baby shower I just had to make something cute, sweet and edible. The choice fell on chocolate baby cupcakes with a white choc buttercream.

The little cupcake toppers are sugar paste teddy bears that I made using mould. As we don't know the sex of the baby, I made a mix of pink and blue teddies by pre colouring the paste before moulding. The little eyes and noses were painted on using a black Wilton paste colour and a very fine brush. The result were 20 oh so cute cupcakes that disappeared off the tray almost before I could put them on.

I heart you

As I've mentioned before I love pink, it's such a girly happy colour and you can make such pretty cakes with it. So when my friend Amie ordered her heart themes pink and white cake for her and her friends birthday party, I couldn't wait to get started.

We decided on chocolate sponge with a choc mousse filling and white chocolate mud cake, which makes for a rich but tasty cake. Oddly shaped hearts, and pink and white sugar balls in different sizes, were to be the main features on the cake, with the striped white chocolate tier as the base.

We originally decided on only two tiers, but as you can all see there are three tiers on this cake. After having completed the first two tiers I was not happy, and felt it needed something else to finish it off. A plain white, fake tier was added, which I feel topped it off (pardon the pun) quite nicely, and made the wired hearts stand out more. The birthday girls was at least more then happy with the results, which of course is all that matters.

Silent night..

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone reading my blog a HAPPY NEW YEAR! I just can't believe how quick the past year went. So many wonderful things have happened, and I really feel truly blessed.

For Christmas lunch this year we went to Ben's parents. I had asked Julie (Ben's mum) if she wanted me to bring anything, and she had showed me a photo of some cupcakes that she had ripped out of a magazine for the occasion. So armed with the photo for inspiration I set to work..... on Christmas Morning!!! The lack of time I had for these cupcakes was due to a slight "misunderstanding" on my husbands part. I still work nightshifts at the hospital, and finished my last shift before Christmas on Christmas Eve morning. The plan was to sleep for about 4 hours, until 1 pm, and then get to work doing the cupcakes for our lunch and the cake for the Christmas party, leaving me plenty of time to finish them both. The husband was left with strict instructions to wake my up, and I went to sleep. When I, however, woke up at 4.30 pm (my husband thought he'd do me a favour, letting me sleep in), leaving me only a few hours to bake and decorate I must admit I was rather stressed. The chocolate mud cake for the Christmas party went into the oven first, and the cupcakes were baked at about 11 pm on Christmas eve.

To decorate I decided to go with uncoloured, white buttercream, to give the impression of snow. I piped the edges using the same buttercream, and it really made a difference to the wintery look I was going for. Holly leaves and berries were made from a supermarket-bought fondant, but with only 10 min on hand to colour and cut out the shapes, I didn't have enough time to get the shades I wanted, so I had to settle with pastel green, and an almost pink berry. I would have preferred a bit more time decorating, but for a 30 min job, I'm pretty happy with them. They went down well at the lunch too.

This year I decided to stay away from the traditional fruit cake, and rather make a nice chocolate mud. My rationale for breaking with tradition, the majority of the relatives attending the Christmas party would be in their 20s or younger, meaning a chocolate flavour is more likely to be eaten and enjoyed by a greater number of people. The cake was first covered in the same buttercream used for the cupcakes, before applying a top layer of fondant. I used a bell-shaped cookie cutter to remove a small area on the top of the cake, exposing the buttercream underneath. This area was then filler with silver coloured sugar balls, and I used two holly leaves and a berry to top it off. For the writing I used a mix of buttercream and piping gel, and coloured it the same shade as the berry.

The cake was very well received, and I must say one of the biggest compliments was when Ben's cousin (without knowing I had made the cake) came over and asked if we thought someone had made the cake or if it was bought in a cake store.

So once again I hope you have a fantastic 2010. Keep your eyes on the blog, I've got a lot of exciting projects coming up, and I can't wait to share them all with you.

A Bunch of Roses

I love making cakes for friends and family, so since my work's Christmas party conveniently coincided with my last Wilton class, I decided to make a cake for the girls to enjoy. And being hard working night-nurses, I thought they deserved something special.

I chose a butter cake that I layered and filled with mango and custard, before covering the whole thing in almond and vanilla buttercream. It was then brought into class to be decorated. We have been practicing making buttercream roses over the last few classes, and this week we finally got to finish them off, and as I love pink, it was an easy task to choose the colour.

We got to choose between a couple of designs involving roses for our cake. I went with a bouquet of three pink roses and added in two small buds, some leaves and a bow to finish it all off. My buttercream had softened a little in my hand, so my roses ended up being a bit more open then originally planned, but since they still looked good, I left them that way.

The cake was a big hit, and I was so happy to see that they all enjoyed eating it.

Thank you to all the fabulous night nurses at Noarlunga Hospital. You do such a wonderful job, and you all deserve a bunch of flowers!