Category: In the kitchen

So after spending all day yesterday making the dragon cake… the first thing I woke up this morning deciding to do was make more cake.
While I had cleared it, I still had a worry about the amount of red food colouring for my neices so I made up some mini muffins for them.

Let me start with… I WILL NEVER EVER EVER DO THIS AGAIN!!!

Andrew requested a dragon cake for his birthday, specifically a red/black chinese dragon. After a full day of baking and decorating (9am-11pm to be specific)… here is the final result…

And so how do you make a dragon cake…

1. Roll out some marshmallows. The initial goal was to have the big ones on the top and the little ones down the side but the big ones don’t roll out very well.

2. Paint marshmellow with food dye

3. Roll more mashmellows – around 5 packets

4. Paint mashmellows (starting to see why we finished at 11pm?)

5. Shape the cake into a head shape. For the whole cake, we used 3 round tins with holes and 3 small loaf tins.

6. Set out all the pieces

7. Add legs and tail

8. Shaping complete and eyes completed

9. Ice the head. The icing is the womens weekly fluffy frosting. Not the best for keeping moist and attaching marshmellows to, but it is really yummy and Andrew’s requested icing.

10. Add scales to the head

As you are looking through the next pictures imagine HOURS going by….

And finally the head

So folks thats how two people can spend a whole day making a cake. While going through the scale stage I realised that I was crazy to decide to put together such a cake, however now that it is completed, I’m really really proud of it. So maybe it was worth it.

Oh and the Birthday boy thinks it is great too, which I guess is the main thing.

I need to practice my fondant modelling skills in an attempt to hope to bring Andrew’s Birthday cupcake wish to reality. In doing so, I created this crouching puli.
Fondant is created from scratch, then modelled and then painted with food colouring. I let the fondant dry a little then painted, dry painted etc so that it didn’t run. I wanted to try painting instead of colouring the whole figuirine.

Andrew had nicely cleaned the kitchen …. so I just had to destroy it 😀
I have a couple of upcoming parties in the next few weeks and decided to spend the afternoon experimenting with a few new techniques. Firstly I have a chocolate cake recipe that I’ve been using since I was about 10. It is a great recipe and is very reliable, but I wanted to try some different chocolate cakes.

The first recipe I tried was from wem’s blog. I only got 6 cupcakes out of it and while the taste was nice, I really needed more liquid to fill it out more.

The second recipe I tried was HERSHEY’S “PERFECTLY CHOCOLATE” Chocolate Cake and it is definately a keeper! It is a very runny recipe but the cakes rise really well. Next time, I am going to try adding some golden syrup or brown sugar to get a fuller taste.

When I went to get the camera, I returned to the kitchen in time to save the first batch from dissapearing.

I also made up mock cream icing to see what it was like and how it worked. Then I had fun decorating the cupcakes. I still need a lot of practice piping, but I love using grandpa’s piping set because it brings back special memories.

Then I made caramel (another first). It is really fun working with the strands of caramel and it makes a lovely mess!

I also made a batch of fondant. I need to practice for Andrew’s upcoming cake, but didn’t get time to mold little figures so it is wrapped up for me to play with later.
Oh and I did get dinner made too.