Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody! I hope that this year brings you new and exciting adventures, I know I'm in for a lot of change this year and I can't wait!

To celebrate, I've collected a few New Years themed cupcakes from accross the web. Enjoy!



I Am Baker

Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

Cupcakes Plain and Fancy

Holiday Crafts and Creations

Rudolph Cupcakes

So I went to make Whoopie Pies for Christmas day and used a recipe from a recipe book I had, but it failed me big time! The mixture just didn't hold up, it was like pancakes when cooked, no nice rounded whoopie pie. I though maybe I had put too much mixture on the tray (which I had the first time) but when I did small amounts it was still flat as a pancake!

So....what to do? Panic? Yes. Then breathe... Then make cupcakes. Cupcakes always come to the rescue!

I made chocolate cupcakes using half of my Chocolate Cake Recipe which made 12. Then whipped up some choccy buttercream. Piped on the buttercream with a star tip (1M) to make them look a little bit hairy. Then popped on two pretzels for antlers, two balls of white fondant for eyes (I used an edible marker to make the black dot), a little gingerbread mouth/face thing (which I made at the same time as my gingerbread house) and then topped it off with a Jaffa for the nose!

Rudolph Cupcake!

EASY. PEASY.

I've pretty much seen this design all over the Internet so I can't take credit. It's so simple and it's a great design you could get your kids to help out with too.

"Rudolph with your nose so bright,
won't you guide my sleigh tonight!"

Crazy Rudolph!

Home Made Christmas

This year I found Pinterest and my life changed! It inspired me to do so many things especially when it came to Christmas. I made home made sugar scrub for Christmas presents (which I forgot to take photos of, sadly!) I also made my own advent calendar!

My Home Made Advent Calendar

It looks like my friends have been inspired too, check out their awesome (and yummy) Gingerbread Houses below.

My best friend, Peta, made this adorable Gingerbread House

My friend Laura created this delicious masterpiece -I really want to eat that roof!

Gingerbread House

This year I almost didn't make a gingerbread house. I had just finished making a mock up wedding cake (will explain next month) so was pretty exhausted, plus I had to make Whoopie Pies (which didn't work so I had to make cupcakes instead) and a stacked meringue dessert for Christmas day!

I made the gingerbread from a recipe I Googled (that wasn't very good) and realised after it was all baked that I didn't have enough Royal Icing! I knew I wouldn't have enough time to make more icing so I decided to just ice two sides of the gingerbread house, sneaky sneaky!

I was inspired by a few gingerbread houses I saw online and tried using similar piping techniques. It was quite hard to pipe on the side of the house but in the end I got the hang of it. I actually quite liked it in the end, even if it was only on two sides! I think I like this gingerbread house design better than last years one, mission accomplished!

Christmas Pancakes!

I have always wanted to try making some cool pancakes, like Jim's Pancakes, he's AMAZING!
So I decided to give it a shot!
It turns out it took ages to make, firstly the mixture has to go in the fridge for an hour. So me and hubby actually had a boring breakfast first.

Rudolph in a Pan!

I divided the mixture up into three parts, added cocoa to one, added red food colouring to another and left the last plain.I only had two squeezie bottles so I put the choc and white mixtures in them and left the red in a bowl which I just used with a spoon.

Santa Hat Pancake

I piped an outline then did the details (like the nose,eyes and antlers) then filled the whole thing with more pancakes mixture. Most of them looked retarded but it was fun to do anyway. My hand got quite hot doing it too, that was a bit scary!

First Rudolph Pancake

The pancakes didn't taste very nice anyway, they sort of resembled rubber with some maple syrup haha! I think it was the recipe (Edmonds Cookbook) and the fact that I wasn't making them JUST for eating (they were for playing with!) But all in all I had fun making them, might be a good idea for an activity to do with my niece some time!

Candy Cane Pancakes

Lots of Rudolph Pancakes!

Merry Christmas Every Body!

Merry Christmas!

I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all my fantastic friends, family and followers who have really helped support Grace Cakes in this past year and a bit!

The Grace Cakes Facebook page now has 85 Likes! Woohoo!

Though I have decided not to pursue cake decorating as a career I will definitely keep baking and decorating in my spare time for anyone who would like to celebrate with CAKE! ...or cupcakes or macarons!

Here are some beautiful Christmas cakes I've come across on Pinterest:

Sugar Sweet Cakes & Treats

Bakingdom

Such Pretty Things

Martha Stewart

Bubble and Sweet

Jacques Pastries

Inspired by Michelle Cake Designs

Craftzine.com

Cake Central

Wilton

How Sweet It Is

I hope you have a very merry Christmas and a fantastic new year filled with new adventures and lots of joy!

God Bless!

xx

Pecan Pie and Ice Cream Cake

After having made Pecan Pie for the first time I thought I'd share the recipe I used. It was quite hard to find a recipe that actually had ingredients we have in New Zealand and I was lucky enough to have some light corn syrup I managed to get from a relative in Canada so it's not quite Kiwi-friendly I'm afraid. You can find corn syrup in shops that import foods from America like Martha's Backyard (I love Martha's!)

Just a quick side note to say the day after I got back from Wellington me and hubby adopted a little baby kitty from the SPCA and named her Pecan! We thought the name suited her as she is "cute as a pie"

Pecan

Pecan Pie Recipe
Pie crust recipe from the Good Morning Show
Pie filling recipe from My Home Cooking

For the pastry:
Prepare the pastry as per recipe above and chill for half an hour.
Grease your pie tin, roll out the pastry and prepare for blind baking.
Once pastry is blind baked, continue with recipe.

Pecans

For the filling:
Ingredients:
1 C White Corn Syrup
1 C Brown Sugar
1/3 t Salt
1/3 C Melted Butter
1 t Vanilla Essence
3 Eggs
2 C Roasted Pecans (chopped in half)

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
• Mix the corn syrup, sugar, salt, melted butter and vanilla in a bowl, set aside
• Lightly beat eggs in a separate bowl then add to mixture and stir until combined.
• Pour mixture in to prepared pie crust and sprinkle the pecans over mixture.
• Bake for approximately one hour. Pie should be done when I knife inserted comes out clean.
• Let cool in pie dish and enjoy! Yumyumyum!

Pecan Pie About to go in the Oven

Recipe Notes: To roast the pecans, put in the microwave for one minute bursts until they are warm and give off an aroma. The recipe I used says to cover the pie crust with foil after half an hour but I didn't bother with this. Also, the recipes I've seen don't usually blind bake the pie crust, I did this because a pastry chef (who was there when I made this, oddly enough) told me to, so I trusted the expert opinion!

Pecan Pie Once Cooked (sorry about the photo!)

The Ice Cream Cake Recipe isn't really a recipe as such but it was a really simple and easy thing to make so I thought I'd share how my friend, Ange, made this dessert.

Ice Cream Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
1 tub of Ice Cream (plain vanilla or Hokey Pokey)
Chocolate Bars of your choice:
Mint Aero Bar
Crunchie Bar
Twix Bars
Maltezers
Tim Tams (crushed)

• Defrost the ice cream so that it has the consistency to mix in chocolate bars.
• Chop up chocolate bars and maltezers.
• In a large bowl, mix the chopped chocolate in with the ice cream until they are all mixed through.
• Pour ice cream in to a cake tin or large container and pour over crushed Tim Tams.
• Put in freezer to freeze over night.
• Enjoy!

Chopped up Chocolate! YUM!

Pouring the Ice Cream in to the Tin

Ice Cream Cake

My First Thanksgiving!

Here in New Zealand we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, we sometimes eat turkey at our Christmas lunch but never a pumpkin or pecan pie. That's why, when I was invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with my friends in Wellington this year, I had to say YES!

I lived in Upper Hutt for six years before moving back up to Auckland which I now call home but my old high school friends are mainly all there (some travelled from Australia to be at Thanksgiving though!) This is their third year in a row they have celebrated and apparently they're getting better and better. I heard stories of frozen turkeys beinig defrosted using a hair dryer, thankfully that didn't happen this year!

Me, Ange, Pat and Alana

Pat, Alana and Ange in their Thanksgiving aprons

My contribution was to make a Pecan Pie, which I had never tasted before either! I followed a recipe but it did seem over cooked when I took it out of the oven so I was very skeptical as to how it would taste! My friend, Ange, (who I was staying with) made an ice cream cake. This basically consisted of half defrosting the ice cream and adding chopped up chocolate bars (YUM) then sprinkling it with crushed Tim Tams.

Me with my Pecan Pie

Pecan Pie

One of my friends made an AMAZING edible centrepiece using vegetables. Other items on the menu were turkey, ham, potato salad, roast vegetables, garlic bread, corn, peas, carrots and salad. As if that wasn't enough food we also had a delicious dessert menu with pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, chocolate Bavarian pie, ice cream cake, strawberries and chocolate, chocolate mousse and eclairs!

Thanksgiving Edible Centrepiece Turkey

The Carving of the Turkey

Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving Desserts!

I can honestly say it was the best Thanksgiving I've ever had! Also, one of the best meals I've ever had. Can't wait for next year!

Last Christmas...

I gave you my heart!

Actually, last Christmas I posted about my Christmas Dessert Table and my Pink Gingerbread House feel free to check these out again for some Christmas-y ideas this year.

I may have slightly upgraded the posts to look a bit nice and have bigger photos too ;-)

If you get in to the Christmas spirit with some seasonal baking I'd love to hear about it and see some pictures!

Christmas Wreath Cookies

Pink Gingerbread House

Nyan Cat Cake

You all know of the Nyan Cat right?  If not here you go:

It's a crazy and weird Internet "meme" thing that I just KNEW my sister loved.

I had been racking my brain for ages trying to think of a simple design for her cake this year. My ideas were along the lines of X-men, Star Wars, Marvel Comics...all of which are not SIMPLE cake designs.

I even enlisted the help of my good friend, Katie, then we had an epiphany, Nyan Cat! The perfect idea! Yaaaay!



The funny thing was that when I went to actually decorate it, it wasn't easy at all! I mean, the design is simple but it was layer after layer, little squares cut out to certain sizes and took AGES!

I wasn't expecting that!

In the end it was worth it though, even if it didn't look like much effort went into it!



My sister loved the cake (as did my niece!) so that was the most important thing!

Happy Birthday Ruth!

Vegetable Anniversary Cake

A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked if I could ice and decorate a fruit cake she had made for her parents 50th wedding anniversary. It was just a plain square cake to be covered in white fondant with gold stars and a gold 50 to go on top as well as gold stars on wires to stick in at the party. I told her of course I could, then got talking about the party, her parents and the cake which lead to a conversation about making ANOTHER cake for the anniversary.

50th Anniversary Cake (the edible one)

I already had two cakes on that week to do so it wouldn't have been possible for me to make an edible cake but I did have some cake dummies lying around that I used for the Grace Cake. So we decided that I would make a three tier display cake and it would be themed around raw food. Apparently the couple LOVE raw fruit and vegetables and they are very well known for this.

The Display Cake Before the Vegetable Decorations Were Added

I got to work on designing the patterns on the cake with a rough outline of what I would put on top (vegetables!) when it all came together in the end I was very happy! I had so much fun making the vegetables out of fondant, mainly because I don't like eating real vegetables! I also got to use a new cake decorating tool I bought, these letter indent press things to write names on cakes (I also used it on the Engagement Cake)

Vegetable Display Cake

Broccoli, Peas, Carrots and Lettuce

The baby peas were as easy to make as they look. All you do is roll five small balls of green fondant then cut out two strips of fondant and wrap them around. You can play with it to make it look however you like, then pinch the ends.

Asparagus and Lettuce 

I made the asparagus by rolling out green fondant like a sausage, then sticking a bamboo skewer in the middle (so it would stay up right). I then used scissors and cut slits out of the top to give it that asparagus-y look. To make it look a bit more realistic, I put tiny little spots of light green fondant on the sides then roughly painted the stems and tops with green food colouring.

The lettuce was pretty easy to make once I got the hang of it. I rolled a small ball of green fondant then cut out about eight circles of the same size and stuck them around the ball, alternating the starting points. I ruffled the edges with my fingers to give it a lettuce-y look!

Carrots

The carrots were the easiest to make, all you do it roll some orange fondant like a sausage but make one end thin (I put a toothpick down the middle to make them stand easier) then just cut marks on the side with a knife and pop a bit of green fondant on top!

Broccoli (my fave one to make!)

The broccoli was my favourite to make. I used two different shades of green, one for the stem and one for the top. I made little tree type figures from the light green fondant then put the dark green fondant through a sieve (you can add some shortening to your fondant to make this easier) and stuck that on top, easy as that!

Bessie & Brian's 50th Anniversary Cake!

I really liked this fun design, it was so cool to make something that is supposed to be healthy out of icing! I heard that the couple LOVED their display cake (and the edible one) and they'll be keeping it to remember their special occasion. Awh, I love happy endings!