Enough of the quietness - and Fairy birthday inspiration

I have not posted in soooooo long!!!!

And to be honest - there was not really a good enough reason for such quietness on my part. After the last post things got busy. But not more than usually. And I was used to going back and forth between times of business and times of more quietness ... 

So I waited for the more "quiet" time to start. 

And waited ... and waited ... and waited ... 

Weeks passed and I realized that this is not a busy phase ... this is it! It kinda freaked me. I missed posting here. But I hardly managed the German blog ... and everything else. I kept telling myself ... oh, I will write something next week. But that never happened as there were new things always going on ....

So, all I can say - I have missed you guys! Seriously! 

And I am sorry for being so quiet for so long!

And especially thanks to some of you who checked in ... will get back to you!

I will try to start up again and write here. I love this blog of mine and I love hearing from you guys! I miss sharing things I make with you. And I also miss reading all your blogs. 

I will not be able to write as often as before and to be honest I still have no real plan yet how I will do it - maybe I try a "once the week" post or something. Not sure yet. I will have to figure it out along the way. 

I just realized if I wait until I have a plan ... it will never happen! *laugh*

So today I will start off and share a few of the things I made for the fairy birthday party of little bear (which was in summer).

First of course there was a huge 

fairy castle cake. :-)

And for the kids party there where 

toadstool mega-muffins 

And I had acutally sewn 

leaf shaped pillows

to sit on!

Talk about crazy and having no time! :-)

My daughter had wished for a 

birthday crown

So I made her one out of felt ... decorated with some handmade heart-buttons:

 

"Feenkrone" is fairy crown in German. :-)

One of the buttons:

And last - but not least - there was a 

fairy! ;-)

I made her the 

fairy dress

according to her instructions! 

And believe me - a six year old can have surprisingly precise ideas about how her fairy dress has to look!!!!

I love her so much!

And huge thanks to Lorraine for helping me with making the dress!!!! 

Your input was unbelievably helpful!

PROJECT 21: Amazing Gumpaste Teacup

Photo from Sugar Teachers.

Doesn't this teacup look pretty?

But you know what - it's not an actual teacup. It's made out of gumpaste! Amazing isn't it?!

You can find a tutorial on how to make one on the blog Sugar Teachers.
Imagine this on top of a cake ...

***

Enoyed this? Please spread the word!

Chocolate Box Cake

You know what that is? Okay, apart from chocolate or chocolate candy! 

A CAKE!

Well, okay, not a real real cake. It's brownies. I made for my father for father's day a "Chocolate box" out of brownies, tiny chocolate bars and small chocolate candy. Oh, and frosting of course. I always wanted to do that. Actually it was supposed to look like a box of truffles or pralines (I hope that is English). But I could not buy any small truffles or chocolates around here. Who would have thought. So I changed the plan and made it all colorful with mini-smarties. 

I think my dad probably did not care too much for the looks anyway. ;-) He is the craziest chocolate lover I have ever seen! And I am already pretty bad. Probably genetic. 

As my dad is actually not supposed to eat that much chocolate anymore I made it all rather small and used miniature versions of everything and ate the rest of the brownies myself.

What do you think? I thought it turned out quite cute ...

Tea Party Cake

So I used these ....

and added this ...


and a whole lot of something called

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

(Luckily I had decided to make only half a batch of the buttercream to try it ... and make more if it works out. It turned out that even half a batch still was WAY too much for the cake.)

and ended up with this ...

And if you don't know what I was aiming for it actually looked pretty good! ;-)

I used a recipe by Martha Stewart that is called Tea Party Cake. I had fallen in love with this cake quite some time ago. I had it saved and wanted to try it but there never was a good occasion. So when I was asked to make a cake for my granddad's 90th birthday I figured that a 90th birthday is a pretty good reason to make such a cake! :-)

I would have really liked to make a square cake like in the picture of the Martha Stewart homepage. There is something I like about it's squareness. (Is that a word?) But square cakes - and therefore square cake pans - are rather unusual in Germany. Around here cakes are round! Therefore the usual cake pans you get are round - of course. You can get square ones nowadays - but they usually have rounded edges (Do the cake pans in the US also have rounded edges?) which I do not like and they are rather pricey! :-( So, to make it short - I do not have a square cake pan (except for a brownie pan which would not work) and did not want to pay money, that would buy me several round pans for just one square cake ... so I made a round one.

But if anyone out there happens to have a spare square one and does not know what to do with it ... well, send it my way! ;-) I will trade for felt finger puppets, crocheted pigs or whatever else I could make for you. :-) I would also happily send you a baked square cake but I guess that would violate customs regulations ...

Anyway, so I made the round. And I used just the white Swiss meringue buttercream - without added strawberry puree. I wanted a completely white cake with silver pearls. I think it looks good. I actually wanted to decorate it with a round tip. But my round tip was too small - so I had to use the star-shaped tip. I am pretty sure that I would have liked the look of the round one better but it still turned out alright I guess. I have never done piped decorations before so I am quite happy with the result! It does come quite close to what I had envisioned.
I did try to make a piped rose to add at the edge - but failed at several attempts and decided that I like the cake better without a rose ! ;-)



And the best thing: my family DID like it!!! Oh my - what happened!? I had prepared myself for the usual - "Too sweet.", "Too many calories.", "Too big." ... Told myself beforehand a million times that it did not matter whether they liked it or not ... I finally got to make it and if I like it that's fine. But almost everyone requested a piece! Wow! And they liked it! I got quite a few compliments and people asked whether they could take left-overs home. (It was a pretty HUGE cake.) I gotta tell you THAT felt really good!


So, how was the taste! I loved the chocolate cake!!! You can use the recipe to make cupcakes or "big" cakes. I had already tested it and made chocoalte cupcakes for Easter. And it tasted really well together with the strawberry cream cheese filling! I personally did not like the Swiss meringue buttercream too much. For my taste there was too much butter in it and - of course - it hardens when cooled. I am very intrigued to trying the frosting without adding butter though. I guess it will be harder to decorate ... but I think I would like the taste much better. It's supposed to taste kinda like marshmallows ... mmh ...

So, would you like a piece?

Easter cake

Any idea what this is? ....

My daughter made them and I loved how they turned out! Even though I do not like to eat marzipan. :-)
They are really easy to make ... and here is an easy way on how to make the green bits of the carrots. But you could also use some greenery like here.

And what did we do with them? Of course decorate carrot cake!


This was a small one which I gave as a present to my granddad. Well, at least it was supposed to be a small one .... I used the smallest pan I had. But it turned out so high that it still was way too much just for one person. But I did not have the heart to just cut it up ... it looked so pretty.


I LOVE cream cheese icing!!!!


And above thise was the carrot cake we had for Easter. Usually I just lay the carrots on top. But I had seen this version and just LOVED it. So I scooped on a BIG layer of cream cheese icing and stuck the carrots in the cake. I think it looks so cute! And my daughter had so much fun pulling them out! :-)
I also put some chocolate cookie crumbles on top of the icing so it looks kinda like earth/ dirt.


And even better than carrot cake ... chocolate cupcakes!!!! YUMMY! I used Martha Stewart's recipe and was totally pleased how they turned out. In the past I had not much luck to make great plain chocolate cupcakes or muffins. The really good ones always had either chocolate bits or coffee or fruit in them (or a combination of these). But with this recipe they turned out pretty nice. I actually made them to test the recipe because I will need it later this month! Already very excited about it ... but not telling you yet ... ;-)
I actually was planning on frosting them ... but simply ran out of time. Turned out that it was not too bad since the cupcakes are already very sweet and rich all by themselves. I would still love to have them WITH frosting - there is no such thing as too sweet for me ;-) - but my family probably was happy that there was not extra icing on top. They are weird people that often complain my bakery would be too sweet! I really don't get that!

Fondant covered cookies

I have wanted to make fondant decorated cookies for so long .... So couple days ago I finally made a batch of dough and cut out some cookies. I used the recipe by Meaghan Mountford which she posted on her blog The decorated cookie. Really loved the cookies and I was surprised how well they really DO stay in shape!
I decorated the cookies with a thin layer of fondant (light green one). My favourite ones are the hearts and the tea pots. But there even was a dinosaur (for my daughter) with an umbrella! :-)

Fondant decorated cakes

Okay, here are the promised pictures. As I looked over them I realized that my fondant-skills must have progressed alot ... so I am a bit embarrased to show the first pictures. But I guess it is all right - maybe it encourages some of you guys to try it! As you can see from the pictures the more you do it the better it get's ....
All of the cakes in this blog are decorated with fondant, not marshmallow fondant. The marshmallow fondant I tried for the first time when doing the Winnie Pooh cake. I find it much easier to work with than regular fondant!

So this was the first cake I ever decorated with fondant. I used food color powder and it turned out to be kinda blotchy looking. I am not too proud of this ... but it was my first try. :-)





This was a cake I made for my daughter's first birthday. It was the first tiered cake I ever made and I remember being totally proud and happy that it actually turned out to be a TIERED cake - and did not fall apart! :-)
The fondant actually did not turn out very nice - it was very dry and you can see cracks and it is not very even.


I think my bear-making-skills have progressed alot from this pink thing to the Winnie Pooh ... :-D

This cake I made for Christmas. I still like the all white look and the snowflakes. At the time I did not own a snowflake cookie cutter. So my husband made a cardboard pattern for me and I actually cut out all the snowflakes with a knife and that pattern. I would not recommend doing this - unless you are REALLY REALLY bored and have WAY too much time!!! ;-)

Oh, it was a fruit cake and just looking at this makes me really hungry .....


Well, this was MY WEDDING CAKE! Yes, I decorated my own wedding cake! :-) (Hey, there must be some crazy people in this world!)
Because obviously I had other stuff to do just before my own wedding I wanted it to be really simple. I made three different cakes:
The largest tier was chocolate - since I LOVE chocolate cake! The middle layer was carrot cake. And the smallest one was almond apple cake. It was simply all covered in white fondant, we added red ribbon and scattered red rose petals over and around it. I loved the look of it.

Some of you guys might be wondering why on earth I would make my own wedding cake especially such a simple one. Could I not just have bought some plain fondant covered cake???
Well ... no. I live in Germany and we do not have fondant covered cakes. I assume you might be able to order one in bigger towns by now ... but it's not like you can go to your regular bakery and tell them "I would like to have a fondant covered chocolate cake." As it is rare to have it is probably also very expensive ... and we simply did not have that much money. In Germany people also have tiered cakes for their wedding - but they are usually frosted with cream or some kind of butter cream. Some might be covered in almond paste. But I did not like any of those ... And I often also don't like the cake that you can buy in bakeries overhere. That's how I ended up making my own ...

These are some muffins I decorated with fondant for the christening of my daughter. For the lady bugs I used bought colored fondant (I had bought that on a trip to England). I think you can tell the difference - the colors are much richer.


I made lady bugs, butterflies and flowers. I especially like the muffins with the flowers. They are really easy to make and look so cute!