St. George Jersey Cake

I'm not a St. George supporter, however when my best friend and I were asked to make a St. George Jersey cake, as one of our first paid jobs, we jumped at the chance. Below is a rough tutorial on how to go about making a jersey cake. You could use the same steps for making any football teams colours and styles. Go the Storm! *cough, cough*

As we are visual people we like to set everything out as we go to see how the end result will look. We are usually designing as we go also so, as you can see above, we have placed out the cutters to see how it will all look once finished. (As we only have one of each letter there is a little interesting spelling going on. :))The torso of the jersey was cut from one large slab cake (sometimes called a lamington slice tin) and the arms were cut from another small cake. The template for the cake can be found here. 

The next step is to patch the cake with small pieces of fondant icing. (Sorry I don't have a picture of this step.) This will help the cake to end up with a much smoother finish. You can either use a small amount of egg white to stick the fondant on, or melted jam (explained below). Then ice the cake with butter-cream icing. (Sorry I don't have a picture of this step either.) The butter-cream icing not only helps the fondant to stick to the cake, but also helps keep the cake moist, improves the taste greatly, and for people who hate fondant, they can simply peel the fondant off their piece of cake before eating and still be left with nice tasting icing. Refrigerate the icing until firm. Other options would include chocolate ganache, or if you don't wish to have any icing underneath, heat a small amount of jam (any flavour you like) and paint the warm jam onto the cake. 

Roll the fondant out until about 1-1.5 cm thick (approximately 1/2 inch) and carefully drape over the cake. Start to smooth the fondant, beginning with the top of the cake first, using circular motions with a smoothing paddle. Gently work down the sides until the entire cake is smooth. 

Carefully cut the fondant around the edge of the cake (If you are using a cake board, be very careful not to mark it). Try not to cut too close to the cake as it's better to have extra left around the edge then not enough. Using the smoothing paddle again, push the cut edges into the sides of the cake and smooth the edges again. (Sorry I don't have a picture of this step.) If the fondant begins to go hard before you have made it smooth enough, run your hands over the cake for a bit. The heat from them will help to slightly melt the fondant and allow for extra smoothing. 

For the dragon I took a tooth pick and traced around the dragon shape onto the fondant. (See template). Then with some edible chalk (which I'd crushed it into a powder) I coloured-in the shape of the dragon using a small brush. A black edible pen was then used to outline the dragon and flame.

For the collar and V we did this free hand. We used the template I'd drawn out, but made the strips slightly bigger then the drawn version as the cake had become bigger because of the added width caused by the fondant. The words were cut out using alphabet cutters. 

And there you have a jersey birthday cake! 

God Bless,

Little Wren xxx

Birthday and Special Occasions Cakes

Here is a selection of cakes made by my best friend and I. 

Death by Chocolate 

The ring of balls around the edge are chocolate cake pops.

Sweet and Simple 

Strawberries and Cream 

ST. George Birthday Cake 

The dragon was made using edible chalk and edible pens. Click here for the tutorial on how to make this cake. 

Our First Wedding Cake 

iPhone 21st 

Akubra and Australian Flowers 

These flowers are made from chocolate that we coloured and then pipped onto baking paper. We then placed them in the fridge to harden. These make awesome flowers as they are easy to make, look great, and taste good too. :) 

Balloons and Streamers

 Christmas Trees and Cup Cakes 

These little Christmas trees were inspired by ones that we saw on Better Homes and Gardens however we struggled to make the trees stable enough when simply using tiny patty cakes for the bases. For our version , we made the bases as cake pops (pressing the cake pop mixture into little patty cake trays to set). There are strawberries under the icing and the stars and baubles are made from fondant. 

Floral Cup Cakes 

Wedding Cakes 

This wedding cake is a chocolate cake with butter cream icing. 

This wedding cake is a light fruit cake with fondant icing. 

The wedding that we did these two cakes for was an afternoon/evening wedding were the Bride and Groom wanted a cake for the afternoon tea and also the reception as only close family members were invited to the reception, but they wanted everyone to get some cake. The chocolate cake was for the afternoon tea and the fruit cake was for the reception. For the tutorial of how to make the roses used on these cakes click here. 

Dora the Explorer Hot Air Balloon Cake 

This cake was inspired by one we saw on the internet. 

Australia Day Cake

God Bless,

Little Wren xxx

Hemp Bunting

Two things that are very big in the craft/DIY world at the moment are hemp and bunting. So why not make hemp bunting? 

Print out the bunting template and trace onto your hemp (I found it easier to make my template out of cardboard). Carefully cut this out. Fold over the top about 3cm (1 inch) and sew along the very bottom edge to join. You want to leave plenty of room for your string to easily thread through later on. 

Voila! You have made bunting! 

To reduce fray, add a bead of craft or PVA glue along the edges of each bunting flag and allow to dry. (This will dry clear.)

To add letters to your bunting, first draw your letters onto paper, cut out paper letters and trace them onto fabric. Then cut out.

Above you can see where I sewed by the green line I've added. You don't want to sew all the way around as we are going to add some stuffing to the letters to make them stand out more and appear 3D.

Add the stuffing (I used old pillow stuffing) and sew along the un-sewn edge to finish.

Continue sewing on letters until you complete the word of your choice. Finally, thread through some string and you're all done! 

God Bless,

Little Wren xxx