The Sweetest Sushi

Well I like the normal sort of sushi as it is, but make it out of cake, phew LOVE IT!

My friend Ian is rather keen on his sushi also, so when his birthday this year came about, sushi shaped cake it had to be!

 

 I took a large rectangular shaped vanilla sponge, and cut out circles using espresso cups (I should probably get a wider range of cutters, but oh well, I am nothing if not resourceful!).

I used a cupcake corer to take a chunk out of the middle of each cake piece, then started to decorate each of my pieces of sushi.

I mixed icing sugar with a little water, keeping it quite thick, and poured this over the top to cover the cake pieces, with a little down the sides also.  I then wrapped around green fondant, which stuck to the icing on the sides.  I then coated the tops with white sanding sugar to give it a more grainy, rice like effect, dessicated coconut would also work well for this.  Then filled in the cores with the sushi centres...

The "roe" are just orange chocolate beans, and the sliced coloured bits in the other sushi, were made from thinly sliced strawberries, kiwi and dried mango.  I chose these as they represented a nice range of colours, and because they are just super tasty!

I then plated up the sushi, and the finishing decorative touches were some green buttercream to look like wasabi, and some very finely sliced crystalised ginger, for a sweet version of pickled ginger.  I left out the soy sauce, though I'm sure a little jug of treacle, or molasses would have been perfect. 

Ta-da!  Lovely little sweet sushi rolls

:D

Crochet Cake, and Cake Crochet

Oh boy I really am on blogging catch up about now! 

This cake was made last June :s 11 months ago whoops!  I forgot to take a camera up to coffee to photograph this one, doh!  Luckily I had a friend on hand to save me from this lapse in sense.  … the second lapse in sense was how long it still took for me to do anything further with the picture… doh. 

Anyway, to the cake!

My lovely friend Esther has gotten myself and a large group of our colleagues and friends seriously in to crochet (see my other blog here for my crochet and crafty shenanigans).  Shortly after which it was her birthday, and so I combined the new found crochet skill, with the baking fun to create this little beauty.

Yes this is the crochet cupcake, from my previous post “A Different Kind of Cupcake” (you can find a link to the pattern on this previous post if you feel the urge to try it out yourself).  I crocheted the cupcake and stuffed it, then attached a little extra wool, to run from the top of the cupcake via a cake crochet hook, right up to the cake ball of wool.

The "ball of wool" was made using a mixture of chocolate sour cream cake, crumbled, and added to white chocolate fudge icing.  Insanely decadent.  Seriously tasty.  I used two well-rounded bowls as moulds to create two sphere halves with this cake mixture (a bit like a GIANT cake pop).

This was then coated with white chocolate fudge icing, the top was rounded off as best possible, and then the whole thing was coated in lots and lots of thin strips of pinky-red coloured fondant to make the “wool” type effect.  Hooray for yarn cake!

The crochet hook was cut from the chocolate sour cream cake also, and coated with white chocolate fudge icing, followed by a layer of grey fondant.

Then I placed the whole lot on my cute cupcake chopping board, because it just fit the theme so well! 

Artsy Fartsy (Artist's Palette Cake)

Sort of a nice physical metaphor this, arty bits made out of arty things, in an artistic(ish) way.

One of my closest friends is currently studying an illustration course, which she is incredibly good at!  Thus, I thought for her birthday I would go for something nice and artisty….. et voila a cake made to look like an artist’s palette.

I looked around for inspiration before I started this, and although I found a few artists palettes, I could only find those which were cake paint, on wooden real palettes. 

Pffffft to that I say!

If you going to do it, then go the whole hog…. I made my palette our of a large chocolate sponge baked in a large rectangular baking tray, then trimmed this down to the correct shape and size, and added a little whole for the bit where you put your finger through (very technical term, I know).

I coated the palette with chocolate fudge icing, nom.

I made chocolate cupcakes, removed them from their wrappers, and coated the underneath with various colours of an icing sugar, water and colouring mix.  These were placed upside down on baking paper, to dry for about an hour.

I then topped the cupcakes with similarly garish coloured white chocolate fudge icing, and arranged them on the palette.

The brush was a cheat I’m afraid, I realised what it was missing whilst my friend was ascending the stairs in my flat building so I did a quick stick it down job with a real brush :s needs must!

And thus you have a pretty quick (this is definitely a relative term!! i.e. quick by comparison to say making the golden gate bridge out of small pieces of cake and icing to be a precise model... not so quick if you compare to a normal Victoria sponge with the one type of icing, or such) artsy birthday cake.