Kit Kat Cake

I really love this idea that I found on Pinterest recently. My niece is turning 11 soon, so I might try and make something similar. This picture unfortunately has no link back to the original cake designer.

Pixie Slippers!

How cute are these?! This was a FREE pattern from the generous Flint Knits. I gave these 4 hot cycles in my top loader machine to felt them. I used some 100% 12 ply wool from Skeinz. It doesn't matter if you gauge 100% as you just make them fit while they're drying after felting. Miss 6 loves these - they're fit for a fairy!!

Shabby Chic Bunting Cake

I have wanted to try something like this for a long time, but getting edible ink rice paper in the right designs is impossible in this country. Thankfully Jo from Sweet Whimsy came to my rescue and printed out some beautiful designs for me to use - she really is such a honey and I highly recommend her. It's easy to cut out the triangles, you just get a template off the internet to use and cut out with sharp, clean scissors. I made this cake for a friend who wanted it for a 50th birthday party. My first paid job - unfortunately after a few dramas, I think I got paid $10 for 8 hrs work!

I used sugar water to paste the images on to thin triangles of fondant. Her recommendation is clear piping gel and I think that would be better, as the paper kind of warped a little and became brittle - very easy to break corners off if they hang over the edge of the fondant triangle.

I used Annabel Langbein's ultimate chocolate cake recipe and made the 2 smaller cakes, and her chocolate ganache (although I halved the ingredients of the ganache and still had leftovers). The ganache needs to be chilled for 1 1/2 hrs with the occasional stir, so that it sets firmer to use as a filling. You can heat it up in the microwave a little to use for the crumb coating. You have to be quite careful with this cake though as it's easy to knock edges off! I wished I'd used a white choc ganache instead for the crumb coating, some got on the fondant and looked terrible until I covered it over with the bunting flags.

To attach the flags, you use royal icing as glue. Before gluing down I used a piece of string and pinned them to the cake how I wanted them to fall with clean pins. This is where the icing string then goes afterwards. So I stuck all the bunting flags around the string, removed the string and used royal icing to pipe the edible string. I wished so much for a fondant extractor gun (not cheap) as I really am not happy with the royal icing, it was so difficult to make it look straight and nice.

Last of all, I attached a ribbon around the base with a pin at the back to fix it, then cut a small round of wax paper and placed camellia's from my friends garden on top. Camellia's will only last the night, but that's fine. I also attached blue ribbon around the cake board with double sided tape.

I wanted to cover the cake board with fondant but I'd run out by the end. I had so many dramas with it and wasted 2 packs of it as it kept cracking. I just cannot figure out how to prevent this occurring.

Embellished Wooden Alphabet Letter

I bought a wooden "C" for my daughter years ago and have finally got around to doing something with it for her bedroom door! Her fave colour is blue at present, so I chose some co-ordinating papers from my stash. It was super easy to do. I just painted the edges brown, then once dry, painted on PVA to stick the papers to. To get the papers the right size, you just place the letter over the top and trace around the outside. I tore roughly the places I wanted the papers to meet together, to make it look more home-made and vintage. I also used brown ink on a sponge to dab around the edges of the papers to get an aged look. Once stuck down, I painted (thinly) PVA glue over the top of the whole thing, to seal it. I got a triangle template online and used it to cut the bunting pieces and stuck on sticky letters for her name and attached them at the back to some embroidery thread with sellotape. In hindsight, I wish I'd used a template where you fold over the back and glue down, it would last longer. I used PVA to glue it down and attached some black rhinestones over the bows. I wish I'd had a good stamp for the black swirly bit over the blue and white spotty paper, but I used a stick on instead. I wrote some lovely things about my daughter on a tag and attached.

She just loves it. I attached to the door with those velcro removable 3M thingies, it makes it sit flatter and will hopefully stand up to those door slamming years! ;-)

Garden Theme Bunting Cake

My poor husband was away on business for 2 weeks over his birthday. I'm not sure who had it worse, him alone on his birthday, or me alone with the waking-in-the-night 6 year old! Anyway, I made him a cake on return to make up for it. It was quite quick and easy. I made Annabel Langbein's Ultimate Chocolate Cake recipe for this and it's AWESOME. It makes 2 cakes if you use a 20cm or smaller cake tin. I halved the ganache ingredients and we still have some left over. Trick with using ganache as a filling, is that you pop it in the fridge and give it the odd stir every now and then for a couple of hours while it sets a bit. Otherwise it seeps in to the cake and runs everywhere.

I got this idea from CocoCakeLand but changed it up a bit.
I used a "grass" nozzle for doing the green grass - the trick here is that you have to make sure the buttercream is the right consistency or it all turns to sludge. I used Milo for dirt around the carrots. The carrots are made of fondant, along with the name plaque and flowers. The bunting is just attached to wooden skewers with bakers twine. The bunting was a free printable from YellowBlissRoad

The cake was much enjoyed by all!

The Last Page!

I've finally finished the 1st year scrapbook for my daughter! Amazing. Should we have another kid now? ;-)

I've since filled in the little tags under the buttons with "cute", "clever", "kind", "lovely". Inspiration online somewhere, I can't recall who.

A Flora Hat

This is such a sweet hat. And a free pattern from tentenknits, it does need some tweaking to make it work out, but the colour chart is very easy to use.

Here are my notes for this hat if you decide to knit it:

Whatever you do, DO NOT cast on 120sts unless your head is the size of a basket ball! If you CO 120sts you will have to do 4 repeats of the pattern. CO 90sts then you get the 3 repeats. I used the larger needle size for the whole hat to get the right gauge on my yarn (which was Malabrigo Silky Merino). The only problem though is that now it’s quite tight on my head and the green yarn woven in behind now shows through and looks a little ugly. But 120sts was WAY to large. I think with 90sts, this would perfectly fit a 10 yr old. My 6 year old daughter loves it, the yarn is so soft, it’s a little big for her (especially in length), so we’ll share it. I have a small head. If I knit this again, I’d attempt it in 4ply or sport weight yarn and cast on 120sts.
I did garter st starting with a PURL round otherwise it looked all weird and I only did 5 rounds of garter st otherwise it doesn’t look like the hat picture from the designer.
Be careful doing the chart, the colours can be confusing if you’re doing white leaves.
If you’ve cast on 90sts instead, you need to start the decreases at the top of the hat at Round 5 instead of Rnd 1, (you won’t have enough sts otherwise). To make up for this, you’ll need to add some more knitting 'even' where it says to work 5 rounds even. I knitted 8 rows 'even' and it was just right for length. If you don’t add in extra decreases between rounds 7 and 11, you’ll end up with your decreases looking like a dog’s breakfast, (this goes for 90sts CO or 120Sts CO). So it should go like this:
Rnd 5: K8, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 6: (and every other round): Knit
Rnd 7: K7, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 9: K6, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 11: K5, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 13: K4, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 15: K3, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 17: K2, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 19: K1, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 21: K2tog around (10 stitches left)

I hope that helps someone.