Cakes in the last 6 months!

Wow, it's been too long!! My apologies for being a little quiet...I just cannot believe how a year of 'not doing cakes' can still be so crazy busy!

Since my third child Micaiah was born in May, I have been busy with a few things.

The main thing has been our application with mission organisation SIM (www.sim.org.au) to work in Malawi as Christian missionaries. Finally, after much paperwork, we are finally 'official' and are working towards leaving in July 2012! For more info see www.ongsinmalawi.com

But in the midst of all that, I still found time to do a cake here or there :) Here are some things I've been working on since June but haven't had the time to update here!

JULY

Rainbow cake cones with marshmallow on top

Engagement figurines for a friend

 

Child dedication/baptism spread for a friend

Replaced our dodgey oven so resumed macaron making!

SEPTEMBER

First workshop with my baby girl!

OCTOBER

Kitchen tea cake for a friend

NOVEMBER

'Half' birthday rainbow cake for my baby girl

Spy themed figurine for a friend's daughter

Baby shower rainbow cake for a neighbour

Rainbow cake for a friend's 40th

DECEMBER

My last workshop ever before we head to Malawi next July!

Mini gingerbread house decorating with the neighbours kids

Baby Jesus cookies for my 4 year old to take to preschool

Wedding cake for a friend

Surprise peach figurines for the above wedding. Their last name is peach related!

Snowman macarons for a gathering with ex-neighbours

And last but not least... my new book!

You can purchase it from here: www.blurb.com/user/store/jong78

That's all, folks!!

Have an awesome Christmas celebrating the birth of Christ!

Love, Jo

Mermaid figurine and cake pops

I made this figurine for our next door neighbour's 4th birthday. She loves Ariel and mermaids.

Her mum made the delicious chocolate-strawberry layered cake covered with buttercream frosting.

Melody the Mermaid

 Flounder and starfish

 I also made some cake pops for them to give to guests at the end of the party.

 Individually wrapped with a 'Thank you for coming to my birthday party' tag.

Greetings from my new home!

This is my first post from our new place!
For those of you who didn't know. My husband Pete and I, along with our 2.8 kids, recently moved to live at Bible college while he completes his theology studies over the next 18 months before we head off to long term Christian missions in Africa. Read more on my family blog.

Here's my new cake table...which is a third of the size of my previous one. But I'm so thankful that I even have a place to do my cakes!

All my cake stuff has gone into the store room

I'm still getting to know this temperamental oven, which I need an ocky strap to keep shut.

It's not fan forced and things seem to burn at the bottom and remain undercooked on the surface.

So far I have baked a few failed batches of cupcakes... 

This is the first order I did at our new place -  a cake topper figurine of a photography enthusiast

Here's the cake I made for my dear little princess' 4th birthday. The kids here at college usually celebrate their birthdays with a cake to share on the playground. Teaghan has been eyeing the Snow White cake from the shops since last year, so I tried to make this cake as close to the one she saw at the shops as possible! The edible image was purchased from a party supplies shop.

It's not my usual style but the birthday girl was very excited!

and here's a photo of the 'Author Talk/Book Signing' I did at the Castle Hill Library recently. 

It was a great turn out with all 50 tickets sold out. I did a demonstration of one of the designs from the book. 

All participants received a scrumptious chocolate cupcake :o) Thank you to all who came along!

Justine Clarke submarine cake

Princess Cupcake Afternoon photo shoot

My local council (Hills) wanted to come and take some photos of my work for their upcoming 2011 calendar, and asked if I could arrange for a couple of extra kids to come for some action shots of me teaching cupcakes. So I decided on a princess theme and invited a couple of my 3-year-old's girly-girl friends over for an afternoon of princess cupcake decorating fun!

Inspired by the likes of Mrs A in the Cove, I've always wanted to do a party spread like this, so this was the perfect excuse.

The whole thing turned out a little bigger than Ben Hur and I lost many hours of sleep over it, but in the end I was really pleased with the result!

 the spread

Juice, macarons, cakepops, and marshmallows

What you see here are 2nd rate macarons...

After the first succesful few batches of macarons, I hit a macaron wall this week and all attempts flopped. Being a perfectionist, I just had to keep trying... but after 6 batches, even I had to say enough is enough.

Well, just ONE more :o) ... magic batch #7 turned out beautifully!

So the night before the photo shoot, I laid out the best of my batch #7 macarons to take some photos... and ended up smashing the whole box of them when I was packing up!!!!!

Lucky I had some list-B macarons waiting in the fridge for their moment of glory (the tops are a little browned)...

Cakepops - another thing I've been itching to try.

 Love heart cookiepops
Meringues courtesy of Woolworths

Party bags

The castle cake.

Princess cupcakes (cupcake is under the dress).

'Upside-down' cupcake inspired by Debbie Browne

I was really happy with how these turned out.

Snow White

Cinderella

Tiana

Belle

Sleeping Beauty

Outside for the photo shoot

Drummer Boy

When designing this cake, I was originally thinking of doing the cake as the bass drum, but that would've meant a huge figurine. Plus I wanted to make it so that the entire drum set could be saved and not cut.

In the end, I decided on making a mock cake as a platform for the drums so I could stick the cymbal stands in. This way, after the cake is cut, the top cake can be lifted off and kept as a memento without disassembling the drum set.

Being a drummer myself (once upon a time!), it was hard to skim on the details. I would've liked to include the legs of the cymbal stands too, but there just wasn't enough room on the cake! I think it still looked quite effective without the stand details though :o)

The base cake is a gluten free chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache.

 the tom toms

 snare drum

 front of the drums

I decided not to have this as the front of the cake because it showed more of the details the other way.

 the bass pedal

 crash cymbal and hi-hat

 floor tom

Time it took to complete this cake: approx 5 days

Price: from AUD$350