Baker’s Delight

The store, Chef’s Warehouse, nestled in the heart of Surry Hills Sydney, is truly a baking enthusiast’s wonderland. I discovered this emporium today while chatting to owner of my regular coffee hotspot. 

Opened to restaurateurs and catering businesses, Chef’s Warehouse also allows the food-obsessed public (yay!) to wander and marvel at the amazing array of wonderful and unusual assortment of food items, cook books, pots, pans, knives, kitchen utensils and cooking equipment. 
  

Be whisked away by this baker's emporium

I felt like a kid in a candy store as I walked through aisles of bakeware, vanilla extract and couverture chocolate. Aside for the endless assortment, the prices are also extremely reasonable compared to retail. I wished I discovered this place sooner before I spent so much money building up my baker’s kit. The highlight of my trip – I finally managed to purchase those pretty cake stands you see in cafes (which I have been forvever trying to find), I was so excited I brought two! Just in case…

 The endless array of baking and pastry tins and trays, cookie cutters, cook books, piping bags and tips, rolling pins, spatulars, baking ingredients  and more

Everything and anything you could wish for in a domestic or professional kitchen is here!

 
Location
Chefs Warehouse
111-115 Albion St
Surry Hills, NSW, 2010
Australia
Phone: (02) 9211 4555

Baby Nugget

Sending all my love and kisses to one of my best friends, Gracie and her husband Steve who have announced that they are expecting their first child!! They have affectionately named their growing bub, nugget.

Little nugget and mum at 12 weeks + the gorgeous couple

Only 12 weeks old, baby nugget is already being showered with gifts

Gracie and Steve are going to make the most amazing parents. And with parents like them, nugget is going to be one extremely beautiful, smart, musically-talented, Gucci Pucci-clad bub.

Read about Gracie's pregnancy log at http://gracieisthebestok.blogspot.com/ 

p.s. Happy Birthday Gracie!!

Rainbow Bright

I came across this gorgeous rainbow cupcake on a blog named Katie's Kitchen. I love the concept - it's like biting into a rainbow surprise.

Feeling extremely inspired (and maybe a tad ambitious..?), I'm going to make this into a cake and make it look like this! 

Wish me luck...

We Love Sharon Wee

Her creations include designer handbags and shoes, Vodka and wine bottles and adorable animals ready to play. What started as a hobby for Sharon Wee a couple of years ago has turned into a full-time career.  Sharon creates custom cakes, cupcakes and cookies for birthdays and weddings and when she’s not running her regular workshops (I highly recommend attending the designer cupcakes workshop) – she’s busy designing cakes for the likes of Sunrise and Kyle Sandilands. This is one busy girl and she's not slowing down anytime soon. 

A few of Sharon's beautiful creations

With Sharon when I attended her cupcake workshop

I had the privilege to chat with Sharon recently. She even shares her full-proof cupcake recipe! Maybe this is the perfect vanilla recipe I’ve been looking for…

 
Tell us a little bit about how your business got started?
SW: I have always loved desserts and would always be the one to make birthday cakes for my friend. I then decided to take a community college course to learn new decorating techniques... It was supposed to be a hobby but with encouragement and persistence by my friends it's now turned into a business!

 
Do you remember the first cake you decorate?
SW: Aside from the cake we had to decorate in class, the first one I did on my own was for my friend's christening. It was a little strawberry shortcake cake which looked decent but had terrible piping on it. That was a good 3 years ago and it now seems like a distant memory!

Favourite cake/cupcake flavour?
SW: I love my chocolate mud cake with dark chocolate ganache - it's so rich and sinful :)
As for cupcakes, I love the red velvet with lemon white chocolate ganache. The flavour of red velvet is hard to describe but I love it.

Which sugary treat do prefer making – a) cakes b) cupcakes or c) cookies?
SW: a) Cakes! I prefer cakes only because it's more satisfying when I finish decorating them as there is a lot of work that goes into designing, setting up the cake, covering it and decorating it so it kind of feels like finishing a masterpiece when I'm done.

What’s the most impressive cake you’ve made so far?
It would have to be the cake I made last week for Kyle's (from the Kyle and Jackie O show) birthday. It was by far the biggest cake and one of the heavier cakes I've made. The cake just made it out my door too. Side note: if you listen to Kyle and Jackie O regularly - you'll know that Kyle often likes to reference that a certain part of his anatomy is the size of a Foxtel remote control. Perhaps this was the inspiration for his cake?? 

  
What’s next Sharon Wee Creations?
SW: More awesome cakes! I would love to have the opportunity to make really crazy and fantastic looking cakes - the bigger the better I say!

I will also be looking at running more beginners workshops and some more advanced ones... as I love meeting other cake decorators and also helping aspiring decorators discover their potential :)

Click on the links to find out more about Sharon's workshops or check out her really cute blog called "Wee Love Baking".

SHARON'S FAVOURITE CUPCAKE RECIPE
Adapted from Planet Cake with slight adjustments.

Makes approx 12 cupcakes

175g butter, softened
160g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 eggs
160g self raising flour
100g plain flour
200ml milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius and line the cupcake tin with paper cases. 
2. Beat the butter, sugar, vanilla until light and creamy.
3. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Sift the flours together. Fold in the flour and milk alternately into the creamed mixture.
5. Spoon into paper cases and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the cupcake. 
6. Leave to cool before decorating

News Flash

Congratulations to my brother-in-law, Alex, who recently got his first ‘real’ job as an Online Journalist and Content Manager for Sky News. He’s so intelligent and everyone knew he was always headed for bigger and better things :)

Naturally it was time to celebrate and even though it was the Queen’s bday, I’d rather make cupcakes for my BIL.

So while it was first jobs for some….it was actually the first time I had decorated cupcakes with fondant by myself.

I baked 2 types of vanilla cupcakes, one set from Cupcakes from Primrose Bakery (testing my out my new gift) and the other from Planet Cake. I’m on the quest to finding my perfect vanilla cupcake recipe. Both taste good – but I would say that the Primrose Bakery recipe is best for icing with cream frosting due to the cupcakes’ light and fluffy texture, while the Planet Cake recipe is more dense and moist and allows for better ganache and fondant icing.

Planet Cake vs.Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery

With cupcakes in check. Time to decorate.

The task was not as easy as I thought…but it was a really good learning experience.

Things learnt:

• Don’t use silicon baking trays. Old-school metal trays work best and create the perfect cupcake shape
• Don’t use eating white chocolate for the ganache. I used Cadbury Dream – and while yummy, it makes the ganache more glutinous and makes covering cupcakes harder
• Invest in a set of measuring scales….googling how to convert grams into ml/cup = not fun (and not very precise)
• If you want RED fondant and RED icing DON'T USE liquid food colouring (turns out hot pink). I kinda knew this, but colouring paste is harder to find (especially on a public holiday!) and you have to use A LOT of it.
• How to make the perfect piping bag for piping text.  I recommend the Bretty Crocker method. I ♥ Betty

oh so many times to learn...

Dinner at The Meat and Wine Co. Meat Platters and wine (would you order anything else?) followed by Star Bucks and Sky News cupcakes.

      Go Alexander for Sky News!!

Signing off.

Primose Bakery

I had dinner tonight with my friend Karen before she jet sets for Korea to visit one of our best friends (and the other half of Dress Me Pretty), Gracie. It was also the night, that Christine decided that we could eat her Tiffany cupcakes!! umm...I think I will hang onto mine a little longer still.

Speaking of cupcakes, Karen gave me this book – CUPCAKES FROM THE PRIMROSE BAKERY. So deliriously happy…eeeehehehehe. Well, if it’s good enough for Jude Law and Kate Moss…

I’ve already picked out my next cupcakes to bake:
Honey and Granola Cupcakes
Earl Grey Cupcakes (just for Karen)

Peanut Butter Cupcakes

White Amaretto Cupcakes

Sweet! Sweet!

Wee Love Cupcakes and SATC2

Any occasion to spend time with close friends is a good one. Especially if the occasion is watching the much anticipated Sex and the City 2 at Gold Class with girlfriends. Carrie-ing on (sorry I couldn't resist, tehehe) my recent obsession with cake decorating, I took the liberty to do some research online and enrolled myself and my girlfriends in a cupcake decorating workshop with Sharon Wee.

So with the cupcake course booked, I was really looking forward to this day.

We had the 3 C’s down pat that day: Cupcakes, Carrie and Captain Torres.

The highlight of the day was definitely our cupcake course (SATC2 a close second). Sharon was amazing and she customised the course just for us. After 5 hours we were all beginning to look like pros. *Claps*

Hard at work making our Tiffany and flower cupcakes...

We love Tiffany's...Christine and I with our Tiffany and Co sunnies and cupcakes.

THESE CUPCAKES ARE NOT FOR EATING…

And for those who have seen SATC2, who could forget the cupcake scene.

p.s. Charlotte's cute apron is by Jessie Steele. Get yours before it's sold out!

Flour Child

I honestly think my calling in life is to create pretty things. And I couldn’t think of a better way to start a blog about how sweet life is, then to blog about creating one of the sweetest things in this world: CAKE.
Given, I had never decorated a cake before but I have baked many-a-cakes (and desserts). And I was in good hands, having enrolled myself into a one day cake decorating crash course at the Paris International Cooking School.

The Cake: White Chocolate Berry Cake (baked from scratch, of course)

The Class: It was straight in to making the royal icing and piped roses and leaves and basic linework. I think I need a little practice here (hence no photos of the finished result)…and I was starting to re-think my ‘hidden’ talent.


But then we moved on to decorating our cakes and that’s when the fun began. Who knew there was so many ways to decorate fondant? Chalk, powdered, liquid and gel colouring becomes a playground for tinting fondant and stencils, moulds and cookie cutters assist to create just about anything imaginable.


The Results:

Oh *hearts*.  It had to be pretty…
I coloured fondant modelling paste in shades of pink, yellow and green and used cookie cutters in 2 different sizes to create my flowers. The buds were created with silver candy balls. YUM.

 

The Inspiration: Marc Jacobs Daisy (well, not really – but I think the flowers look awfully like Marc’s daisies)

Can’t wait for my SATC2 day with girlfriends. We’ve booked ourselves into a cupcake decorating course with Sharon Wee. We heard she’s fantastic. Watch my cake space!