With a recipient moving to Georgia the theme of the party was of course “Leaving On A Midnight Train To Georgia” and what better cake fits that theme than the Soul Train.

We started off with a quarter sheet amaretto cake (a relatively new flavour we’ve developed that seems to be gaining in popularity) filled with vanilla buttercream. That was cut to silhouette the train and covered in fondant.

Matching cupcakes were arranged on the sheet to hold up the psychedelic steam from the train.

The cake was finished with the themed piped onto it, along with a hearty good luck!

This cake stood at 13″ tall, that’s pretty hefty for it’s 8″ diameter even though it still wasn’t completely in proportion to perfectly match the 16oz can we were replicating. Any taller though and it would have been dying to teeter over during transportation. It was a little scary carrying this one about due to the height!

Our always popular chocolate cake was filled with chocolate buttercream and of course covered in fondant before using a mix of fondant cutouts and royal icing piping to form all the detail work.

No, the zombies aren’t here yet, but this brain is definitely the tastiest I’ve come across!

It’s a butter cake with raspberry jam between the layers (perfect for that gory look). We covered the cake with a base layer of black fondant and then built up the brain design on top with coils of fondant.

The brain got covered with a thin apricot glaze, this didn’t affect flavour at all, but dyed a blood colour it finished the look of a brain.

The finishing touch was an “evil twin” popping out of the brain. Female so no evil goatee, I had to go with hands on hips and a smirk!

Remember yesterday’s Wedding cake? This is the utterly awesome Groom’s cake that went with it. Red velvet with cream cheese icing he is what we’re calling a “character cake” mostly flat with some shape and relief built up, out of both cake and fondant.

Tis the season for weddings and I was excited by the prospect of this whimsy cake, they’re always fun and a bit of a challenge.

This is a butter cake with vanilla buttercream, covered in fondant. Each tier stands around 6″ tall (dropping to 4″ at the lowest point) and tapers down 2-3″ inches in width from the top to the bottom.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Not everyone wants chocolate Easter eggs (really? where are these people?), it does get rather warm here early in the year so I imagine they melt pretty quickly if you let them. Why not try some of these egg cookies? They have a light refreshing lemon flavour and can be decorated in any range of colour or patterns.

I decided for these that light pastel colours fitted the season well and stuck with simple patterns.. I tried a couple more complicated ones but preferred the simple eggs.

They are 3″ tall and we’ll be selling them for $18 per dozen.

I’ve written about the beginnings of hot cross buns in the past so I won’t bore you with all of that again. They are, I think, my favourite treat at this time of year. The light flavour of spices, not as bold as in the wintertime with gingerbread, but enough to give a little warmth. The different types of dried fruit, I usually go with a mix of raisins, sultanas and currants, you could add some cranberries or craisins, or some candied peel. Then toasted so they’re lightly golden, with a slathering of butter, slowly melting into the bun.. mmm yum!

I’ve played about with the recipe a few more times since I last posted about them, and I’m definitely happy with the results. I made a batch of 12 as a final test, and refused to give any away (most test batches either head to my workplace, or Michael’s.. we can’t manage them all ourselves!), they were all mine *cackles*

As they’re a bread they do go stale pretty fast, we’re avoiding putting in any preservatives so they just won’t last very long. Since they are toasted before eating they do get a couple extra days leeway.

Perfect for breakfast, elevenses, brunch or afternoon tea, I do enjoy my hot cross buns with a cup of tea or coffee. You’ll see some people pipe their crosses on with icing after the buns are baked, I make a paste that gets piped on pre-baking and bakes into the bun – purely because that’s how I’ve always had them so it my mind it’s better that way!

I’ll be selling these in quantities of 12, each bun is a nice hefty size (approximately 4″ in diameter), for $18, we look forward to hearing from you.

St Patrick’s Day is next week (17th) and time is running short to get your goodies for the celebrations. We’ve been experimenting and we’ve very happy to be able to offer these Irish Car Bomb cupcakes.

Now, my idea of fun is not a drink that has to be downed before it curdles, no thank you very much! However, the three components of a car bomb are all delicious and work very well together when they’re not all liquid and curdling.

So, with some tinkering we have a Guinness cupcake, it has some chocolate in it too for a smoother flavour. That cupcake is then filled with a whiskey ganache. Topped off with a Baileys buttercream we have heaven in a cupcake!

There is no hiding the fact, you want to keep the children away from these beauties. Not that I think they’ll be hanging around long enough for that to be a problem *grins*

We’ll be selling these this week for St Paddy’s (and afterwards too) at $26 per dozen, just call (512-465-2879) or email us (info@curiousconfections.com) to place an order.

If these aren’t quite to your fancy how about some Irish Cream Cupcakes (at $24 for a dozen).

*** UPDATE*** – moving this post back up to the top for greater King Cake awareness. *grins*

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

It’s January again, Epiphany has passed and it’s King Cake, sorry, Mardi Gras season. *grins* Though I do tend to think if it more as King Cake season.

The end of the season – Mardi Gras day itself is early this year, coming along on February 21st. That still gives you 5 more weeks of eating king cakes though.

The past two years I have talked about the history of king cakes, and how to make them. This year I’m going to stick with just letting you know that we think we’ve gotten that recipe just about nailed and so we are selling them, to you.

We’ve been playing about with fillings now and we’re proud to say we have seven different flavours of king cakes to offer!

So, starting with the traditional filling, (cinnamon sugar) you can get a small (8-10 servings) for $10 or a medium (16-20 servings) for $20.

The filled king cakes are $12 for a small and $24 for a large and you have the choice of -
- Apple
- Cream Cheese
- Lemon Curd
- Pecan Praline
- Chocolate Hazelnut
- Berry

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’re interested in trying one!

We were asked to make a Guinness cake, in the shape of a wooden keg, it sounded like fun and let us try out new recipes to get it right! In the end we settled on the Nigella Lawson Guinness and chocolate cake, it was rich and flavourful, a definite winner! With the cream cheese icing to balance it it was wonderful!

We didn’t want to do a full keg, but it ended up being more of a half-a-keg, I guess it was a 3/4 keg! We stacked 6 layers and then carved the sides.

To create the wood effect we marbled the fondant, and then scored in the graining. The sides were all done as individual planks, the top as one circle.

I took a look at actual Guinness kegs, but they looked pretty boring, so I took some artistic license. Two metal bands at the top and one at the bottom (if it was a full keg it would have had two) and then a plaque with the Guinness logo on it.