A very Kirby birthday!

It is that time of the year again.  

Time to provide a nerdy birthday cake for my sweetie's kid, that is!

I knew right from the start, alas, that this time around I wouldn't have the time to replicate the feat that was last year's Super Mario Bros. cake.  

The theme was still going to be Nintendo videogames though, since the birthday boy's such a huge fan - thus, Kirby it was! 

Unlike Mario and Luigi, with whom I had a passing acquaintance if nothing else, I knew absolutely nothing about Kirby and his friends. 

All I had to work with was this pic that my sweetie kindly provided...

The Kirby games and all related characters belong to Nintendo and HAL Laboratory

I fully meant to reproduce the four of them - Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee - hanging up to the star, just like this.
And that was when... dun-da-da-DUN... DISASTER STROKE! 

Between me and you: that's not really true.
The ugly truth is, I've been a complete idiot and didn't check my fondant stash beforehand, so I only discovered at the very last moment that... It. Had. Gone. Bad. 

Luckily I had a bag of marshmallows in my pantry, so I quickly whipped up a batch of homemade fondant. 
The good thing was, I had a chance to flavour it to my heart's content and make it way tastier than storebought sugarpaste. But it was far too soft to model complex shapes out of it, plus - since my marshmallows were of the pink-and-white persuasion - getting a pure white base out of them was out of question, which meant I could only make characters that were pink-hued to begin with...

Even their simple, spherical bodies ended up all squished. 
Blah.

While not my better job by far, this cake tasted delicious if nothing else, as it was based on Alice Medrich's Queen of Sheba - a European-style cake, and possibly the closest you could get to a Sachertorte without receiving worryingly official-looking correspondence by some highly respected legal practice in Wien. 

Ground almonds. Egg Whites. Chocolate-based batter. So NOT a Sachertorte...

The recipe's from her Craftsy class, Decadent Chocolate Cakes. 

If you are a beginner and interested in baking with chocolate, you should definitely buy it! She gives tons of useful tips on how to work with this "difficult" yet yummy ingredient!

I was in such a hurry in the end that I didn't even snap a pic of the finished cake... but my hun took a few during the party! 
Awww... Ain't he such a sweet and considerate guy?  

(The star should have been standing, though. Sigh...)

Imma makin' Super Mario Bros. COOKIES!

Would you believe it? It's that time of the year again! Time to get into crazy baking mode, that is! 

Last year I made a Super Mario Bros. cake for the 8th birthday of my sweetie's child. This time around I'm settling for a less ambitious cake, since unfortunately I lack both the time and the storage space to replicate that feat - but, I can do COOKIES!

Many people see cookies as the easiest form of baking. I disagree with that. 

Personally I find cakes to be much less troublesome; I can't think of more than two instances where I seriously messed up a cake (and both times it was because of a notable mistake on my part), whereas I've had countless cookie misfires, even while following recipes to the letter. 

Meh. 

Not this time, though!

Of course, it helped that the recipe is from that veritable cookie lover's Bible that is Decorating Cookies: 60+ Designs for Holidays, Celebrations & Everyday, by Bridget Edwards.

Same of you might remember me raving about her (and her blog, Bake at 350) back when planning my Susan gingerbread cookies - which I made for a party we never had. Drat! - only this time I picked a chocolate dough. Kids adore chocolate cookies and that's a fact!

(Plus, this recipe has Nutella in it. Your argument is invalid.) 

Unlike my previous gingerbread experiment, these cookies baked flat and even and didn't spread at all. OMG I'm so happy about that!
That might be because I've been using cookie cutters, as opposed to cutting manually around a template - which allowed me to work quickly, manhandling the dough as little as possible. 
Also, I allowed the raw cookies a fair 10 minutes in the freezer before they went into the oven. And finally, I splurged on a few extra cookie sheets, so I didn't have to keep using the same one by refrigerating it with water between batches. I really believe it makes a world of difference!

Oh, and speaking about cutters: I got mine from WarpZone, an Etsy shop I am head-over-heels in love with. It's a nerdy baker's paradise!
They 3D-print cutters in every geeky flavour you can dream of - from anime to Game of Thrones, from Dr Who to My Little Pony... You name it, they have it!
And if they don't, they can make one from your own drawing. How awesome is that? 

I got the whole Super Mario Bros. range from them, knowing how huge a fan my hun's kiddo is... but I didn't want to mix up dozens of different icing shades all at once, so I stuck with three subjects: our two hero plumbers, Paper Mario-style... 

...plus the iconic 1-up mushroom. 

Hee hee! Aren't they friggin' adorable? Squee! 

..And here are the freshly iced cookies! 

Since kids are going to eat them, I didn't trust raw egg whites and used Wilton's Meringue Powder instead. 

I have mixed feelings about it, franky - it's super-easy to mix and takes colour well, and it doesn't clog up in the squeeze bottle's nozzle nearly as much as "real" royal icing. It seems to be sturdier, too - less brittle and crunchy, somehow more like candy melts than icing. 

On the other hand, it feels slightly chalky in my mouth, and the flavour, while not at all bad, is just different. 

Still, better safe than sorry!

Of new beginnings and Italian plumbers

So. 

It is my birthday today (YAY!) and, as someone might remember from my very first entry, this date was supposed to mark the official start of my blog. 

I mean, we've been joking up to now, right? Warming up. Flexing our muscles, exchanging some friendly banter and so on. 

But now? 

Now's when the game gets tough. 

I could tell you how I enrolled on a photography class on Craftsy, in order to overcome my fear of a digicam once and for all. 

I could extoll the designers I entrusted with the task of creating a logo worth of my Efreet-y self. 

BUT. 

You all don't give a damn about that, right? 

You're here for the cake. 

Aww come on, do not pretend you don't know the one I'm talking about. 

THIS ONE.

My Super Mario Bros cake!

Starring Luigi... 

...and everyone's favorite Italian plumber*, Mario! 

Booty shot! Aren't those Silver Stars cute? 

The very same cake, with the sugarpaste decorations and the candle removed. 

You can see the wonky shape a little better in this one (and the flaws in my fondant stripes too, unfortunately...)

Well, it sure looks pretty. But was the actual cake any good? 

The following one's for all of you Doubting Thomases out there... 

(My answer to the above would be: If done well, a decorated cake is way yummy! I wouldn't go as far as eating the fondant figures myself, but the covering was thin enough to complement the hyper-chocolatey cake nicely, without overwhelming it with sweetness.)

I find it strangely fitting to post this cake today. I am really proud of it, and even if I know there are things I could have done better - that blasted striping AAARGH! - I learned a lot from it, and it gave my confidence a huge boost. 

It seems I can do designer cakes after all!

Plus, the kid I made it for was happy with it. In the end, this is the thing that really matters!


* = Although, I have to confess, not mine. I always thought Luigi's far cuter. He definitely deserves some more love!

Avast! Thar it blows... a M-ARR-io cake!

Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Er. This would be it for today, actually.

But since you dropped by (which is AWESOME btw, thankyouthankyouthankyou!), I'll let you have a peek at what I'm currently up to, decorating-wise...

It's still a WIP of course, but I trust you can pretty much tell where I'm going.

And since it's September 17th, I get to call it a MARRio cake for a whole day! *nudge nudge* Geddit, uh?

This cake is meant as a special surprise for a kid who's turning eight today... but thankfully, his birthday party will be on Saturday, so unless something really bad happens to a) me, b) the cake, c) the sugarpaste figures or d) any combination of the above, I should be able to put it all together just in time...