Lamingtons Galore

Be Gorgeous High Tea

The annual fundraising high tea for Be Gorgeous held on the 25 May. This year they raised money for the flood affected women from Gayndah, Queensland. 

It was a really amazing event. It was great to see the generosity and the creativity in the room. Ladies decorated their tablets so beautifully for the high tea. A quilt was made for auction. All the delicacy for the high tea - sandwiches, cupcakes, chocolate slices, and of course my lamingtons.

These little lamingtons was 3cm x 3cm, I thought they were big at first, until I cut it... The sponge was very soft and it was hard to have a clean cut when there is fresh cream and raspberry jam in it. Oh well... I seem to always pick the challenging dish. Patience Patience... one by one, cut it and dipped it in the chocolate sauce, rolled in the coconut. 100 lamingtons later (I think I probably made 102, but the other 2 ended up in my stomach), they are really! 

Pig in Mud

The "Mud" cake

A lot of you probably have seen the "pig in mud" cake on Facebook or Google image. Someone has asked me to make one for a birthday - I was pumped!!

However, to make it a bit different to all the other "mud" cakes. I wanted to be creative. I thought may be I could but a Hawaiian pig with sunnies or a pig flowing in the mud bath with a drink... or at the very last minute, let's invite Miss Piggy to the pool party!!

To make Miss Piggy wasn't as hard as I thought really - the makeup was more the challenge!

Roses

A week of tiramisu!!!!!

Last year I was wanting learn how to make flowers and kept thinking I should enrol in some course. With the busy schedule with work and traveling (no more traveling, need to save some money now)... anyway... I never enrolled in anything :(

A friend asked me to make a tiramisu cake for her mom's birthday. Tiramisu is easy, until she said "can you put some flowers on it? anything is fine..." Flowers, I can't use the fondant flowers like the one I made for the cupcakes... what should I do now @_@"??????

Well, I have seen the chocolate roses on some tiramisu cakes, looks really elegant and pretty. I thought may be I could YouTube some tutorials and create something different! (Light bulb moment).

My local cake shop does not sell chocolate moulding paste, so I had to make my own. Not much of a drama, some chocolate and some glucose syrup later - I am in business!

I made the dark chocolate roses for this tiramisu cake. I had some gold dust, I thought I could sprinkle on it to make it looks beautiful. This is the finished product!

Later in the week, I was asked to make another tiramisu. So I used white chocolate this time. Viola!!! Practice makes perfect - this saying is SOOO true lol.

PS3 characters

Sackboy and Pikachu hanging on my little planet

 Sackboy and Pikachu

I love when a client ask me to make something that I have no idea what is about. With the help of the Internet, there is nothing you can't find. 

Sackboy is a character from the Little Big Planet game from the PS3. He is quite an adventurous character I think. He has a lot of facial expression and different outfits, which makes it hard to pick which one I should make for the cake. While Pikachu, I am quite familiar with, since I grown up watching the cartoon.

One of the things from the Little Big Planet is the PLANET - I decided to take the adventurous path with my sackboy - to create a planet for this cake. 

The client wanted a green tea cake. I trialled 3 times to get the cake right - for the flavour and the consistence of the cake. Anyway, you may think the decoration is the hardest part of this cake. I think making the cake itself is harder in this one.

Cupcake

Who love cupcake??

Alice in Wonderland - Mad hatters tea party

Giant cupcake

Hello Kitty Cupcake

Hello Kitty Giant Cupcake

A friend who loves cupcake so much has asked me to make her a birthday cake. She loves Hello Kitty, so the theme was Hello Kitty... and the rest of the instruction was "surprise me". 

I put the two ideas together, cupcake + Kitty = giant cupcake. 

I did not buy the cake tin (although it would make life easier), but I used what I've got. A 6" tin and my sphere cake tin. It was a good chance for me to use this expensive Wilton cake tin, which I don't use often (hint: order some ball cakes, like basketball, tennis ball, baseball etc THANK YOU)

For the surprise element, I created a rainbow marble cake, which is a cake made out of 6 different colours. This surprise was well received. I tried very hard to keep this little secret until she cut the cake open!

The surprise element - the rainbow coloured cake (madeira cake with vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache)

Aussie Aussie Aussie

Oi Oi Oi...

To celebrate Australia Day this year. I made some lamington with my cousins.

Lamington really is a sponge cake with chocolate sauce and coconut. Sounds simple, but, because it is sooooo simple, which makes it hard or I should say harsh when it comes to judgement. 

You want the lamington so light and fluffy and chew without effort. 

This is perfect for morning tea or afternoon tea. Or if you have functions at work, need catering, LET ME KNOW!!! 

email me: mandywong01@gmail.com

Rainbow cake

Do you remember this baby?? I made this last year for someone's birthday at church.

Just a revisit of this cake, as someone ordered it for a 4-year old birthday party.

This is a simple vanilla sponge cake. However, not simple about it, is the colour inside, underneath the fondant. 

It has 6 layers. When you first see the cake, you will have a "wow" effect, because the bow and the colour is so beautiful... but when you cut into the cake, you will be like "awwwwwwwwwwwwww"!!! 6 different vivid colours in ONE cake.

If you would like this special cake in your next party, give me a call 0402 750 640. 

British cake

British cake

Mandy's farewell...

My favorite Mandy is going away for SIX months to Manchester for exchange ::>_<:: font="">

It was a party with British theme. Everyone was to dress something British and to bring a plate. I was wanna dressed as Jamie Oliver lol, but he is a bloke..

Anyway, knowing Mandy is a vego, I made a orange chiffon cake. I decorated it with chocolate ganache and topped it with M & M's.

I bought a whole bucket of milk M & M's and coconut ones (for the white) and scuffed the rest with my cousins - not a very good idea before you go to a party :(

Blackforest

Would you like some?????

... is the question I asked on Facebook when I first posted it, and of course, I had numerous response... (a bit of teasing really lol)

This is a double double decker blackforest. With fresh cherry and cherry syrup, fresh cream, chocolate ganache, really nothing can go wrong here... except when you ate too much.

If you want one for a party, a special occasion or simply just something for desert. Let me know!! All orders are welcome. 

Please call 0402 750 640

Oh... here is a mini version

Sherlock Holmes

When I was asked to do a Sherlock Holmes cake, first thing comes into mind was Baker Street. This is because I was only there few months ago during my Europe trip. Then the pipe, detective hat, detective jacket, Dr Watson, a Study in Scarlet etc... and of course the ABC theme song!

This is a orange sponge cake with fresh cream (the customer wants lots and lots of cream). The Baker Street sign is actually a candle!

My first stiletto

For a special 21st birthday...

This is my first shoe cake. I practiced numerous time before I got this right.

This is a vanilla butter cream cake. With the white chocolate panels on the side and bed of shaved white chocolate cures and silver edible glitter, very simple but elegant!!!

Lemon Cheesecake

After making the lemon meringue tart, I have lot of leftover lemon curl. Lemon curl is like lemon butter, you can put it on toast, use it to make muffins, or.... you can use it to make cheesecake!

This is a refrigerated cheesecake, well, what I mean is, it is not bake. I am not a big cheesecake eater. I found that baked cheesecakes are heavier. This cold cheesecake is made with gelatine. The trick is to stir in slowly so that it does not form lumps in the cream cheese mixture.

For the recipe I used, instead of adding lemon juice and lemon rind. I added my lemon curl. To top it off I put a layer of lemon curl as well. It was quite rich in flavour. Not so sweet, it is quite heavy because of the cream cheese, but I like it because it is a bit lighter than the baked cheesecake.

*PS* I used Oreo biscuit as the base. Not too bad, but I think the chocolate flavour of the Oreo is not the best combination with the lemon. I probably will use plain biscuit next time, may be used the Oreo base with the strawberry cheesecake! Yummy :D

Lemon Meringue Tart

This year I was very spoilt for my birthday (and Christmas). My family organised a party for me, it was awesome. I celebrated with some of my closed friends and family members. I was spoilt with a lots of gifts as well. One of the gifts is a food processor which I have wanted for ages. For Christmas I received a whisk and blow torch - I don't know how many gadget I can have in my kitchen!!

The first thing I made with the food processor is this lemon meringue tart. I have been wanting to make the meringue tart for a while. With the heat in Queensland and I don't have the luxury to have an air-conditoner in the kitchen, which makes it really hard to make the pasty. With the food processor, within seconds, my pastry is ready!

The lemon curl is easy - with my new metal whisk, a few whisk and twist - viola!!! The fresh smell of lemon is incredible. The meringue part is easy as well, all I can say is, it is so glossy :)

The blow torch is an amazing tool. I love it! Not just making this meringue tart, but I can make my favourite grilled salmon at home!

Christmas Eve dinner

That time of the year again. Christmas. This year I don't feel like Christmas. I think it is because I just came back from Europe and had a really good holiday break. Of course spent a lot of money over in Europe, I am not prepared to spend more money here to buy presents... anyways... Christmas is about giving. I might as well do my best - be creative.

This year we had our family dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. I prepared something really simple - well... good food are the simple ones and not have to fuzz over 10 recipes to create one thing...

I was given this fresh dill over a week ago. SO fresh that it has not died after being in the fridge for a whole week. I stuffed the dill in the salmon - best salmon ever!! rubbed with some good quality olive oil and drizzled with lemon juice and lemon zest. The crispy skin was awesome and the salmon was really fresh. 

We invited a friend over, who is a vegetarian, so I adopted some dish that is vege friendly, I made a zucchini, chickpeas cous cous dish - it was delicious and SPICY. I flavoured it with curry that I bought from the market - man.. that was hot!!!! The cous cous is not like the normal cous cous. This is called pearl cous cous. They are hugh and the texture is really different to the normal cous cous.

I also made a roasted pumpkin and eggplant rocket salad with pine nut. It was really simple. Toss the cut up pumpkin and eggplant with olive oil and a bit of soy sauce for the eggplant and chilli flakes for the pumpkin. After the veggie is cooled. Toss with the rocket with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice... the pine nut added an extra texture to the dish. It is very nice!!! We were pretty full after the 3 dishes... 

Wait... how can you dine at Mandy's kitchen without desert??? 

Mango ice-cream!!! I did a quick version of this mango ice-cream. It was refreshing in a hot summer night... but I will do a long version next time. I think it will worth it...

The quick version is not bad. I used store bought vanilla ice-cream. Let it melts then add mango puree and mango chunks to it. However, the texture of the ice-cream changed during the process. When it refroze... the texture is more like a granita... it lost the creaminess of the ice-cream,

I am making a pavlova for Christmas lunch tomorrow. Yes, Pavlova... which involve a lot of eggwhites... so I will have a lot of egg yolks leftover... that is a formulation for a creamy ice-cream...

Macaroons

The time starts now!!!
I received an order for a birthday cake. The client gave me less than 24 hours notice about what he has in mind for this cake. Thank goodness that he just wanted something simple, but with a green and purple theme.

I only (successfully) made macaroon once, so my thoughts of putting macaroons on this cake was quite risky, but I had so much egg whites leftover, so I gave it a crack. A bit of green colouring and a bit of purple... few hours later, the green ones were perfect. The purple one... hmmm... to save my reputation, I did not use them since the colour was a bit deep, not as flamboyant. To redeem myself, I used purpled chocolate and drizzled over the macaroons.

After a few hours of hard work, I finished on time :)

A twist of the chocolate panel cake

White chocolate strawberry boxI made this for Dennis' friend. It was for a birthday party. She loves white chocolate and strawberries. Since I was making the strawberry cake like a daily chore. I thought I would use the white chocolate instead of the dark chocolate to make the panels.

It was easy and the colour was perfect!!

Running

My first Mother's Day Classic
In between all the baking and working, my friend and I ran the 4km Mother's Day classic as well.

As a pharmacist, I see a lot of people who have cancer or have family or friends who have cancer. With the fundraising, I hope the research will one day find a cure! Or I pray that people will run to Jesus, who has the power to do miracles and has the healing power to cure all the sickness and disease. Nothing that is impossible for HIM!!

Sustenance

Something naughty, something fun!After a wonderful workout at the gym, I thought I deserved something NICE - naughty ice cream XD.

I mixed some leftover caramel sauce with some vanilla ice-cream, a scoop of that... and a scoop of peanut butter ice-cream and a scoop of vanilla bean ice-cream. The healthy part of this is the banana - the energy food after a workout... and a few of the leftover KitKat from the swimming pool :))) and I present you my very own banana sundae.

I had to make a cake the next day for a customer.
I had a bit of fun with the leftovers cake lids... so I made a pac-man cake.

Swimming pool part 2

After the successful swimming pool project, I was commissioned for a second one. This time is for a 50th birthday. This guy likes swimming and participated in a number of triathlon. So the cake needs to be slightly more sophisticated compared to the previous one.

I added some markings on the buttom of the pool... and a spa...

A ladder to the pool was under contruction...



The swimming pool from the top view



After a few hours, the palm tree has grown... the pool is filled with jelly... a few signs were up... a diver, swimmer... a guy in the spa!! Coooool :)