How much can a Koala Bear?

How much can a Koala Bear?

When I was younger I really didn't understand that joke. I was a very literal child and I always thought the sentence was wrong.

But now that I am older and I have grown a sense of irony, I get it.

Have you ever been in a situation where you've had to ask yourself the question: what is my capacity for endurance? How long can I hang onto this tree for?

I am hanging onto a tree right now. I'm up there in mid-air, and I'm starting to feel like I've had my arms wrapped around it for too long. The blood is pooling in my limbs, my shoulders are stiff, and I'm starting to lose sensation in my fingertips.

Sometime I think about what it would be like to just .... let .... go ........

Echidna cake: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

My echidna, who has a very long nose

the original from The Book

Ta da!  Ladies and gentlemen, here is the first cake of 2013.

And the twist to the story is that it's not a cake per se, it's actually ice cream cleverly disguised as cake. So not only is it the first cake of 2013, it's my first ice cream cake EVER.

I was hoping for a scorcher of a day today so that we could all really enjoy the cold creamy goodness of the cake here in my office, but to be honest it doesn't matter that it's only 19 degrees. This baby was out of the freezer for all of around six minutes before not a skerrick was left to be seen. And that's really what you want  for a cake, isn't it?

I made this for a colleague's birthday, so there were some logistic difficulties to overcome. Because how would I get the cake from my house to the office without a disaster? And not just that, but how would it ever survive an hour in the boot of my car while I run around and jump up and down during my exercise class before work? I mean, I'm clever, but even my epic cake making skillz (and yes that "z" indicates my tongue is firmly in my cheek) cannot prevent an ice cream cake from melting. I am many things, but I am not God.

So I came into the office yesterday and made it here. Voila, problem solved.

If you'd like to replicate my experience, here are the steps you need to follow.

1. Go to Coles at 730am on a Sunday and buy lots of chocolate chip icecream, ice magic, malt biscuits, smarties, a chocolate swiss roll, and camphor balls.
2. Receive strange look from the checkout chap. Was it because I was buying ice cream at 730am, or the camphor balls? We may never know.
3. Zoom down Hoddle St and arrive at work ten minutes later. This is some kind of record. Normally it takes half an hour at the minimum. Congratulate yourself.
4. Plonk everything on the kitchen counter and wait for your icecream to soften. 
5. Settle down to hand stitch the binding on your latest quilt, while ice cream is softening. Curse when you realise you've forgotten the thread you need. Sew the button eyes onto your owl softies instead. 
6. Five minutes later when all eyes are sewn on, curse again. Search in vain for something to read.
7. One hour and many website visits later, spoon all your icecream into a pudding steamer lined with gladwrap. Return to freezer.
8. Curse when you realise you've forgotten the baking paper and aluminium foil needed for the next step.
9. Head up the road to the shop. Buy baking paper and deodorant and oooh look, raspberries on special.
10. Traipse back to the office and remember THE BLOODY ALUMINIUM FOIL. 
11. Skip that step.
12. After another hour, get the icecream out of the freezer and flip it out of the pudding steamer. Working quickly, jam in lots of biscuits to make the spikes.
13. Trim your chocolate swiss roll to look like a nose, position it on the icecream body, and then douse in ice magic. Ice magic! When was the last time you had ice magic?
14. Return to freezer.
15. One hour later, check for firmness and realise it's still soft because the freezer is at its highest temperature setting. Sweat a few bullets worrying. Then  turn the temperature down.
16. Leave the office, crossing your arms, legs, fingers, and eyes in the hope that it sets well and does not turn into a big melty puddle in the freezer.

And there you have it - one ice cream echidna. 

Oh, the camphor balls? Totally unrelated. You don't need to buy them after all. 

Let the 2013 cake baking commence!

image from here

Well, readers - happy Christmas and Merry New Year!

I hope that wherever you are, you managed to have a great break over the holiday season. I hope you lay around and ate a lot of Christmas cake. I love Christmas cake in all its fruity alcoholic glory, and I especially love that thick, sweet marzipan icing. Mmmm, marzipan icing.

I also hope you're ready to read all about cake in 2013. I had a baking break over the holidays but that is over now and the project is ON again.

The nicest thing happened to me before the year was out though. It was at the office Christmas party, during the formalities. I won a cake-related award!

I was given half a dozen bottles of beautiful champagne as a thank you for all the cake I have brought into the office over the past nine months. Everyone said how the cake brings them together and helps build team spirit. I swear, I was so touched I nearly cried.

So I'm very glad that I also decided to put cake into my 2012 performance review document. Along with the other dot points about what I achieved at work over the year, I wrote this:

" I am a strong contributor to organisational culture and I have single-handedly raised expectations about what it is possible to achieve with icing and coloured coconut."

It's true. There was a lot of coloured coconut in 2012.

And that brings me to 2013, where I will attempt some or all of the following:

• the Cake Of Kisses made from meringues, 
• the Sweet Shop, using the sweet little Bo Peep lollies that reader Sue so kindly picked up for me when Darrell Lea went bust
• the Fairy Castle, for a male colleague who picked it out for his birthday months ago
• and of course the SWIMMING POOL!!!!!!!!!!! for my very own birthday in April.

2013, I'm ready for you.

Let the cake baking commence!

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I Caked It Myself: the iPod cake

Today's submission to I Caked It Myself is the very model of a modern birthday cake, to (mis)quote The Pirates Of Penzance.

Lara writes:

My friend Jane made this for her daughter Claire's 10th birthday - her birthday present was an iPod, so the matching cake was absolutely perfect!  

It was a family effort - each member of the family decorated three "apps" to go on the cake.  Food colouring was used as paint throughout.  

The cake was gluten-free chocolate cake - and it was absolutely delicious!

I think my favourite bit is the earbuds. I would definitely have staked a claim on those. 

The Giraffe Cake

My giraffe

the original

Here is the giraffe cake. 

I am not sure what to say about the giraffe cake. 

It has not distinguished itself in any way, this giraffe cake. It was not too hard. It was not too easy. It did not cause me to weep in the middle of the kitchen like a deflated meringue. 

It was fine. My version is a little fatter all over (more acacia trees for lunch, perhaps?) and I got that spot in the middle wrong, I put it mashed up against the left eye instead of directly underneath it.. 

Other than that, there's not much to say.

Oh, there is ONE lesson for young players. If you're making this cake the night before, WAIT to do the licorice horns .... do them the next morning. 

If you do them the night before, like I did, the licorice will dry out overnight and break into a squillion inch-long pieces, instead of staying wrapped nicely around the paddle pop sticks. 

Then the next morning when you have to take it work for the executive assistant of the CEO, for her birthday, you will have a mild spasm when you see the broken bits, and have to do it all over again in a state of semi-panic. So, wait.

That is all.

I Caked It Myself: bumper edition from Kate!

It's Friday, readers, and this week things are different.

Normally Friday sees me heaving my sorry self onto the sofa, while clutching a glass of wine as though my life depended on it. Which it usually does, let's be honest.

But today people - TODAY - I am swanning around in Dubai and preparing to head to Kathmandu in Nepal. I probably had a huge dinner last night with friends, and I know I definitely went to my tailor to pick up a new summer wardrobe he's been sewing for me. It is warm. It is sunny. It is magnificent.

And so in the spirit of celebration I bring you a bumper edition of I Caked It Myself, from reader Kate.

Kate writes:

Hello fellow cake-aholic!

A good friend of mine put me onto your blog and I've been checking it out just now. I was compelled to write to you and send you some of the cakes I've made for my kidlets over the past few years.

Women's Weekly Cakes trigger so many delicious and delightful memories for me. My mum was a cake whiz and each year she used to let us choose which birthday cake we wanted out of the well-read, tattered copy of the Women's Weekly Kids' Cakes book. We would spend weeks perusing the pages slowly, trying to imagine how good they would taste. The ones with maximum lollies were always our favourites.

I've carried on this tradition with my kids, but I've been challenged to break the mold a bit lately with a few cake requests outside of 'The Book'!

I'll continue to follow you efforts to make every cake in the WW Book. Goodluck and happy baking :)

I know it is technically not a Women's Weekly cake, but I think Yoda is my favourite in this submission. It is the stuff of legend. Kids would have been talking about that for WEEKS. At the birthday boy's 21st, they will refer to this cake. It is so amazingly realistic! 

You can see more of Kate's marvellous creations at the tumblr blog she's set up - click this link and you'll go right there. 

May the force be with you!

The swimming pool! 

The castle, with spectacular grey icing - how did she do that??

This may be the cutest cake I have ever seen.

The train - doesn't everyone want a train!

Happy Halloween from the Good Witch!

             

The Good Witch wishes everyone a happy Halloween!

She is getting ready to fly off on her broomstick tonight, to Nepal, India and Dubai. She is totes excited about this and is having trouble holding it all inside.

It's the reason her icing is more of a maroon than a purple - when she was putting her dress on last night she DID NOT HAVE THE PATIENCE to get the colour exactly right, because she was TOO EXCITED TO THINK STRAIGHT and wanted to get back to her packing. Packing is important.

She spent a good fifteen minutes arsing about with five drops of this and ten drops of that, and fifteen more drops of this and twenty more drops of that - and all to no avail. So she knocked it on the head and spent a far more enjoyable hour considering the merits of dotted swiss voile over cotton poplin. Even witches have to have some down time.

So she does not consider this cake her best work. But she does not care because soon she will be on holiday! With dotted swiss voile!

The Good Witch is at work today but is so on edge that she may need to go outside at some point and screech with excitement to relieve the tension.

The Good Witch will be gone for nearly a month, but fear not - she has cast a spell and blog posts will appear by magic while she is away.

For cakey goodness, keep reading this blog (of course!).

For all the tales of her travels, check out All Toile And No Reward.....