Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lazy, rainy day

It is raining here today...again, our summer here has been quite soggy and dreary. I am still taking it easy and so have spent the whole day darting from site to site on the net.

I started fixating on cake decorating half way through the day. As a child, I wanted to become a cake decorator, and the other day, I saw a course was being held at Lismore. I was  in a crazy, risk taking mood and told myself that I would pay up to $150 for the course.  However, I was in for a surprise when they told me it was $300 for an eight hour lesson, plus I would have to supply, cakes, biscuits, icing, icing colours, gum paste, rolling pin, measuring cups, spatulas and other items. Anything else?

Of course that prompted me to do a little research. Being of a thrifty nature,  I am fully capable of learning cake decorating from the internet! In my perusing, I came across somebody that has been described as the Manolo Blanik  of cake decorators, Ron Ben-Israel. Really his skill and vision belies belief!


All of the flowers are sugar! Most cakes I found that were comparable used fresh flowers, nobody came anywhere near the skill of this man!


These are both cakes! The first is part of a Mad Hatters Tea Party range of cakes, the other, a massive cake urn with a gorgeous cascade of flowers, complete with green frogs and butterflies.


Oprah and Martha Stewart are his mates. He is the darling of the New York entertainment scene.There is also a blog by his off-sider, NY Cake Girl which has lots of fabulous behind the scenes tidbits for cake decorating wannabees like me, including tutorials. I particularly like the process pictures on his facebook page.


I started off thinking I could make a (daggy) rose or two to adorn a sunken cupcake, but ye gods, the bar has risen so high, I think I shall give up before I even start. 

Hmm he makes it look so easy

5 comments:

  1. I feel your pain. I'd like to learn to get better at cake decoration, but the cost puts me off too. So I just stumble on, making two themed birthday cakes a year and the occasional bit of Halloween party food. Right now I have a chocolate cake in the oven - its destined (hopefully) to become a pirate treasure chest for littlest's birthday party this weekend. I am hoping that the judicious addition of chocolate money will hide any flaws!

    Those cakes are completely mind-blowing - my favourite has to be the cascade with the frogs - incredible.

    Have you seen the 'Cake Wrecks' website? That's more my level (although I can spell)
    x

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  2. Don't give up Nick. You can do it!
    You could make a welcome home cake for the hubster, couldn't you?
    Can't believe how expensive that course was, maybe Mr Ben-Israel is flying over to give it himself...
    My favourite is the green one. It's subtle yet o.t.t. at the same time. The trouble with these cakes though, is that although they might gorgeous, they taste as good as they look (in my opinion)
    x

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  3. Ooops! That was meant to read: although they might look gorgeous, they don't taste as good as they look...
    Bedtime for me!

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  4. Amazing. If you want to - start I say! Even if you only made one or two of these flowers on top of a cake would be wonderful.

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  5. So it was an all inclusive course haha! got to love the internet with all its how tos, my youngest daughter is the baker extraordinaire in our fam, we love to watch the Cake Boss, he's so cool he even makes cakes with fireworks let me know if you would like to borrow the dvd while you are taking it easy, glad you are on the mend and not doing copious amounts of ironing x

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