I am still so exited! I won these travel cheques for two for 450 euros each and received them this monday morning. I finally dare to believe that I really won this price! But I still don’t know where to go to. We are thinking about going to Disneyland in  Paris or a mini cruise maybe  but I am not sure if those things are allowed since that’s not really a city trip right. Well I also would like to go to Venice in Italy or Portugal, where Antonio is from but London and Athens sound great too, just to mention some other options. With the travel cheques I also have a personal travel agent who (hopefully) can and will help us in the right direction. We are going to have to get a Passport for Anarosa because she is going to have to come with us. yay I am so exited I can’t tell you how much!

And the next cool thing is that I got in touch again with one of the very best friends I ever had. At the end of high school we got different friends and we lost contact, I moved away and moved again and got wrapped up into a lot of stuff and as we grew older we just simply never got into contact with each other again. Weird sort of, because I could have just called her parents unless they changed their home phone number, because I still remember it (Ya think we talked too much on the phone at that time?) Anyways I would not just call them like that. I don’t know why but that is just not me. Anyhow to make a short story a little longer, I just looked up some people I remembered from those days and via via I found her back again on Facebook. 🙂 That’s just cool isn’t it? Haha we used to have so much fun back then, she almost got me pee my pants sometimes from laughing so hard.

Another cool thing is that the community center where I am volunteer is going to open again next week. I really look forward to get back in the rhythm again. I’ve got a bunch of good idea’s and can’t wait to get started on them :).

I think the summer we had this year was okay we had some bad weeks but also some good ones and overall it was not so bad.

Next week the school is starting again for my oldest daughter, I’ll miss her being around but I think its good for her too to get back into a rhythm. In October she is going to have a trip to the UK for a week or so and I am kind of nervous about that. I mean she is still my little girl even though she is 13 years old already and with me worrying about everything you can imagine the stress in my head about this LOL.

So I got this request to share how I make my cakes. I had no idea how to put this post together so as chaotic as it is, I hope it does help you somewhat.

Well in the first place there is the cake, then the filling and then the fondant. Before I started making cakes I have been looking at many tutorials, video tutorials and picture of all kinds of cake and cupcake baking and decorating. Checking on the tools and techniques and materials they used. Then when I finally got enough courage to get started, I decided what kind of cake I wanted to make and what I wanted it to look like. Again I looked at tutorials searched recipes and how-to’s, just this time more specific  with the wishes I had. I went looking at online stores where I could buy materials, checked prices, looked at ebay for the tools and search the stores in the mall to find what I needed for reasonable prices.

Most of my tools I bought off ebay because I don’t have a lot of money to spend and I did not mind waiting a little longer till I had everything I needed at first, I bought from international sellers. Most times my items came from hongkong.  The search terms I used where: ” fondant cakes decorating”. On the left side of the search results u can select a number of things you want to define your search a little more with. I checked: “world wide” and “free shipping” , because I want to be sure that when I bid on something that they actually deliver it to me across the globe and I don’t want to pay a lot on unexpected delivery costs and I dont want to spend /waste time asking the seller how much shipping to me would cost. From the drop down menu at the top right I select: ” price plus shipping lowest first”.

So, THIS would be the results and from there I start looking at everything  and bid on the things I need and want.

When I first started to make cakes I decided to make a heart shaped cake with pretty little roses on it because I loved how pretty, romantic and fragile they look and wanted to learn how to make them.

The images below here shows you all the ingredients  I had and used when I made that first cake.

You see from left to right, top row first: biscuit mix, eggs, butter, powder sugar (confectioners sugar), water, vanilla extract, bakers cream mix (custard cream), fresh strawberries, read made roll fondant, oil based food coloring and baking spray to keep your cake from sticking to the pan.

And here in these pictures you see the tools I used, they seem to be a lot of tools but most of those tools you probably already have:

Again from left to right and top to bottom: Piping bag, A mixer, 3 mixing bowls, a large  butcher knife, A bread knife, wooden rolling pin, toothpicks, cutting set for the roses, cutting set for the leafs, foam (just leftover packaging), an oven,  a coaster for pans to let the cake cool off on.

And the second set of tools I used:

 And once again from left to right top to bottom: Fondant smoother, transparent document folder, baking paper, plastic box, silicone heart shaped baking pan, scale, brush, zipper bags and a modelling tool set.

To make the mix I simply followed the recipe on the package. I bought a kilo pack of mix but that’s plenty for several cakes, depending of course on the size. I bought it in a cooking shop where they sell a lot of fun cooking things. I made enough for the size of my cake and bake the cake following the directions on the pack.

When the cake is done (usually about 30 -45 minutes  in the oven) You take her out of the baking pan and turn her carefully upside down on top of a rack where it can cool off. I used a coaster to put hot pans on because that would come the closest to a real cool off rack for cakes. Yeah they do exist but I did not spend money on one yet since it goes perfectly well with the coasters for my pans. Every ten minutes I turned the cake a few degrees so the metal of the racks would not get too deep into the cake bottom. IF the shape of the rack gets into the cake bottom it does not matter so much because keep in mind that the Top of the cake becomes the bottom so that’s why you have to turn it around to cool off upside down so you don’t get the pattern of the cooling rack into your cake top.

While the cake is cooling down you can make the butter cream, you can buy a mix  but its pretty easy and quick to make so you can save yourself that money and make it from scratch in the same time. This butter cream is meant to spread in between the layers and make a small protection wall so your filling doesn’t touch the fondant. Its also used to spread on the outside of the cake to make your fondant stick to the cake and make the cake perfectly smooth before you add the fondant cover. I added a tiny bit of vanilla extract to give it a nicer taste. If you use a different color then white to cover your cake then you might want to add a color to your butter creme, but do this at the end of the mixing when you are almost done and add very small doses , mix and if the colors is not the way you like then add some more.

Basic cake recipes:

• http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/
• http://www.wilton.com/recipe/Basic-Yellow-Cake
• http://baking.about.com/od/cakes/r/basicyellow.htm

Recipe butter creme:

Ingredients:

250 grams butter at room temperature
250 grams powder sugar (confectioners sugar)
Vanilla extract (optional)
food color (optional)

Materials/tools:

Mixer
Bowl
sieve (for the sugar)

Instructions:

Put the butter in a bowl and mix it till its completely smooth.
Put the powder sugar (confectioners sugar) through the sieve in the bowl.
Mix it for at least ten minutes. 
Add vanilla little by little while you try the taste till you are satisfied.
If you want to add a color you do this last. Mix really small portions  into the butter creme till you reach the requested result.

DON’T put your bowl with butter creme into the refrigerator because this will make your butter creme hard again and we want to keep it smooth. Just set it aside till you are ready to use it.

After you filled and covered your cake with the butter cream put it in the refrigerator for a little bit. Take it out and you can smoothen the butter better around the cake. Then you can add the basic layer of fondant on the cake.

Custard Cream filling

 The custard cream I used comes from a ready mixed package as well and I simply follow the instructions on the package. I have however looked on the web and found a few recipes that sound good to me to be used instead of the one I used.

Custard cream recipes

• http://www.food.com/recipe/custard-cream-filling-39522
• http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,166,155191-255200,00.html
• http://www.food.com/recipe/cream-custard-cake-filling-190976

The strawberries

Well that’s the easiest part. Wash them and let them dry and cut them in slices. After you added the butter cream wall and put the custard filling onto the cake layer, you can put the strawberry slices on top of your custard filling. I basically covered the whole custard because I think you should taste the fillings with every bite. Then the layer of cake that goes on top of the strawberries  you spread in with butter cream first so the cake does not get soaked from the strawberry juice.

The fondant

I have used fondant because I don’t like the taste of marzipan and fondant is whiter then Marzipan. I think its just a matter of trying and taste whichever you prefer. When you color the fondant with food color then make sure its oil based food color and not water based. When adding the color to the fondant always do small parts and use a tooth pick to add the color to the fondant because a tiny bit already gives a big result. If you want hard colors like red and black and dark blue I suggest you buy them already colored because that’s like impossible to make using coloring gels at home.  just have to try  with the fondant and make the decorations a few days ahead if possible so they can harden up. DON’T leave them drying in the light too long for they will lose the color you gave to it if you leave it too long.

I have used the packing foam to stick the roses on with toothpicks so they would stay straight up. To give the  rose leafs some shape I used aluminium foil that I crumbled a little bit so I could let the leafs dry without them laying flat and straight.

Here are some tutorials that can help you making the roses and getting the fondant smoothly onto the cake. I have just watched a lot of tutorials and learned a lot from them. Tutorials might not be exactly what you need or are looking for but they often contain little tricks that you can use at one point.

Fondant tutorials:

• http://www.wilton.com/technique/Full-Bloom-Fondant-Rose
• http://www.wilton.com/decorating/browse.cfm?thm=Flowers lots of good tutorials on this site not only about fondant but about the whole cake making thing.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g1Nyd-LhAY just love this guys cakes  and how easy he makes everything look like lol
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R8MsL-5oKA&feature=related make roses without cutter and coloring fondant
• http://sugarcoatedchronicle.blogspot.nl/2010/09/perfect-fondant-tips-for-covering-cake.html some help full tips and info
• http://www.duskyroseveiners.co.uk/page_1303586.html another pretty rose

After reading the title of this blog post you might wonder and try to picture what this story is about but unless you have all ready some background information, I strongly doubt your guess is even close to the truth. So I will simply drop it on you guys like its nothing.

I WON A PRICE!!!! A BIG ONE.

No I am not on the list of millionaires now but you can envy me just a little bit 😛 I participated in this little online contest for a fruit drink called Spa&Fruit I did not forget about this competition but I just did not think I would win anything. Though as I always say “If you don’t kick the ball, you will never make a goal”. So I kicked that ball and participated. They didn’t asked me all my info at that time, just my email and my name.

And now a few weeks later I got an email from Spa&Fruit saying that I won a price. A city trip for two people for 450 Euro per person. Every week until a certain date they pick three winners  for those city trips and this week I was one of the winners. I was like eh, yeah, right, lets see where the small letters are. You know those hidden texts that always lists all the reasons to make a legit win not legit? Well I have read it through and I could not find any part in the text that would make it a not legit win. So I read the email again and I had to reply to them before a certain date with my address information and such. So I did and today I got a phone call from Spa&Fruit to congratulate me again and to make an appointment for when they can bring the travel cheques that I won. Along with the cheques they will send me all the information where and how and when I can book my trips. So now here I am still kinda wondering if it is all true but also thinking of where I want to go to. Venice in Europe sounds nice right? Or maybe Paris or London, Brussels or Rome. Haha I can’t wait till I have all the information so I know more! I keep you all posted!

Oh yah if you wanna win too go to Smaakmood.nl 🙂 Goodluck!

Yeah, there’s not much I can tell you about him since I don’t know him. I have heard some stories from my mom and some rumors. I know I have three half-sisters who may have children of their own so that would make me a half auntie or something, I guess LOL.  I have no clue what my dad may look like and frankly other then curiosity I don’t care much, I mean, why would I be interested in my father who never seem to have cared any diddly do about me? Why would I even care about him? There it is. I don’t, but I do think about my life often and my father of course is one of the reasons I exist. I am a thinker and can think literally about basically anything and the background story of it. Pure out of curiosity, to move on and think about a complete different subject a few minutes later to never think back about whats  been in my head before anymore at all. Now thinking about my life however I do often and often same things are passing my thoughts not necessarily going the same direction every time.

Still able to keep up with my random babbling? Good then I’ll continue my ramblings. Last week I got a message from a stranger to me on my facebook, asking me for my address because she had seen pictures of the cakes I make and she would like to learn how to do this and come by my house for this if I would want to help her. Well since i’m not a complete idiot ( I’m incomplete because I always lose bits n pieces :P) I of course did NOT gave my adress. I did checked out though who I was dealing with because I thought it was quite an unusual question. I am not famous or anything with making my cakes and only have made very few decorated cakes yet. So I checked out this persons facebook and I learned that she came from the same city as an ex bf I dated 15 to 20 years ago. Now that relationship was not really a great one, actually it was a rather bad one and the way it ended wasn’t much better.  I checked out this persons profile and learned that she is related with a person that he (the ex bf) has a relationship now.  Wow, I was like wtf?  And I decided to block them all including  all family members of them that I am aware of. I don’t need to have anything to do with any of these people and they do not need to have anything to do with me. That relationship ended for a reason and to me the past is the past. Some things from the past you have very fond memories of like cookies from your grandmother or friends you used to hang out with while growing up sometimes even relationships, but in this particular case as soon as it was over I wanted to stay away from it as far as possible and did not wanted to have anything to do with it anymore and those feelings really have not changed. That’s how negative things where.

I moved on with my life got married  and live happily ever after (or something like that), and I will continue to do so. However this little research made made me think about other people in my past that actually don’t really have any part in my life, exactly like my dad. And that’s  when I decided to look up my dad and his family up on Facebook. I did not learn much other then that the pictures showed that my half-sisters are pretty young women, a picture supposedly with my father on showed me he  got grey hair but it was hard to make out his face really and I certainly did not recognized him at all. Then again I was about 3 years old when I had last got a good look on him. When I was about 15 y/o I went with a friend to the town where he was running a supermarket and I just went in to buy a can of coke. Well, just my luck he did not seem to be there and I was not going to ask anyone either.  I did not feel he or anyone else needed to know that I had been looking for him. So after paying for the can’s we left the store and drink them on a little distance from the store. The woman who was at the cash register however did rang a bell in my memory but that was just a flash, however I knew she was his wife because I had seen her too when I was visiting him sometimes when I was a baby. I have a memory of  a woman (her) washing me in a little tub on the sink or something like that and me and my brother where sleeping in a two person bed (I think, because it was huge, then again when you are little everything is huge when its bigger as you) The bed had some orange details on the  boarding as far as I remember which is not unusual because those where trendy colors at that time. I also remember playing with markers at my dad’s place or actually I just remember that I had them there. We had to be quiet when we where there because he had night shifts or something. If I am not mistaken he was driving a green Audi. And that’s all the memories I have about my dad. Anyways, my friend and I where sitting outside a little away from the store drinking our cola when a car, (obviously a delivery car from the store because it had the company name on it) stopped at the store. The driver parked the car and got out. That got my attention because this could be my dad, a man who was/is half responsible for my existence and that I had not seen for 12 years. So when this man got out of the car I looked at him and I saw his face although from a far distance. I knew instantly this was my dad. I didn’t recognized him from memory at all, my bro looks like him and the dark hair that I knew he had gave it away. And of course the fact that he was driving a car with the name of his little supermarket on.

My brother,  and now I don’t remember if this was before or after that particular meeting, went to see him one time. On just an ordinary day, I believe in the weekend, our phone rang. I was the one who was usually picking up because of my curious nature. I answered the phone and was shocked to hear a voice at the other end tell me this was my dad. I don’t remember the whole conversation  exactly  because I got pretty flustered by this unexpected  call. What I do remember is that he asked how I was doing (I dunno if he really expected me to give a detailed answer since 12 years had passed LOL) so as flustered and confused as I was I mumbled that I was doing ok. He asked if we (me and my bro) wanted to come visit him and spend some time together. A weekend or in the next small vacation we had coming up. Well at that point I still did not got a hold of my self and my own thoughts from the shock that I was glad my bro was in the room and mumbled something that I all ready had plans but that my bro might be interested. I told my dad I was gonna put my bro on the phone and on that note I handed my bro the phone and that’s all the memory I got left of that call.

Shortly after my bro indeed went to see him, I didn’t and  I just asked my bro to ask my dad a question why he never let us hear from him anymore at all, no cards no calls nothing. And exactly because of that I didn’t feel the need to come running to see him when he out of nowhere pops up and asks if we wanted to come, I first wanted to have a little more conversation and explanation, besides he was a complete stranger to me and why would I go visit a complete stranger without any further info. When my bro came back he brought some gifts for me. And  these things he brought, I wish I still got honestly, but I don’t. The gifts he brought me where 3 pieces of paper, two letters and a drawing. These where from my half-sisters the drawing came from the youngest because she could not write yet, it was in ballpoint and color pencils. I still remember the names of the girls although I don’t remember anymore how old they exactly where and who was the youngest and who the oldest and I remember little bits that where written in those letters. They asked me how I was doing and that they wanted to see me and that they had hoped I would come too and get to know me and also that my dad wanted to meet me. And that’s all my bro had brought for me from that visit. I asked my bro about what I had asked him to ask my dad. And my bro told me that my dad said that he did not had time to write a letter or a card. That pissed me off, 12 years and not a few minutes time to even send a postcard, not even for our birthdays or Christmas, 12 years and nothing. And  although the letters from my little half sisters touched me, I never replied to these letters. Because I couldn’t, I could not tell them that it was not true what they wrote  that their dad who they loved so much did not cared about his other daughter and I could not reply to them without voicing my own opinion. They would not understand, they where too young and I did not wanted to lay anything in between them and their dad, so I let it be and never replied. But I have kept those letters a long time. They must have gotten lost when I moved one time. I still had those letters when I was 25, 10 years later and occasionally I would take them out and read them and look at them and I wondered how the lives of those three girls would be and what they know about me and how it was to have their dad raise them. Just to put them away again when my curiosity had found another subject to wonder about or just to move on with more important things.

I have heard from my bro that they tried to contact him again at one point and mentioned he looked so much like his father. My brother was not interested in any contact with any of them as far as I know and that’s all I know and kind of where this story ends. Because that is all I know in relation with my dad and his family about them.

Just on a side note, be aware and careful with people who contact you on Facebook, because it can be as innocent as it looks like just coming from a direction that you don’t want anything to do with for whatever reason.  Take care!

I have uploaded more pictures of the last two cakes I made for my daughters birthdays. The fantasy cake for Anarosa contained little figures I copied from and with the help of tutorials online and the Hatsune Miku cake I created for Merel using 3 copies of a Hatsune Miku  coloring book image. I put one (a black and white) inside a plastic transparent folder cover and used that to place all the pieces on the right spot. I cut a second (a colored one) in all the little pieces I needed to make in the different colors. The third one I used as reference. I made one mistake as I found out later. When I wanted to place all the pieces onto a white fondant plate (that would go on top of the cake, almost all the lil pieces broke. Omg I could start allover and so I did, working the exact same way with one difference, I used transparent baking paper this time so I could take of the pieces more easily and take them to the white fondant layer without breaking them. Because before they where getting sticky to the plastic folder the drawing was in.

You can find the pictures of all my cakes so far right here.