Gift box cake

Sometimes, if you are really fortunate, you may find that your neighbor is in fact your friend. Not just someone you nod to in the hallway or someone from whom you can borrow an egg or some milk in cases of emergency - but someone you enjoy spending time with. My neighbor is such a person. She is fun and kind and full of energy and good humor. And I am proud to call her my friend.

A couple of weeks ago we were talking about all the birthdays coming up in September (and all the cakes I would have to bake), and she remarked, that she wasn't expecting a cake for her birthday. I couldn't really tell her that her four year old daughter, the amazing Isabella, had in fact only a few hours before been sitting in my living room flicking through Peggy Porschen's "Pretty Party Cakes" and had requested that I make a gift box cake for her mother. How could I refuse?

The cake was a layered cake - three sheets of light sugar cakes, lemon sirup and two layers of Morten Heiberg's awesome chocolate mousse (the best ever!!!!) (http://dessertcirkus.dk/default.aspx?pageid=42)

Pink striped birthday cake

Each year, my most clever friend, S, insists that she is turning 28, and this year was no exception.

As a loving comment to this unusual case of acute amnesia (or is it selective memory?), her husband had planned to have flags, balloons, and candles and hot chocolate, scones and a birthday cake ready for her when she came home from work.

Now, as this wasn't a normal children's birthday party, the cake couldn't be childish though it had to be girlish......

The idea for the design was inspired 100% from Ban Bakes - in Paris 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonboneh/4029574838/in/photostream

Pink elephant cake

My little friend, Isabella, turned 4 years on Friday and naturally that called for a cake.

I have a vague recollection of her requesting a "princess-cake", but I don't remember how we ended up with a pink elephant cake...... Isabella didn't seem to mind :-)

The cake was a layered cake and consisted of white almond cake, lemon syrup and strawberry mousse.

The fondant proved to be a bit of a challenge, as I couldn't get hold of any Wilson fondant and the replacement sugar past was way too soft (though it did taste better).

Rose cake

I think that most "winter-children", i.e. persons born in the Nordic countries in the period between November and March, have (at some point in their lives) wished to celebrate a birthday in the garden on a sunny day, where the roses are in bloom, rather than having a birthday party in the dark and cold just before or just after Christmas and New Years....

.....and so I thought it was utterly clever of my friend, Katrin, to move the celebration of her 40th birthday to end June - not only did she get to throw an amazing garden party, she also got to stay 39 for an additional 6 month! and I got to do the ultimate summer cake:

It took two kilos of marzipan, 180 hand crafted roses, half a kilo of chocolate, one liter of strawberry sirup and three sheets of raspberry spongecake.... and the transportation from Copenhagen to Malmø by train in 25 degrees celsius was hellish, but the end result was exactly as I had hoped for:

The design for the cake was inspired by Peggy (who else?!?) http://indulgy.com/post/xpaQxiH061/romantic-rose-towerpeggy-porschen-cakes

P.S. I will NOT be doing this cake again any time soon :-)

Horse in a field

Apparently it is possible to be a "horse-girl" even before one is big enough to ride a horse! Henriette's youngest daughter, Marie My, is such a girl - she just turned 3 years old and all she wants in life is a horse called Bruno (?!?)

I am not sure my version of a horse, which seems to be a cross-over between a cow, a donkey, a horse and a hippopotamus, would fulfill the dream in real life, but as a cake decoration is fully suffices :-)

I borrowed the cake design from my good colleague and fellow cake maker, Mai-Britt: http://www.kagerier.blogspot.dk/2012/01/heste-kage.html

Book cake

Recently my brother-in-law, who studies a the Danish School of Media and Journalism, won a poster competition for the Cultural Harbour Festival in Copenhagen, which I think is pretty impressive!

The motive he chose for the poster is abstract and very simple, and I just love it:

http://www.kulturhavn.dk/nyheder/vinderen-af-arets-plakatkonkurrence-201dmin-plakat-er-et-portret-af-havnen-og-det-liv-kulturhavn-skaber201d

So for his birthday cake I thought it would be fun to use his poster motive as a book cake cover. I think it worked quite well.

Birthday cake with miniature shoes

Turning 12 years old is quite something - last year as a normal balanced human being, before the hormonal changes turn you into a strange and scary monster for a number of years before you are transformed once again into a human being - though this time a rather grown up version of your former self....

.... anyway, Mille (the first child I met, that I actually liked - probably because she was a most unorthodox sand eating princess) celebrated her 12th birthday today at her father's house, and she had told me that she wasn't too grown up to have a cake - but she's definitely too grown up for cute animals and toys, but shoes....show me any girl who is not into shoes irrespective of age, and I will show you a liar.

Twelve shoes - one for each year. It was so much fun making it!