#nofondant

My son's 10th birthday was Gaming themed. Since Minecraft is his favourite game, I decided to use that for the cake. And the the rest really followed from that.

The checkerboard cake was quite a bit of work, but the effect was really cool. I used woodruff flavour, in the green cake layers as well as in the cream, which I personally don't like much but all the kids love it. So the cake was adored and declared yummy.

My son asked for a Rowlet (German: Bauz) cake for his birthday party this year, as it is his favourite Pokemon. Since he likes neither marzipan nor fondant, I covered the cake in cheese cream.

Of course, hiding Smarties in a funfetti cake is a cheap trick, but it never fails to delight all kids present. ^^

My daughter asked for a dragon cake for this year's birthday party.

The dragon is marzipan (plain marzipan painted with food color including a bit of metallic red edible glitter), its "mountain" is a vegan "mole's cake" (basically chocolate cake filled with banana and a whipped cream containing chocolate splinters, formed to look like a molehill).

I'm quite happy with how it turned out, especially since it was comparatively quick and easy. Originally, I had planned to include way more details on the dragon, but I actually think it works better this way.

I'm slowly learning that when it comes to cake art, less is often more. It fits better with the transient nature of cakes - since they are usually only admired for a short time and then eaten. ^^

This year's Halloween cake was, for once, a complete copycat thing, at least look-wise. The inspiration was this: https://www.sugarhero.com/red-velvet-marshmallow-spiderweb-cake/

I merely made the spider deliberately more cute and less scary, for the 6-year-olds at the table, and went for less height to avoid leftovers.

Taste- and material-wise, though, I basically changed everything:

- This is chocolate cake, filled with cherry marmelade, instead of red velvet cake.

- I used dark ganache as frosting, instead of chocolate buttercream.

- The spider is marzipan, not modelling chocolate.

It was very yummy, and pleasantly quick and easy to do for such a cool look!

For her 16th birthday, my daughter was holding an "animated Disney" themed costume party and dressing herself as Belle. I pondered different cake ideas for quite a while. Many people making "Beauty and the Beast" cakes seem fond of using her yellow ball gown as inspiration, and I've seen some really pretty cakes based on this.

However, to me, what sets Belle apart from all the other princesses is that she's such a huge book nerd. So I went for a book and decorated with elements from the movie. And since there were a lot of other fairy tale characters at the party, I went with a book title that's both highly specific for Beauty and the Beast, but also works for other tales.

This cake was a comission, requested by a colleague for his wife (who apparently, like probably most mums, makes birthday cakes for everyone in the family but never gets a fancy one for herself, so he figured it's high time to change that ❤️).

It's vegan chocolate cake (once again, the lovely recipe from https://biancazapatka.com/de/schoko-himbeer-torte/, with added cocoa nibs and chocolate chunks) filled & covered with dark ganache. The white keys and notes are white ganache, the inside of the piano is a mix of mostly white and a bit of dark ganache. The black is sugar writing. The piano lid is dark chocolate.

Craft-wise, I'm a bit unhappy with it. I still haven't figured out how to temper chocolate correctly, so I had to cover the solid-chocolate piano lid with ganache to hide the massive stains. And the ganache itself went out of emulsion halfway, so there are stains of cocoa butter everywhere.

This cake was for my daughter's Jugendweihe (a non-religious German coming-off-age celebration at age 14). The idea I wanted to express that the Book of Life now lies before her, still mostly blank and waiting to be filled with memories. Which is why the little chocolate box labelled "memories" contained little photos of events and people in her life.

As she is a huge book lover, she was delighted by the cake as well as the metaphor. As were all the guests. :-)

The cake itself was a vegan chocolate cake with cherries (recipe from Bianca Zapatka, only slightly adjusted to our taste with more sugar and more cocoa), filled with self-made cherry jam and covered with a vegan ganache and marzipan.

This cake was for my cousin’s Jugendweihe. He’s a huge Legend of Zelda fan, so I decided to give this theme a go. (I’m not much of a gamer, myself, but geeky topics are always a joy! :-D) I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous Zelda cakes out there, but I really wanted to make one without fondant or marzipan, so this is what I went for instead.

The base is vegan chocolate cake covered in & filled with vegan dark ganache.

The shield is vegan almond sponge cake (from https://biancazapatka.com/de/himbeer-mandel-torte/) filled with home made cherry jelly and covered with Swiss meringue buttercream. (I tried for a vegan version of the latter, but failed utterly. Will give it another try another time.)