Blog

Roast pork with Perfect Crackling

Easy pork loin roast with perfect crackling, my favourite method.  Ingredients: Pork loin roast, stock, spices. Method: Unwrap pork loin don’t bother patting it dry, slap it straight in a baking dish. Drop in about a tsp each of whole coriander seeds, allspice, star anise a few cloves, some cinnamon

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Modelling Chocolate Unicorn Cake Topper Tutorial

Modelling Chocolate Unicorn cake topper tutorial. This is a simple but effective cake topper that can be made quickly with very basic tools. Step by step photos below  Download the Workshop PDF- click here: Unicorn workshopTemplate PDF: Template Here’s the whole process from start to finish to make it easy to follow

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Decorated Cookies Recipe and Tutorial

No Chill No Spread Sugar Cookie Recipe and Decorating Tutorial
Decorated biscuits look great as an accompaniment to a cake, but they can also be incorporated into the final design of the cake or better yet, used as a cake topper, or as the base for a name or greeting plaque, or to create structural elements as part of the overall design.

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Modelling Chocolate Micro Flower Tutorial

Micro modelling chocolate flowers Micro flowers are a handy additional decorating skill to have. They are great to use as an accent on a name plaque, or in a small cluster on decorated cakes and cupcakes, they are also an easy way to add more detail to chocolate and sugar

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Royal Icing

Royal icing is incredibly versatile, easy to make, and can be adapted to use in several different ways by varying the amount of water or eggwhite added to it. There are lots of ways to make royal icing, I prefer one below, it uses powdered egg white which I find

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The Melting Moments Recipe

Melting Moments – The Ultimate Indulgence. This is my update on the very best recipe for melting moments I have ever encountered. These biscuits have become near legend in offices I’ve worked in around Perth. I still get the odd forlorn message from ex-workmates letting me know they miss my biscuits….

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How to Make Piping Bags

Piping bags Fabric or plastic piping bags are great, but they take time to clean and they can be cumbersome to work with. Especially when working with multiple coloured royal icing, I find it a lot easier to work with handmade paper piping bags.  They only take a couple of

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How to Achieve Ultra Vibrant Coloured Macarons.

How to achieve ultra vibrant coloured macarons. Getting black or dark red macarons can be very difficult, they usually end up paler than desired. To get dark, vibrant colours, I’ve found it’s best to add a heaped tablespoon of gel paste colour to the sugar syrup before cooking it, that

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Macaron Recipe and Tips for Perfect Macarons

Macarons are incredibly popular, they’re great with a cup of tea or a strong coffee, make an excellent cake decoration and can themselves be the centre of attention. Best of all, they can be made ahead of time and are one of the few foods that get better after being

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TARDIS Cake, and Construction Photos

I made one of these a while ago but it was good to revisit and update a cake theme I  have made before and to be able to bring a few more skills and get the dimensions right. The TARDIS is Homemade fondant on an “orange velvet” cake filled and covered in dark chocolate orange ganache. The board

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Ghostbusters cake 

This is a Ghostbusters cake I made for my best mate’s birthday. Slimer and the Staypuft marshmallow man were made with homemade modelling chocolate and Rice Krispy treats, Kellogs LCMs. The cake is layered dense vanilla cake,  filled with Italian meringue buttercream, sour cream white chocolate ganache, and morello cherries. The outside is decorated in basic crusting buttercream then frozen

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Modelling Chocolate Recipe

Modelling chocolate recipe and tips.
How to make modeling chocolate and how to work with modelling chocolate. I have tried a few different modelling chocolate recipes, so far the best I have found is a simple ratio of corn syrup or glucose to white compound chocolate. I use this recipe for everything from figures to flowers

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Sour Cream White Chocolate Ganache

I love white chocolate ganache but I usually find it way too sweet. I found that using sour cream instead and adding some apple cider vinegar and salt gives an almost cheesecake-like flavour to my ganache and drops the sweetness out while boosting the flavour. This is by far my most

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Creamy Chicken and Mushroom Risotto

This is not my usual Risotto recipe, it’s made with what I had on hand in the fridge and the cupboard. It’s a fast enough, lazy “I’m not going to the shops today, no matter what” kind of throw together. It worked well and made enough to feed 4 hungry people, so

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Fast-ish Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni

This is my fairly quick recipe for cannelloni. It’s delicious, not too fussy to make and I need to make this more often. The sauce is ultra fast, browning the onions brings out their natural sweetness and adds delicious savoury depth. Using a shallot adds a lot of extra flavour and a lot

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Fondant Icing Recipe – Roll Out Fondant

The fondant created with this recipe is soft and pliable, with just the right amount of stretch, it is perfect for sealing and decorating cakes. The fondant will store for a couple of weeks in a sealed container in the fridge or freezer.I also use it for some modelled flowers and

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Lace Mat Chocolate Mousse Cake

Lace mats have become more and more popular with cake decorators but they are a unitasker. Most of us might use them a few times a year to make edible lace, but that’s it. Kevin from Bake boss made a great video showing how to use them to create decorative

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Fraisier Cake

Fraisier Cake The first time I heard of this cake was when it was announced as the technical in patisserie week on The Great Australian Bake Off. I’m still sketchy about whether this fits the theme, I was expecting pastry, not cake filled with pastry cream but it does demonstrate

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Mexican Paste – Flower Paste Recipe

Mexican paste is great for making fine flower petals. This is my favourite paste for making sugar flowers, it has a generous drying time, dries hard and is humidity resistant once dry. It’s fast to make, cheap, super reliable and lets me roll paper thin petals for flowers. *Special note: Different brands

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Pavlova with Passion Fruit Curd and Berries

Pavlova with Passion Fruit Curd and Berries Nothing beats the classics when it comes to pavlova. I have updated my basic recipe with some tangy passionfruit curd. Fresh berries, cream, and curd are all this pavlova needs to be a perfectly balanced dessert. The one pictured here was thrown together

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Chicken Fajitas with flour Tortilla Recipe

Chicken Fajitas I cobbled together this recipe based on a dish I had in a good Mexican restaurant. It’s even better with homemade flour tortillas, the flour tortilla recipe is included below. Makes about 8-12 small tortillas and will easily serve 3 to 4 people. Ingredients 3 chicken thigh fillets, or 2

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Modelling Paste Recipe (Pastillage)

The pastillage recipe after the photos is extremely simple and cheap to make. I’ve found it fairly easy and pretty reliable. The recipe is essentially an old fashioned version of pastillage. I have been using this recipe for years to create everything from sugar paste flowers to simple figurines. Best of all it is gluten free and has just three ingredients and water, all of which you can get at nearly any supermarket. This is perfect for structural pieces like the soles and heels of sugar shoes, wired centres for sugar flowers or very thin structural decorations. 

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Orange Dark Chocolate Mud Cake Recipe

This is a variation of the Australian Women’s Weekly mud cake recipe. 675g Dark eating chocolate – chopped, 400g unsalted butter 2 tablespoons of very finely zested orange zest, (at least 3 or 4 big oranges). 390 ml freshly squeezed orange juice 1 tablespoon of natural vanilla extract. 275g brown sugar

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Pan release

Pan release is a really handy cooking tool to keep in your arsenal of tips and tricks to make baking easier. I use pan release when cooking most of my cakes to help prevent the cakes from sticking to the tins. It works better than anything else I have ever used, it’s

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Potato Za’atar Frittata

Potato Za’atar Frittata This has become a favourite because there’s not a huge amount of prep, I use a mandolin slicer, and microwave the veggies for a few minutes while mixing up the egg part. Then it’s just assemble, pop it in the oven and check back in half an hour. I

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