The blanketed crusader

This cake is one that is extremely close to my heart.

Waz, the Blanketed Crusader and his cake. Designed by Khanh of Cake Me!, this cake perfectly sums Warren up.

I remember taking the bus home one winter's evening after uni. It was bucketing down, very cold and very dark. Kind of scenario where you'd prefer to just stay on the bus and not get off, even though you couldn't wait to get home. But there, waiting in the rain by the unlit bus stop was my brother, on his little bicycle, with an umbrella. He's always been like that.

Fourteen years later, my brother Warren founded the charity organisation 300 Blankets, to keep those who are less fortunate in our community warm. Waz works a full time job in Merchandising at the Myer Headquarters, but after work and on weekends, he directs a team of over 70 volunteers to provide warmth to the homeless. 300 Blankets raises awareness, funds, buys, collects and distributes blankets to the homeless. His work isn't just about providing tangible materials, it is also about providing warmth through friendship. Every Wednesday night, rain, hail or shine, Christmas Day, his birthday or just any regular Wednesday, you would find Waz out with the Vinnies Soup Van distributing food, a hot drink, blankets and friendship to those who need it most.

Waz and some of the awesome 300 Blankets volunteers — Waz and some of the awesome 300 Blankets volunteers

The stories and experiences that Waz shares are moving, heart wrenching and more often than not, puts a lump in your throat or fills your eyes up with tears. Listening to my brother speak at a recent event and looking around at an audience of over a hundred people, you can see how his work and anecdotes pulls at people's heartstrings.

So that's Waz as a brother and as a member of the community. What makes Waz extra special is that he is your normal, average person. He loves his fiancee, his family and his close group of friends. Waz is our everyday superhero. He's a man with many hats (or lego heads, as this cake suggests).

Superhero Lego heads, Chocolate mud cake and Red Velvet mud cake with chocolate ganache

The other Waz we know and love is "Uncle Wazzie" as he is affectionately called by his niece and nephew. Waz is a big kid at heart, an awesome uncle, and our kids adore him. He loves toys and for years, worked in the toy department at Myer, and then later, in the Buying Office for Toys. Waz has especially loved Lego and made sure he rubbed his passion for these coloured bricks on to his niece and nephew. Another of Waz's childhood loves is Raphael, the red teenage mutant ninja turtle.

Warren. Our brother, friend and uncle. Hero in a half shell. Friendly neigbhourhood spider. We couldn't be more prouder of you, Waz. Happy 30th birthday to our Blanketed Crusader.

Lego minifigure Waz cake, complete with his signature mole, 300 Blankets tshirt, and CAPE!

Everything is awesome. You are everything AWESOME.

To learn more about 300 Blankets or to volunteer/donate to the charity, please go to www.300blankets.com.au.

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Turn back time... The Cake Me! evolution

Almost five years ago, a client commissioned us for her thirtieth birthday cake. I remember googling images of record players to create a cake to fit the theme of her party. Apart from requesting a record player and preferably incorporating some pink, blue and purple, like the majority of our clients, this client left the design completely to us (and to google of course). It's such a wonderful feeling to be entrusted with the design and it's sooooooooo much fun to have free rein in the creativity.

The record player we made for a client in 2010

Our turntable cake, based on the Technics turntable in 2015

Turn the clock forward five years later and I find myself googling images again for a turntable. This time however, this new client was much more prescriptive in her husband's fortieth birthday cake. She had seen photos of the record player cake we'd made five years ago, however as her husband "Fermo" owns Joey Smalls, a bar in Brunswick, and as such, works with turntables all day, this client has requested that the cake to be similar to the one he uses (Technics SL-1210 M5G Turntable). I'm usually the one with a pen and paper sketching out designs, but I received a few image files from the client. For the first time ever, these image files included one of her own sketches! Let's just say that I was more than a little bit excited!!!

The client was afraid that she was being too pushy, but NO, I loved it. It wasn't til then that she totally reminded me, so much of... ME!! Back when I commissioned a cake company to make my wedding cake toppers (before I started making cakes myself), I gave the designer four A4 pages of notes and photos of my husband's suit, my dress, the veil, right down to the details of the beading on the train of my dress. I was so scared that the cake designer would think I was totally nutters (she probably did), but she LOVED it too. She squealed with excitement and asked if she could keep a copy to show her colleagues and future clients. I now understand exactly how she must have felt, as I felt the same way when I saw this client's sketch.

My four page "brief" for my wedding cake toppers... Um no, I'm not a bridezilla... ;p

I love detail, I have a high attention to detail and those who know me know that I spend another 80% of my time on the final 20% of the work. Sadly though, not everyone appreciates the detail and so quite often my detail is unnoticed. With this client however, I am certain she will see and appreciate the detail I've put into her husband's cake. And this is what excites me.

Images of the Technics Direct Drive Turntable System and our "Fermo" cake, based on the Technics Turntable

Although I still love the simplicity of our original record player cake, I'm so proud to say that I think our techniques have evolved and refined over the years. Just as I still love the cows I did on the Shinkansen cake all those years ago, I can confidently say that our sugar sculpting skills have also improved in the cows on the recent Domo-Kun cake. And again, I totally loved our original digger cake, but the digger cake we made earlier this year was again an improvement on that.

Quite often when we come across a ridiculously amazing cake that someone else has made, we feel an overwhelming sense of admiration. In fact, it might even be an overwhelming sense of overwhelm-ness?! At those times, I hope that I can remind myself that we're slowly evolving too, and hopefully we'll keep improving and refining our own skills and techniques.

And for some further nostalgia since we're on the topic of evolution.. here is a photo of our very first cake...

The very first cake we have ever made with fondant... pre Cake Me! era

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Happy 40th Birthday Fermo, we are so happy that you loved your cake!! For those of you interested in experiencing some of the music from a real Technics turntable, check out http://www.joeysmalls.com.au/ in Brusnwick. They are serving up Huxtaburger from Thursdays to Sundays!

“Thank you Liz for the most amazing cake! Your attention to detail is outstanding and we all loved the citrus mud flavour. My husband was blown away! Congratulations on a job well done.”

— Meghan

Our School Holiday Program - a ROARING success!

Fifty three excited kids, three 90 minute sessions, fifty seven magnificent lions!

We've been a bit quiet on the blog scene these past couple of weeks as we have been juggling the huge interest in the Cake Me! kids Term 2 School Holiday Program, fulfilling cake orders, as well as enduring the wrath that is the school holidays on the home front ourselves!

Although I love my two babies dearly and take pride in being a mummy first and foremost, it is still a tough juggle, trying my best to entertain them and ensuring that they have a wonderful school holiday that is both fun and educational. We try to have a special activity for them every single day, not just to keep them out of trouble, but also because they are only kids once, they are growing up too quickly and we want them to have a memorable childhood. We have taken them to the movies, to the park, on the train to the city, the art gallery, to see the dinosaurs, a live performance, to the market, the drive-in, they've had play dates with friends, been to a couple of birthday parties, seen a magic show... And that was only three quarters of the way through the school holidays.

So today (Wednesday), they got to have a break from me and spent the day with their amazing and doting grandparents, whilst I entertained 53 (yes, FIFTY THREE!) other children!! We were ecstatic to hold not one, but three school holiday program sessions and that we had the pleasure of teaching such clever, creative and enthusiastic group of kids.

Held in the beautiful Art Studios at MC Square (Manningham City Council, on top of the Doncaster Library), our 90 minute sessions were intense and fast paced. There was no time to break, it was all GO, GO, GO! Amazingly, the kids stayed focused throughout the entire session and were all determined to complete the task of sugar sculpting their own 3D lion cupcake.

There were times during the session when a few kids felt some self doubt, "do you think my legs will be too big?" and "I can't imagine this to look like a lion", but eventually, even the disbelievers were blown away by their own masterpieces. We love how each child tried to make the lion "their-own". One student created a dress for her lion, another shaped her lion's tail into a perfect "s" shape.

Some of the kids came with five or six other friends from school, whilst others braved participating on their own. It really didn't make much of a difference as the kids all got along really well and made friends during the class. The only "bickering" we heard all day were kids on one table competing for the title of "Most Meanest and Ferocious Lion".

Although the sessions were aimed at kids aged five and above, we had children attend who ranged from three, up to 15 years of age. A few of the kids have had some experience with fondant and cake decorating, but most of the kids had never used or even seen fondant before. As I always tell people, no matter how much experience you think you've had with sugar sculpting and cake decorating, there is always something new you can learn and always room for improvement. We truly believe this, and even for us, we are always striving to learn new techniques or refine what we already do.

The pride on each and every child's face at the end of the class when they presented their cupcakes to the parents and all the "WOW, YOU MADE THAT?!!?!" that followed, was truly priceless. Thank you to all the wonderful kids who made today a truly ROARING success.

So... does anyone have ideas on what else I can do with my own kids for the remainder of the holidays?

A special shout out and thanks to Lynn, my wonderful assistant, we couldn't have done it without you today!

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“It was so much fun. My kids felt a sense of achievement in creating something so professional looking!!”

— Anonymous (from evaluations)

“Well done!! Definitely value for money & loved that the kids get to take creations home & also a cupcake for mum!!”

— Anonymous (from evaluations)

A grand note, worthy of a blog post...

Throughout the years we've received heartfelt testimonials and reviews from many of our loyal customers. I have scattered some lovely reviews on some of the pages on this site. But today, I received such a beautiful testimonial penned by a loving granddaughter, I actually didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to blog about it. I'm not going to say that it was more beautiful than any of the other testimonials I've ever received, but perhaps the reason why it was so touching to read was because we actually felt so honoured to have been asked to make this cake in the first place.

Those of you who follow our facebook page (www.facebook.com/cakeme) might have seen that we wrote about how we always feel chuffed to be entrusted to make someone's milestone or special occasion cake. So to have been asked to make a special grandmother's 90th cake, it was truly an honour. Ninety. Wow, just a decade away from a century, what an achievement!

The testimonial made me feel so warm and fuzzy I didn't want to condense it, so if you're interested, you're welcome to read it here.

She mentioned:

“My grandma, an avid pianist and music lover, also has an inclination for all things purple and my challenge was to articulate this particular theme to the team at Cake Me. Thankfully Liz and Khanh combined their creative minds and exerted a little engineering flair to come up with a number of cake ideas accompanied by detailed sketches for my family to select.”

When were designing the cake, we weren't sure whether the family had wanted a sculpted grand piano cake, a cake with a grand piano topper, or a piano-themed cake. After consulting with them further, other than "piano" and "purple" they themselves weren't sure what design they wanted either. So we drafted up a few very rough sketches and sent it off to them, and they decided that the latter option was what they wanted, a piano-themed cake. To be honest, I'm always anxious about sending people sketches as I'm no artist on pen and paper, so I don't want people to doubt our cake abilities after seeing my drawings. So you can imagine how very happy I was to hear that they appreciated my scribbles and even went as far as describing them as "detailed sketches." ;)

The piano-themed cake for a grandmother who is affectionately known as "Pepeng", and the top of the piano with the lid off.

Creating a beautiful cake, ensuring that it tastes divine, making sure that it is personalised for the individual, giving the cake its own character and all the attention to detail, literally takes hours and hours. Quite a few people have asked us over the year why we choose to do cakes. And the answer has always been that the joy in seeing someone's face light up when they first see the cake is incredibly rewarding. Quite often we don't get to see the cake recipient as the cake is delivered to a venue, or the cake is ordered by a loved one, or is picked up by someone else. So we rely on testimonials like these. It truly has to be a labour of love, or we wouldn't do it.

It brought us immeasurable joy and satisfaction reading how the grandmother herself actually felt:

“On the day of the unveiling, no one was happier and more impressed than the celebrant herself, my grandma. Whilst it did take a bit of coaxing to get my grandma to cut into the cake (She had repeated that, “The cake was too beautiful to cut”), all guests fell into an appreciative silence as we enjoyed the chocolate mud ganache filling.”

This is love. Grandmother "Pepeng" with her granddaughter on her 90th birthday.

“So thank you, Liz and Khanh for making my grandma’s birthday all the more memorable—we couldn’t have trusted a better team of cake artists to handle my grandma’s birthday with the talent and experience that was delivered on the day.”

No, thank YOU. We love cakes, and creating your grandmother's cake was truly an honour for us. Happy 90th Birthday Pepeng.

And this is exactly why we do what we do.

Winter Wonderland - Our first Cake Me! kids party

We were stoked to have been asked to make Miss Genevieve's eleventh birthday cake this year, and to also host her Cake Me! kids party, our FIRST official Cake Me! kids party!! This blog entry will be quite long as I want to share both the cake and the party with you, but if you don't want to read it all, click here for the cake, and here for the party. No hard feelings, I understand, we're all time-poor these days ;)

It's been five years since we made Genevieve's sixth birthday cake, how time has flown. To celebrate the beginning of winter, Gen decided on a Winter Wonderland themed party this year - and was very explicit when stating that it was a Winter themed cake and NOT a Frozen themed cake. We were told that anything to do with "blue, penguins, snowflakes, igloos are fine" ;) Clearly Frozen is for the younger crowd and Gen is now a young lady.

penguin iceberg cake cupcake cake me kids

Gen's sculpted iceberg cake was so much fun to design and create. I won't lie, for a moment there I did wonder whether I had been over zealous and had gone overboard with the sculpting, destroying an otherwise beautiful 5 tiers of white chocolatey goodness. But google images reassured me that icebergs do come in all shapes and sizes.

Images from Google Search : www.pixshark.com

My main priorities were for the penguins to have a slippery slide to dive head first into the icy turquoise water, and for the baby penguins to have a warm and cozy cave to huddle safely in.

Judging by the expression on the birthday girl's face, I'm ecstatic to say that the mission was accomplished :D.

We were so excited to hold our very FIRST official Cake Me! kids party after all the trial runs. Gen's Winter Wonderland theme was perfect. Using Gen's brief, we mocked up a sample cupcake and based our cake decorating and sugar sculpting tutorial on the sample. The 17 girls, ranging from four to 12 years of age, were so excited and couldn't believe they would be making their own version of what they saw.

The girls were so focused, attentive, enthusiastic and most importantly, they LOVED it. They themselves were in awe of their own creations. After our step-by-step tutorial, the girls were able to create their own masterpieces using the skills they had learnt from the session. It was amazing to see how none of these girls had prior experience with fondant before (other than eating it!) and how creative they could be when given some instruction. We were sooooooooo impressed! Here are some of the gorgeous designs they came up with.

I can't describe the feeling... watching the kids' eyes light up when they were free to experiment on their own, their fingers racing and not being able to catch up with all the ideas they had in their head, watching the dads relaxing on the couch deep in conversation with a coffee cup in hand, the mums snapping away with their mobile phone cameras... this is how parties are meant to be!!

We were so pleased to receive a text message from Genevieve's mum after the party. She said that this was the "first time it's taken less than 30 minutes to clean up after a party!" and that the birthday girl said that it was the "BEST PARTY EVER".

If you would like to read more about our Cake Me! kids adventures, please subscribe to our blog!

“A very happy birthday girl and a very happy mum. Genevieve said that this was “the best party EVER” and I agree. Liz had the girls enthralled and entertained for two hours with very impressive and creative results.”

— Diem

Our new venture... Cake Me! kids

We are soooo excited to announce that we are expanding Cake Me! and launching our new venture Cake Me! kids.

Cake Me! kids is a brand new concept, professionally teaching kids to sugar craft and decorate amazing cakes at birthday parties, utilising the skills and expertise of our Cake Me! team. This idea came about when planning for our own children's birthday parties this year. We love inviting friends over to celebrate our birthdays but at the same time, it can be extremely stressful thinking about how to entertain all the children. Then on the actual day of the party, things can get a bit hectic, running around ensuring that the guests are fed, and the children are entertained. Sometimes we get so busy that we don't even get to enjoy the festivities, which in our opinion, defeats the purpose of having a party in the first place.

We are often asked if we run cake decorating classes or if we could hold sugar sculpting tutorials, however with two children of our own, we have not had the time. Having professionally worked with children and young adults for over twelve years, and seeing how our own kids both LOVE craft and cake decorating (our daughter helped decorate her own cake when she was just two years old, and our son was playing with fondant at eighteen months old), it ALL CLICKED.

Cake Me! kids is about teaching crafty kids to create their own masterpieces and eat it too! It takes the stress out of entertaining for the hosts, and most importantly, it is so much fun for all the guests. Professional cake decorating and sugar sculpting tutorials will be tailored to the age of the guests and tailored to the theme of the party. All cakes, cake decorating tools and materials will be supplied, so the hosts wont need to prepare anything. Guests will be able to take home their own Cake Me! apron, Cake Me! bakers hat... and their own boxed Cake Me! creation.

If you're planning your next birthday party and wondering how to entertain your guests, contact us now :)

Please subscribe to our blog if you would like to find out how our new venture goes!