2012 is going to be a busy year. Hopefully, we’ll move into a new house before spring ( fingers crossed) and lots work and travelling planned. I will also be putting up a few new tutorials next month.You can also let me know what tutorials you would like to see. Have a wonderful Christmas and hope 2012 brings in a lot of good health and happiness to all.

I did tweak the recipe a bit. Here’s what I changed.

1. Fifteen minutes wasn’t enough to ‘blind bake’ the crust. It took me about 25 minutes to get it nice and golden brown. Check the crust at about 15 minutes if you need more time.

2. Since I like subtle flavors, I used 80 ml instead of 120 ml of lemon juice and it was perfect.

3. I didn’t add the whipped cream since he tart was rich enough.

Here are the videos:

You will need to make this a couple of days ahead or at least the previous day since it needs time to dry.

You will need:

1. Two printed pictures of a guitar coloring page of your choice. You can easily find it on google images. Make sure that you resize it before you print. In the example I have resized it to 5 cm.
2. Fondant : Lemon size base color ( I’ve used blue since I already made a red guitar) . A little bit of black, white and grey.
3. Tylose powder( omit if you are using gumpaste)
4. Craft knife
5. Silver dust powder
6. Brush for the dust powder
7. A palette knife
8. Fondant extruder/ garlic press ( omit if you don’t want to make strings)
9. Edible glue  or water
10. Rolling pinMethod:

1.Mix some tylose powder with all the colors and set aside.

2.Cut out the outline of the entire guitar from one the coloring picture. With the other picture, cut out the fret board  and white part of body ( Refer to picture)

3. Roll out the base color of fondant to about 1/6th of an inch thick. Place the cut out of the guitar on the fondant, making sure that it doesn’t move and carefully cut out the outline. Be careful not to stretch the fondant.

Tip: If the fondant tends to stretch too much , just leave the rolled out fondant to air out a bit and then cut.

4.Remove the paper and then smooth the sides with your finger. Carefully lift it with your palette knife and set aside.

5. Take a bit of white and black fondant and cut out the other parts of the guitar as below

6. Place the parts of the guitar on the base body and and then if you feel that the placement is alright, glue it with some water ( just a drop will do) or edible glue.

7.With the back of your craft knife, gently make indents for the frets. Try and get at least 12-14 frets( sections on the black part) . If possible , put  little white dots on the 3rd , 5th, 7th and 12th fret. ( Just a little detail that makes it more real)

8. Now to add some details. Make small parts from grey. 6 tiny balls for the tuning keys, 1 part to hold the strings and 3 small parts for the body. Please refer to the pictures below to see how to make them. Remember that they are really small, smaller than a green pea.

9. Use the fondant extruder or a garlic press to make the strings. (You can leave out the strings if you want) .

10. Place all the grey parts on a kitchen paper and dust them silver to give it a lovely shine.

You can’t place all six strings on the guitar and thats why I have some broken strings .Place all the parts on the guitar and its done!!! Leave it to dry over night or better for 24 hours and place it upright as a cake topper.

NOTE: Ooops!  I forgot to add the volume and tone buttons( the three little white ones) to the blue guitar. Refer to the picture of the red guitar at the top of this page if you’d like to add the detail.

You will need:

1. A microwavable coffee cup

2. A small whisk ( that fits in the cup) or a fork

3.Powdered sugar – 2 tablespoons

4. Cocoa powder – 2 tablespoons ( replace with hot chocolate mix if you don’t like the dark chocolate taste)

5. Vanilla extract – Just 2 drops or if you have measuring spoons, half of 1/4 teaspoon

6. 1 small egg

7. and of course, a microwave…:p

8. Whipped cream or some chocolate sauce as topping if required.

You might be thinking that I left out the flour, well, there’s no flour in this recipe. Try it out!

Method:

Simple! Dump everything into the mug and then whisk away until you get rid of the lumps.Make sure that you scrape the bottom of the mug when mixing. 

Pop it in the microwave and bake  it for a minute on high. Don’t doubt the minute! That’s all it takes to  make this. Over baking it will ruin it! And that’s it. Its ready!!

I wanted a picture of the cup in the microwave but couldn’t get a good shot without my hand ( and camera ) visible.

And the result: 1 cup of chocolate cake and one very happy chocoholic!!!! . You can also add some whipped cream or some chocolate sauce to this. I like it just as it is. Let me know what you think.

So here’s a quick way of getting the marble effect on fondant

You’ll need:

1. Fondant . For the example I ‘ve used fondant the size of a large lemon. The fondant Has to be soft.

2. A rolling pin

3. Fondant color of your choice

4. Two  ice-cream sticks or two butter knives . Toothpicks will not work in this case.

Step 1:

Make sure that the fondant is nice and soft. You can either pop it in the microwave for about 10 seconds on high or knead it until its soft. Roll your fondant into a sausage and flatten it slightly.

Step 2: Using the first ice-cream stick, put small drops of food color on the fondant about 1/2 cm apart. If its a large piece of fondant, then about 1 cm apart.

Step 3: With the other stick, gently push the color into the fondant about 1/2 way through. Make sure that you don’t push it all the way through. The reason I use two different sticks is that if you need more color, then dipping the fondant covered stick into the color tub will ruin the color that’s already in the tub.

Step 4: Fold the fondant over and roll it out a little. Don’t worry if you get some color on the rolling pin. DO NOT KNEAD.

Step 5: FOLD and roll it out again a few more times until you start seeing the right shade that you require. Remember : FOLD AND ROLL. It took me just 3 folds to get the right shading that I needed.

Hope you find this useful. This is how I marbled and covered the cake below.

1. Take a lemon size ball of fondant of any color of your choice. This is a good way to use leftover fondant.Take the number of brushes that you might use regularly.

2. Flatten the fondant slightly and  make indents with your paintbrushes about 40% of the way.

Make your that you use the center of the brush to make the indents and the bristles should be about  1/4 cm above the mat.

3.Remove the brushes and let the fondant dry for at least two days. Once dried solid, it can go into your box of tools where you can’t lose them. I find it very useful.

Have a look at her website : http://www.misspebble.nl/

Soon I may start giving english workshops at her cake studio and I do hope that it works out. Check out this wonderful cake that Miss Pebble won First Place at the ‘Dutch Cake Event’ . The theme was Bollywood. I absolutely move the little edible posters at the bottom of the cake. The flavor of the cake was also amazing. Very ,Very Indian. Coconut with a hint of cardamon. PLEASE DO NOTE THAT I HAVE NOT MADE THIS CAKE. THIS CAKE HAS BEEN MADE ENTIRELY BY MISS PEBBLE.

The theme this year is ‘Fairy Tales’ and I will blog our progress maybe in a new blog. I will not tell you our idea but will post pictures of the evolution of the cake. The cake is going to leave you ‘confused’ and hopefully will impress the judges.

One tier covered in Fondant. It is going to have some interesting characters on them .

Two more tiers ‘dirty iced’ with royal icing.

Wish us luck and do check  back to see our progress.