Kitchen Tea Madness

I recently hosted a kitchen tea for my lovely friend Maree. She is my oldest friend and i have shared so much with her over the years. I was so delighted to be able to host the Kitchen tea for her and show her how much i loved and cared for her. I have three very close girlfriends, one of which is maree. The other two are Ange and Jo. We have been friends since highschool and are pleased to see that our friendship has grown from strength to strength through the years.

I have been eying of a cake design in the window of my local cake art shop of a Tiffany blue cake with utensils out of the top. I also recently brought the wonderful Planet Cake book and have been itching to do a novelty cake with fondant icing.

I have never actually done a proper fondant cake so i was excited but apprehensive

I baked the cake a week in advance and froze it so that i would be ready. I then made the ganache the night before. Planet cake advise to give 3 days to do a cake, so you bake it, ganache it and then ice it. I was really pleased with how my ganaching went and once it was firm it provided a great base to work with. The morning of the party i tinted the fondant light blue and followed the instruction from planet cake. I didn't have some of the tools the recommend but my clean hands (sans rings..)were still able to make it smooth and lump free.

I had found some miniature utensils to put in the top of my cake and made a bow from the planet cake book.

The finished product? I was pretty pleased with myself!!

The cake itself was a choc mud, and i think it tasted really yummy and moist. Although it was a shame to cut up the pretty cake.

I went a little baking crazy too and i made all of the food for the party. ALthough this was also partly due to cost. I looked around at some pre made quiches but i just felt that they were way too expensive for something i could easily make myself.

In the end i made the following food

- Miniture Buttermilk scones

- Cheese and ham quiches ( i will post this recipe next. It was just so easy but tasty!)

- Tuna/ Chicken bagettes

- Chocolate tarts (these i did cheat with, i brought ready made cases and used left over ganache)

- Berry and cream Tarts

A JoJo brought some frozen mini croissants and we covered those with cheese and bacon and baked them . Maree's lovely MIL brought along her famous caramel and cream pies.

YUM YUM!