What a week!

Last weekend my husband and I attended the 101FM Live and Local Logan business show.
The Albert and Logan came out to my cake studio and I posed for the front cover( in an Ace Ventura Pet Detective cover !)
I attended several networking workshops and had a varied time, what I mean by that  it was a bit of an eye opener.
I listened to amazing inspiring speakers and attended the Fridays morning breakfast network meeting.
I sat at the back of the marque during the breakfast and a young woman stood up and spoke about cancer and how it had affected her family.She told us of her son that had passed away to cancer at such a young age and told us of how she set  up a charity, I could just about hear what she was saying as the  speakers could have been louder and the 3 tables behind were non stop chattering.With sevearal people glancing back at them , the chatting just continued in the end I got up and asked them could they keep their chatting down , there response was that they could not hear anything themselves.I replied we can just about hear if they were to be quiet!
Why do people bother attending these events and chatter through them? Why not just go to the Coffee club?if then want to have a chin wag and a bite to eat? That lady deserved for that room to all be quiet, where is the respect? Okay rant over!

I also attended a talk by John  Anderson of Contiki tours empire a wonderful inspiring ongoing story and I bought his book,Only 2 seats left.  A funny wonderful and inspiring read.John received a standing ovation at the end of his talk.
Friday evening I went home and baked just under 400 cupcakes by 1.30am they were decorated and boxed and ready for Saturdays show! My 2 wonderful apprentices,Matt and Adam assisting!

We raised just under $700 for the flood appeal and I also sold boxes of 24 to the various companies that attended.
I met a real lovely group of guys that were filming small businesses and we had to film  for a minute( in my case or two!) and my husband answered the visitors  questions with a knowledge that even dazzled me!
He explained all about  the different classes , the different levels and  what they will get up to and how pleased they will be when they leave with their finished cakes ! He is now back in my good books after The Junior Masterched incident( for those that know wink wink!)

Anyway I met some fantastic businesses and a lovely Logan Mayor who was very thought provoking and inspired me  and best of all I had a message on my answerphone on Friday afternoon from Paul the producer of the Great South East Show  that the cup cake class that they recorded will be aired Sunday 3rd of April Wa hoo!

I have also received nominations for Quest business achiever awards so if you would like to vote for me can you click onto the link below, thank you and have a really good week.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.questawards.com.au%2F&h=88fce

New Cake Classes

Just to let you know there are new classes for April, May and June. Including kids Easter cookies and kids Easter cupcake workshops, Mothers day cake class listed for the Friday, before Mothers day. I have also listed baking macaroon towers and croquembouche towers too.
visit http://www.contemporarycakes.com.au/ and click onto the cake classes.

For all who know me , I am really passionate about my cakes and it has been wonderful to receive emails and letters from my recent students, that have attended my classes, thanking me.
I know some of you are a little nervous when you arrive for your class but as soon as you enter my cake studio  and as I say Welcome to my office! the fun begins.

My classes are small, why because that is how I like them!
 I could have groups of 10 students and squeeze you in like sardines and I know plenty of cake schools that do but my cake room is large and spacious and could fit 10!
However I want  every student to walk away pleased with their cakes and most importantly, have found a new passion in what they now do. So if you like my classes please do not be afraid to mention it on the cake forums,discussion boards and to your friends on Facebook.

Many students that I have met through my classes or at my local library demonstrations ask me how they can  eventually have their own business from home so I have listed the following workshops to help them to do so.

Setting up your home based cake business.
Are you a cake hobbyist at the moment and wanting to know how to become a home based licensed cake operation? 3 hour workshop Cost $275
Registration and licensing requirements, the varying council requirements and Enviromental health and food licensing. Regardless if you are in Logan, Brisbane or in Perth the food licensing laws are all national, the various coucils have different requirements. Public liability what do you really need. What are the costs involved, food safety supervisors certificate and organising meetings with council planning and the EHO.All of this is covered in this 3 hour workshop. Please check calendar schedule for listings. Please note if you rent your home, a home based business is not possible.



Running your own cake business 3 hour workshop Cost $275

In this workshop we will discuss many topics including, cake pricing, quotes, consultations, advertising, marketing .What extras can give your business the edge from all of the others.
We will discuss delivery and transporting cakes, public liability, quotes deposits and balances. You will be given a folder containing valuable information to help run your cake business.
Let me share with you my six years of Australian life and starting a new business in a new country.

I have had a few busy weeks with baking and fundraising at the same time.A few cancellations due the floods and weddings rebooked for later dates.For those still recovering from the floods I wish you all well and look forward to creating your cakes in sunnier times.

I have been busy creating quite a few novelty cakes and will post a few of my latest creations.

Fundraising for the Floods

The last few weeks the Cake Gossip group has been busy with baking cupcakes, we baked 450 +
Jen Yap, Jenny and Hannah Wegner,Kellie  and Sarah Ivory and Tiffanee and Brittany  Coombes and Adam my handsome son ( he never reads my blogs anyway!) all mixed, spooned, baked and decorated one way or another beautiful rainbow swirls of cupcakes.
We then delivered them direct to some of the flood victims that were being housed temporarily at Warwick show ground at Ipswich.The weather was lovely as we left Daisy Hill but as we got closer we had  torrential rain , strong winds and as we approached Ipswich  a storm came through and our visibility to drive the cars was almost nil. We stopped several times as the roads had huge pot holes and I could not see the road markings! We eventually found the venue and delivered all the cupcakes and  I realised then we were just scratching the surface of this huge life altering terrible experience to the families we saw.


We all wanted to help directly again so we put our ideas together and Tiffanee and Jenny thought about baking and selling cupcakes to local businesses.We then realised some businesses in fact all businesses have been affected in some way and so this might be putting more strain on them, by phoning around and asking them to buy the cupcakes, so we thought about having a cupcake stall, I mean how hard can this be with the amount of sausage sizzles every weekend at lots of stores?

Well our first  point of call was at our local shopping centres.The cake gossip group are all cake makers based in  and around Springwood, Beenleigh,Shailer park and southside of Brisbane.
So we called the Logan Hyperdome shopping centre and  Springwood Centro shopping centre and they all said no as it was a  conflict of interests as they had cupcake, cake shops and cafes.

I contacted Harvey Norman and they said yes as did  Officeworks and eventually Bunnings agreed but we were looking for a busy indoor and air conditioned place( because of the cakes !) okay because we wanted to be cool!

Then I thought of contacting my  favourite store Ikea ( who are not my favourite store now!) and they said no as they have allready helped  with donations.

Kellie contacted Riverlink Shopping centre at Ipswich , which had been flooded and  was under water, less than 2 weeks ago and yet was having a fund raising day with facepainting and activities and said a big Yes to us Wahooooo! With a bit of paperwork and uping my public liability to 20 million its easier to write the number  then work out all the zeros! we had a venue! and yes they have coffe shops, cake stores and cafes too!


So On Friday Jenny turned up at 7.30am ( for those who know me I do not do early mornings and yes I know half of Australia have allready been awake for a few hours! I am more of a night owl! ) (That was a hoot!) and we got making the cupcakes and with a production line of baking and then Kellie and Jen arrived after the school run we went into baking and decorating mode. We spend almost the whole day and by 4pm the cupcakes were all boxed up ready for the next day. We made vanilla cupcakes and chocolate chip.

Albert and Logan came out to write about what we were doing and take a photo see link below

Click Here for paper article

A BIG Thank You.

We had donations of beautiful cupcake boxes from http://www.packagingplace.com.au/ thank you to Gary and his wife for delivering and donating them.( They are relocating to bigger and better premises which is great news.)
and our donation of yummy chocolate from Jimele  http://www.jimele.com.au/

Driving through Ipswich it still looked  like they had a lot more cleaning and repairs  to do and you could see the level where the water had risen.We arrived at 8.30am Riverlink Shopping centre, the escalators were still not working or the lifts and my husband Matt and son Adam and I were met with a lovely warm welcome from one of the security girls( must have been all the boxes of cupcakes?) and we met with the other girls, Jenny and her husband Lindsay  Kellie and her husband Don and daughter Sarah, we all  got busy setting up the tables.What beautiful cupcakes and they all sold within 2 hours.We raised $1220 what a beautiful result.

We met  lots of people that were blown away, when they found out that we had travelled from Springwood to help raise funds and it was going direct to the flood affected.We explained all our local shopping centres could not help and so we called further afield and we were all very pleased to help.

This shopping centre had been under water, the town and it surrounding areas flooded and yet a few weeks later was fundraising! and all the local residents came out to support this and they themselves had been terribly affected and so  it was really good to be a  part of that.

Today Kellie and I went and purchased with the money raised, 3 lovely fridge freezers for the Lockyer Valley flood victims, from our cupcake fundraiser on Saturday. They will be delivered to the families free of charge from The Good Guys.


What can I do next?

I am planning on a cake decorating fundraiser so that we can all meet up raise money and further our cake decorating skills all in one day and  meet with other like minded cake decorators. All monies will go to the flood appeal, not just a percentage but 100% I will be posting more info soon on this blog and on facebook.

 I like this quote I read recently  "Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever."


Have a good week xxxx

Brisbane Floods

To everyone that reads this blog I hope you are all safe and dry.What has happened over the last few weeks and over the last few days has been heartbreaking, to see on the news.

My home was flooded a week before Christmas and only ankle deep in water but just seeing the house like this I burst into tears and there within a few minutes was my lovely neighbour and family with towels helping to clear the water and clean up.I do not live near any rivers but the amount of rain and being at the bottom of a sloping rd , the drainage from the house could not cope.

This is insignificant to what is happening now and so I urge you to make a donation to the Queensland floods.
You can make a donation to the Premier's Disaster Relief Fund by phoning 1800 219 028 or visiting

www.qld.gov.au/floods/
or Donate by phone 0600 – 2300 7 days on 1800 219 028

My cakefriends and I want to help and so we are having a bake off of cupcakes to take to the various shelters,this coming Monday, if you are wanting to donate your time to help, please contact me on 33882453

Happy New Year for 2011

Happy New Years wishes to you all.

I have just finished teaching a 3 day workshop watching, beautiful 3 tier square mad hatters be created. I have just uploaded a new cake class video with filming of the class and my new cake studio.Yes it is finally up and running, with thanks to Logan Council.This is viewable on my cake classes page of my website.


I have some great news to share,

Laurel Edwards from the Great South East show filmed a baking cup cake class with me in my new cake studio with her filming crew, producer and my great supporting friends, we all  had a fantastic day of filming and you may see another class filmed later on next year! Laurel also loves to bake and I could tell from the minute she arrived in the class she was going to enjoy herself.They were only  scheduled to be here for a few hours but they ending up filming until 3pm and leaving with a goody box of cupcakes! no surprise there! The camera man was impressed with the cake studio and the lighting so you never know whats around the corner.I used to send dvd recordings of my cake decorating to my Mum and she said I should be on the tely with my cakes and I said to her what are the chances of that ever happening? So maybe she is organising a few things up there in heaven??????

My friends,Barb,Tiffanee, Jenny, and Jen were there to help me with the preparation the day before and I will always remember those days with great memories.The show will air sometime in April 2011 on a Sunday and it will be  cupcakes and bubbly  at my house and tv recording that afternoon of the show!

Christmas workshops at Logan Hyperdome library.

Just before Christmas  I taught 3 days of classes  with 2 days in a row at my local Hyperdome library.Both days had 2 classes the first being parent and children decorating cupcakes together and the second class Teenage cupcakes.
The attendees had to bring 4 cupcakes each and some had even got up early and baked beautiful cupcakes that morning.All the frostings and icings are provided by me and this year I decided to bring a Ronald McDonald"s House  collection box and I asked for  donations as I do not charge the libraries for any of the items and tools I provide  and I was pleased to see the collection box fill up at the end of the 2 days! so for those that attended well done and keep this beautiful creativity going.Thank you to Barbara  and my son Adam for assisting me on those days and for keeping the coffeeand the laughter  flowing!

The  2 teenager classes attendees, had there  names  placed in a raffle and Laurel  aged 16 who had just completed year 12 at Springwood High School, won the prize and attended a full days class baking cupcakes the following week with another group of eager cupcake bakers in my new cake studio.

There challenge this year was to bake 8 cupcakes, ganache cover with sugarpaste and they created a beautiful display of cupcakes on a decorated display board to take home.Beautiful results.


I was very pleased to have Waikay Lau photography attend a Childrens Christmas baking  class and photograph  the days events.His work can also be viewed at http://www.waikaylau.com/  and he also specialises in Weddings, portraits and event photography.

 His lovely wife Jen of A little slice of Heaven and children Ashley and Jordan were also enthusiastic participants of the class. I have attached a slide show of the photos and they capture the whole day and all the events from the beginning of the day to the end, some very beautiful photographs and the cast is not too bad too!There are over 500 shots so make yourself comfortable and be wowed at the photography!I may just use a few for my book!

The photos also include my very good friends,Tiffanee and her 3 boys,Zac, Jacob and Noah,
Jenny and her daughter Hannah, Michelle and daughters Amanda, Zoe, and son George, all available for commercials and films involving  yummy foods!

Happy New Year to you all.

Teenager Christmas cup cake class

Just a short blog, Logan Hyperdome library have places still left for the teenager cupcake classes this Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th .Please contact the library direct to book Telephone 3412 4120

Date: 14/12/2010 Start Time: 4:00 PM End Time: 6:00 PM  Attendee must be between the ages of 10 Years and 19 Years old.


Date: 15/12/2010 Start Time: 2:30 PM End Time: 4:30 PM  Attendee must be between the ages of 10 Years and 19 Years old.

Calling all budding junior masterchefs! Join in a fun, hands-on workshop on how to ice and decorate Christmas Cupcakes with local cake decorator, Jackie Thompson. Please bring your own 4 uniced cupcakes to the event and a box/ container  to take them home . Every attendee from both groups   also goes into a prize draw to win an additional lesson with Jackie .

December 2010
I hope you are all preparing for the Christmas season and making the most of your time with your loved ones.I have had a very busy couple of months and some very magical things happening, that will be in my next blog!

New cake classes and a new schedule are listed for 2011 in my cake class section so have a look.

Firstly I want to tell you about The Packaging Place www.packagingplace.com.au

Gary Lyon, the owner has available the extended tier cake boxes suitable for either 2 or 3 tier stacked cake, perfect for transporting   larger cakes to their venues.I was given his contact details by Kellie one of my students and I tried contacting him and failed several times and left messages for him. Eventually I spoke to him direct and we organised a meeting time.I explained that my family members bring the boxes over from the UK as they are readily available there to buy, but because of packaging size the postal service  will not post out to Australia.

I  showed him the box design and after several test designs and cups of coffee later, (with no cake  I might add! diet is going well!)  We had designed the prototype.The box retails for around $20 and you can buy an extender if needed. I still place a large square cake board in the base of the box and then some gripper matt, than place my cake in the box, if it is a round cake board , this stops any soft corners when carrying the box.The box is an 18 inch square box.

 It also  has an easy flap opening, so the box can slide open for easy access.The Packaging Place also sell cupcake carriers with insert cards in the cardboard boxes, much more suitable than the plastic cupcake  carriers, for our humid climate. The business also has a good selection of ribbon and variouus smaller cake boxes and cello bags and lovely packaging. Please mention my name if you place an order as I would like my next order for free!!!!!

Last weekend I attended a workshop organised by Mary Of Merrivale cakes and Crafts, Mary thank you and Sheryl for your kind hospitality.
The lovely, funny  and creative John Quai Hoi, from Melbourne, was the trainer for a two day workshop in Highfields. The workshop, coordinated by Merivale Cakes and Crafts, attracted twelve Brisbane and Toowoomba experienced decorators.
Whilst I was attending we got to use a product called Menina Flower paste which was a really fine processed flower paste and the best I have used in a long while.It also available  in some beautiful colours too. This was kindly donated by Filomenia and John the owners of  http://www.harttoheartcakes.com.au/  for further details of this great Australian made product and you do not need an ANB to purchase from them.


I have also been busy with more new cake  classes and the Chocolate panelled workshop which I cancelled in July was rescheduled in November and we had great results, photos to follow soon.
I have added some recent made cakes  photos to the right and as you can see a mixed selection of some beautiful cake designs, made.

Ronald Mc Donald House has 2 centres in Brisbane did you know? one based at Herston (Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital and Royal Childrens Hospital) and one at the Mater (south Brisbane) and also one in Townsville.
They offer a home, away from home for families of seriously ill children who are undergoing medical treatment at nearby hospitals.You can donate your time, subject to being checked, donate your skills, cooking, reading, donate  tinned and non perishable food,books,  toys and gifts to be wrapped for Christmas and childrens birthdays .I visit the home several times a month as all the cakes I make in a cake class, I  donate and are enjoyed by all!

It was only by chance I watched the  Millionaire programme a couple of years ago on television,  which featured one of the houses in Brisbane.This touched my heart because my son Adam was very ill when he was a baby and my husband and I had to travel to London several times to Guys Hospital and the Maudsley and we were fortunate to  stay at my Aunts house in London, otherwise we would have been financially drained by hotel bills for the weeks of tests and scans. Adam  is fine now, the only side effects is an untidy bedroom!!!!Apparently there is no cure!!!!


Please contact the Ronald MC Donald House Managers for further information.
RMH Herston Geraldine Donaghy 07 3257 0328

RMH Mater Vicki Meyer 07 3163 8606

RMH Townsvill Helen Tarttellin 07 47755600