Spring time in Winter

After much arm twisting and strong suggestions, I finally agreed to (thank goodness!!!) tag along with my bestest buddy in the world to yet another interstate cake course this year.

This was a 2.5 day advanced sugar flowres course at Planet Cake. The teacher non other than the wonderful and super talented Greg Cleary of Sweetums. The man is the GOD OF SUGARFLOWERS. Man he's good!!!!

We left Melbourne in the wee hours of the morning of Friday 10th of July. It was freezing cold here in Melbourne. It was dark when we arrived at the airport, but by the time our flight took off the sun was shining. We arrived in Sydney at around 9.00am (I think that was the time). The sun welcomed us, and it was lovely and warm. I sat in the taxi, with the full sun on me, fealing like a happy fat seal lying on the beach.

Fran brought her own fruit cakes to the class, covered in marzipan. The cake is destined as a present for her friend, whose birthday is at the end of August. The things weighed a ton, but I couldn’t help her out, because I was struggling with my bag which weighed a little under a ton. Lucky for Fran her wonderful hubby, who works in Sydney during the week, took her clothes up with him and left them at the concierge for her to pick up when we checked in. Because of this she was able to fly with no luggage.

First day at PC, we filled and covered our cakes with ganache. The cake looked nice, it was a three colour marble mudcake.

After ganaching we made the centers for our tulips, all the parts for the lily of the valley, the sweet peas, and some buds. We also covered our boards with fondant and added the ribbon trim.

Class finished at around 4.00pm, but Fran and I stayed back gas bagging with Greg, Anna Maria (AKA Madhatter Queen) and Paris (owner of PC), until about 5.00pm.

We arranged to meet Greg afterwards for dinner. We went back to our hotel, and bummed around for a bit. Greg came to meet us at our hotel in the city at around 7.30, and we just walked down the street to an Italian restaurant (La Bora) that David (Fran's hubby) had recommended. We had a very delicious dinner, and great conversation, although Fran had lost 85% of her voice, and the place was packed to the rafters, and very bloody noisy!!! It was a wonderful night, and Greg had us mesmerized with his wonderful stories. The staff at the restaurant though, were very bizzarre and made the characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show seem tame and normal ;)

We got to sleep at around 11.30pm, woke up at 8.00am so that we could go and have brekkie at the hotel cafe before class. For some unknown reason, i was absolutely starving and had to have a full breakfast of eggs, toast and hash browns. Hmmmm Brekkie was yummy!!

We got to class and Greg had bought us a lovely treat. The night before he had been telling us about a place that he walked past every day on the way to Planet Cake, that had beautiful pastries. He bought us a delicious Lime and Almond tart, OMG, it was devine!!!

During our class we covered our cakes, and did all the petals for our flowers. We finished class at around 5.00pm on Saturday. It was a very busy day!!!

Back to the hotel again, to have a very quick shower and to get ready to go and see the Phantom of The Opera OMG can a girl have a better friend than Fran??? Nope I really really doubt it!!! She bought the tickets, so that I could go and see my very first musical. AND MAN!!! It was soooo wonderful, I was just in awe of it all. I loved it, loved it, LOVED IT!!!! Anthony Warlow is fabulous, and Alexander Lewis is gorgeous!!!

After the show, we went straight back to our hotel, we were very very tired, and tried to get to sleep ASAP because we had agreed with Greg that we would go into class at 8.00pm to get an early start on our cakes, we needed to be packed and checked out of the hotel by 7.00am.

Unfortunately, there was very loud music coming from a pub downstairs, and we couldn't get to sleep. We got into silly giggles, and I was having stupid laughing attacks over the silliest things. It was fun, but we didn’t fall asleep till waaaaay past midnight!!!!

It was very hard to get up at 6.00am, but we had no choice. Brekkie got us going a bit, and off to class again. We were lucky and managed to finish in time to head off to the airport at 1.15pm. We missed out on the group photo though.I was sooooo absolutely gobsmacked with my cake, I just could not stop staring at it. I just love it that much!!!

Greg is such a wonderful teacher. He wrote fantastic notes for us, and taught us so many great tricks. The fact that he was a florist and he has such a love for flowers really shows in his work, and his beautiful flower placement. Flower placement was something that I had no clue about before this class. I feel so privileged to know him.

Fran left her cake in Sydney to be shipped by courier, but because my cake was not destined for any particular event, I decided to just check it in as fragile luggage.

The flight was pleasant, but arriving into Melbourne, there was a lot of wind, and it was a bumpy sort of landing, quite scary really, but the pilotess got us home safe :)

Hubby, David(Fran's hubby) and D'arcy were all waiting for us at the airport. It was great to see them all.

My cake arrived in perfect condition. wooohooo!!!!
I would certainly do another class with Greg Cleary, at the drop of a hat!! No doubt about it.

A trip to Sydney, a course, and broken cakes.....

After months of planning and anticipation we finally set off for Sydney for our Planet Cake course. We were going to step into the hallowed ground of one of the best commercial celebration cake suppliers in Australia.
Planet Cake is in Sydney, about 800kms(500miles) from our home in Melbourne. Three of us set off on our trip, Fran, Min and I.
The course was a two day Mad Hatter course. Planet Cake (in my opinion) makes the best Mad Hatters in the world. Yeah, big claim, I suppose it’s all up to personal taste. I was never very thrilled with the original Mad Hatters they had in their website. They were rounded but the ones they’ve been doing lately have been simply amazing, sharp edges that seem impossible to achieve in cake, let alone fondant. The secret is their newly acquired Mad Hatter queen.
Anyway, so Fran and I booked all our stuff together, our other friend initially had other plans of going visiting some other friends, so she booked her stuff on her own.
We left Saturday morning on an 9.00am flight, arrived in Sydney at around 10.30am. We were expecting to get a nice brekkie on the flight, well at least I was. All we got were these dry biscuits and a cuppa tea. YIKES!!!
We arrive at our hotel, and manage to get connecting rooms, the lovely concierge upgraded our room so that we would be able to get connecting rooms. We had a view of the Opera House from our window.
Our class was to start at 1.00pm, and it was still early, so we went to the exec club to have some nibbles (Membership to the executive club was part of the room fees).
My husband was saying before we left that the course was just an excuse to get away with the girls. To tell the truth it was a little for me, as I NEVER expected to learn soooo much on a single weekend.
After our snacks we got a taxi to Planet Cake. Their shop front is small, but very lovely and neat. The front room, which I guess is where they must see their customers, has a table with chairs all around it, and it has lots of display cakes. Every single one simply amazing.
At the back the place is huge, we get taken to the class room, which is where they make their cakes. WOW, there was a 10 tier cake there which was supposed to be a replica of Jessica Simpson’s wedding cake. My goodness, I have NEVER in my life seen a cake that big in person. It took them quite a bit of working out to get it out and into the delivery van. It was pouring down with rain at the time. The thing had piping all over it, and 300 gumpaste roses, along with all these other filler bits and pieces!!! WOW, sooo much work.
A while later we meet the owner, Paris Cutler, what an absolutely lovely lady, and then we met the master Anna-Maria Roche, an Austrian pastry chef, who is the lady responsible for the most fantastic Mad Hatters I've ever seen.
So she shows us the sample cake she made. I'm thinking NO WAY am I going to be able to pull that off in two days!!!
Our tables were all set up with equipment, aprons and cake. We got started straight away. We finished at around 5.00pm, we cut up the cake, crumb coated it and left it ready for decorating the next day.
I left in absolute awe of the Anna-Maria’s talent. We went back to our hotel, had showers, and got ready for our dinner at Forty-One.
We were starving, and our booking wasn’t until 8.30pm, so we went back to the exec club for Hours’Dourves. That was a very silly thing to do!!!
We arrived at Forty-One a few hours later, wow it was gorgeous!!! It was on the 42nd Floor of the Chiffley Tower. Just outside the lift on the 42nd floor, there is a gorgeous Japanese garden. The restaurant had a wonderfu atmosphere, the service was fantastic, and the view was out of this world.
While waiting for our meals I was still dreaming of my cake back at Plane Cake!!! Hahahaha, I was a woman obsessed!!
We chose to have a tasting menu which had 6 courses. We thought that a tasting menu would be that, tasting, small serves. OMG, by the time we had gotten to the second course we were completely stuffed!!!! By the time I got back to the hotel at around midnight, I thought I may explode!! The food was delicious, but definetly too much and too rich!!
I spent most of the night tossing and turning in a strange bed (which although was very comfortable) was still not my own.
First thing the next morning we were off to have buffet brekkie at the exec club, it was delicious, but I am still wondering how it was I could fit in breakfast after that huge dinner. Ok so i’m a PIG.
We packed our stuff, checked out, and went back to Planet Cake to finish off our cakes. Anna-Maria showed us how to apply the stripes and how to assemble the cake. We were going well, until it got to the part of making a bow. I always make bows with gumpaste, and although i'm no expert at it, I can do it usually after one go. I made my bow about 7 times, and could not get the darn thing to work. In the end Anna-Maria finished off my bow.
Fran, made her cake with colors selected by D'arcy, the cake was to go to her art teacher that was retiring from school this week.

After lots of photos, we left Planet Cake, all happy in having learnt so much, for me it was so much more than I ever expected. Also, left in awe of how absolutely lovely every single person that worked there was. How giving and willing to share information they all were.
Anna-Maria is now my new cake idol, STEP OVER Mr. Ben-Israel, hehehehehe.
The lovely folks at Planet Cake did their best to package our cakes, which were on 18 inch boards and weighed a ton, for air travel. The air travel would prove NOT to be the problem.
We arrive at the airport, all feeling exhausted, after too much food, lots of work, and very little sleep. There is a girl on the queue for check ins, that is an utter COW, she treated us like trash. We got to the counter, and the guy was lovely, he managed to get us on to a different flight, a bigger airplane, where we'd be able to have a free seat each to carry our cakes. If the flight was not over booked, those seats were ours, and if they were booked the plane still had plenty of on board storage to fit our cakes.
We proceed to security, we have to leave our trolleys behind, and put our cakes on the conveyor belt so that they can go through an x-ray machine. ARGH!!!!Red alert, red alert, I put my cake down, after Fran's, Min was behind me, as soon as I put my cake down, some old bag screams at me to move my trolley out of the way, so I have to leave my hand bag, backpack with all my possessions and cake going through the x-ray machine, and I have to go and put away the trolley. COW!!I walk through the door, and I beep, I am made to take off my shoes, and put them in the x-ray machine!!! I walk through again and all is fine. I get to the other side and find Fran beside herself, they have broken her cake, the top tier has completely fallen off. I was fuming. I turn around, and my box is still in one piece, but I look at the conveyor belt and Min's cake is coming through UPSIDE DOWN. The security people couldn't give a rat's what happened to our cakes, they didn't apologise, and looked at us like it was OUR FAULT, that they were absolute morons and killed two cakes. Min says to me, is my cake the right side up, I look inside the box and see the bottom of her board. I turn it over, and somehow the cake is still in one piece, banged up and smooshed but the tiers are still together. Fran's is not. Fran has an argument with the security guard, who goes ballistic, Fran walks away. I am just amazed that these people can be so careless, complete and utter SCUMBAGS. I explain to the security guard that was going crazy, that from the moment we stepped into the airport we were treated like trash. No one cared.
Franny's cake ended up in the bin, I tried my best, while she was talking to her husband, to repair it, I managed to put it back together, but like she later explained, repairing it at home would be very difficult, matching the colors in order to patch it up would be almost impossible. The cake was in the trash!!! ARGH!!!!
From that moment on, the whole trip home was a pit of darkness. My heart was palpitating because I was just so full of pent up rage, I just couldn't get over it.
We had such a fantastic, out of this world weekend, just for a couple of absolute, no-life morons to ruin our whole weekend in a few seconds.
My cake managed to get here in our piece, but it's no joy to have it, when both my friend's cakes, which they put so much work and love into, were completely destroyed.
After this rant, and maybe a few letters to Qantas and the Sydney airport, I am going to move on from this, and try to remember only the wonderful time we had learning from a true master, the special time we had in Sydney, before the untimely end of two very beautiful cakes.
In the group shot, Fran's cake is the second from the left, the blue, green, yellow and white one with the white polka dot bow. Mine is the brown one, Min’s is the black and white one on the left.
Luckily as well, the very clever Franny, took her super dooper camera and took pics of all our cakes before leaving Planet Cake. At least we all have wonderful pictures.