OZ cake Adventure – issue 110 of C&S

Have you seen the article about my 2009 Australian cake adventure in Cakes and Sugarcraft Magazine this Quater – issue 100, Autumn 2010?

For me, one of the best perks with teaching and demoing overseas is that I learn so much from my audience and students. Every day on my  Australian trip I learnt something new, it’s really interesting how we all have the same problems with our sugar work but we all have different solutions. There are also lots of interesting facts to learn, I met people that as young children in the late 1940’s early 1950’s were covering cakes with sugarpaste, I didn’t realise that sugarpaste, or RTR (Ready to Roll) as it is known by many in Australia, dated back this far!

• In Australia they use different cake bases to us in the UK, they tend to favour the calorific but gorgeous chocolate mud cakes plus others such as orange and poppy seed, one I became partial too and it keeps well, a must for discerning cake decorators. I also sampled other interesting flavours such as white chocolate with macadamia nuts and a whisky cake!
• Gum tragacanth is difficult to find in Australia as can be CMC. It is not possible to buy it from abroad due to strict food importation laws so some of the cake decorators I met used a seaweed alternative apparently it’s not as strong but is better than nothing – we don’t know how lucky we are in Europe.
• Sugarpaste (RTR) is only available in white, red, green and black and the colours, from all accounts, are not always available. I guess that could partially explain why I saw a lot of white cakes with not many colours!
• Australian tablespoons are different, they are equal to 5 teaspoons, not 3 as in UK and US
• Sugarpaste is sold in 7kg boxes why? I was wondering what was this magic number, discovered it’s just a simple imperial conversion
• Cupcakes had hit Sydney big time, it almost seemed that around every corner there was a shop selling cupcakes!

Above is a sample of what I learnt from my trip, to read more about my travels – click on the pages