Sweetcheeks at the Logies!

Did you see? All those Celebrities on the red carpet at the Logie Awards ? All the Hair and Makeup, all the suits … and the CUSTOM GOLD LOGIE COOKIES ?!!! We were so excited when we were asked by Celebrity and Hollywood Gifting to be part of the gifting for the 2016 Logie Awards, and we wanted to tell you all, but we were sworn to secrecy. It all happened in April/May and this was also when I was up in Port Douglas, getting ready to be married! So it was a hectic time here at Sweetcheeks Cookies and Cakes. Lucky I have a small, yet amazing team around me, and we got all 250 hand painted Gold Logie Statue Cookies created, boxed, and sent off ready to go into the boxes with all the other goodies.

The nominees, presenters and performers were the lucky recipients of these gift boxes, and inside included;

• A TV WEEK Gold Logie Statue Cookie from Sweetcheeks Cookies and Cakes
• Deluxe entry into IceBar Melbourne
• Resort Entry, 1 hour lesson and lift pass at Mt Baw Baw Alpine Resort with snow gear and ski or snowboard hire fromMt Baw Baw Ski Hire
• Mi Gear ExtremeX MGE WI-FI 108OP Action Camera
• Actiiv Fitband Activity Tracker
• A flight with Melbourne Star: taking in amazing views of Melbourne.
• An Escape Hunt racing against the clock to escape in 60 minutes and solve historic mysteries
• Chocolate Bar New York chocolate gift box
• Secrets-shhh Sterling Silver Duo Pearl Stud Earrings
• Buckle 1922 cufflinks
• Eureka Skydeck experience
• Lashes by MODELROCK
• An Evolis 6-8 week hair care treatment
• A teeth whitening pen from Hi Smile
• A MINXX long wearing lipstick
• A Karma Wellness Water
• Wine Stoppers Australia champagne popper
• Aviation Hydration advanced hydrating moisturiser
• Short Story Happy Pills containing inspirational quotes
• Our friends at Bondi Chai’s Chai latte (SERIOUSLY YUM!)
• A Simone Perele $100 gift voucher
• An Alpha Kerri skincare gift set including an Anti Cellulite Sugar Body Scrub.

Some of the presenters at this year’s Logies included: Dave Hughes, Julia Morris, Megan Gale, Eddie Perfect, Amanda Keller, Matt Preston, Peter Helliar, Eddie McGuire, Rebecca Gibney, Chrissie Swan, Ray Martin, Dannii Minogue and Richard Wilkins – these guys have all had our cookies in their hot little celebrity hands!

So I’d like to know – if you could accompany ANY celebrity to the 59th TV WEEK Logie Awards 2017 – who would it be? Tell me in the comments below. You never know – you just might get what you wish for 😉  

– Danielle x

Easter Recipe

It’s Easter Time! And don’t we know it! There are chocolate eggs, bunnies, footballs, bilby’s and even chocolate babies (freaky!) in stores everywhere right now! But what if you want to create something yourself this Easter? What if you want something a little different…. Never fear, Sweetcheeks is here with a totally awesome Easter Recipe! I’m sharing with you my favourite coconut ice – Easter style, baby! Let’s get into it …

What You Need:

• 3 1/3 cups of Pure icing sugar

• 4 1/4 cups of Desiccated Coconut

• 1 tin of sweetened condensed milk (395ml)

• Gel Food colouring (your choice of colour/s) Wilton or Americolor are both available widely from cake decorating shops or online (if all else fails, ebay has everything you could ever want for absolutely anything!)

• And of course a LARGE bowl

• Spatula or wooden spoon if you’re old school (and I love that about you!)

•A cake tin or baking dish of some sort, and use baking paper to line it.

Easter Recipe Method:

We start by sifting our pure icing sugar into the large bowl – TRUST me on the ‘large’ do not try this in your cereal bowl!

Then we pop all the desiccated coconut on top of that

Then mix with your spatula/wooden spoon (see? SUPER easy!)

Tip in the condensed milk (use your spatula to get aaaall that sweet goodness out)

And mix together with your spatula or super cool retro wooden spoon

Keep mixing, and mixing and mixing, you’ll feel like it’s too dry – but it’s not! I promise…. Once it looks like the picture below – you can switch to your hands, yep get messy, get in there, and knead it like you would a cookie or bread dough.

Now we’re going to cut our coconut ice in half and colour one half of it. Traditionally, coconut ice is white and pink, but today, we’re using yellow (don’t ask me why, but when I think of a colour for easter, it’s yellow – maybe little chicks?) You only need 2 drops of this gel food colouring, and then knead it until the colour is evenly distributed.

Press your yellow coconut ice layer into your lined tin, then use a smaller tin or anything else flat, to flatten it out.

Repeat with your white layer on top

And – pop it in the fridge for 1 hour.

Once you remove your coconut ice from the fridge, you can easily lift it up with your baking paper lining – then with a hot knife (run it under hot water then make sure you dry the water off) cut your coconut ice into squares or rectangles – whichever you’d prefer – viola!

Now – if you’re like me and like to experiment a little, you can roll out the coconut ice like cookie dough – cut out easter egg shapes, and looky here what you can make! These are so cute wrapped up in cellophane for little Easter gifts for friends, family, teachers, colleagues, the love of your life, or your postman! Anyone and everyone will love these sweet treats and the fact that you made them yourself – You’re Welcome xx

Danielle is a third generation baker/decorator based in Melbourne’s South East.
Creating cakes, cookies (which are shipped Australia wide) and other desserts from Weddings, Birthdays, Christenings, corporate functions and beyond. Her clients include Tiffany & Co, Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo, French Connection and more. To see more of Danielle’s work head to www.sweetcheeks.com.au, or www.instagram.com/sweetcheekscookiesandcakes.

Tis the Season to Get Baking!

Well… at least it is in the Sweetcheeks Cookies and Cakes world!

We’ve been busily baking away and creating lots of delicious treats for our clients all over Australia – and I thought now was the perfect time to share some of those treats with you!

As you may already know, at SCC, we’re lucky enough to work on a huge variety of orders; from sweet birthday cookies and wedding cakes to huge corporate orders. Lately we’ve been working on lots of corporate orders for clients who are looking to sweeten up the festive season!

We’ve been busily rolling, cutting and decorating cookies for our friends at The Herald Sun who ordered 3,000 custom cookies for 500 lucky recipients. We had the boxes custom made to perfectly fit the cookies in the colour that The Herald Weekly Times wanted. These boxes were then wrapped in their personalised ribbon before being delivered to HWT who then shipped the cookies out to each recipient.

3,000 must be the number of the season, as we’ve also been hard at work making 3,000 custom Tiffany & Co cookies for their 7 stores around Australia! They had their first delivery on December 1st and we’ve just delivered their second order on December 15th, ready to give to lucky customers who have purchased their beautiful pieces for Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like this gingerbread man has quite the life, hanging out in his coffee ‘jacuzzi’! He’s just one of the many gingerbread in the gingerbread army we created for French Connection’s Chadstone and Melbourne Central Stores. The stores also hired a barista for the big event to make delicious coffees to accompany our cookies!

Click on the image to open the box!

Forever New opened up their new Eastland Store in Melbourne just in time for Christmas and ordered 200 cookies to sweeten up the celebration!

But it’s not all about Christmas; we’ve also been making plenty of cakes for December babies! We recently created not one, but two Alice in Wonderland Themed Birthday Cakes for a first birthday celebration! The little birthday girl had two celebrations; one on the Thursday and a second on the Saturday, and celebrated both with cake!

Both cakes had six layers of cake inside to represent six of the flavours Alice tastes in the “Drink Me” drink. Whilst there wasn’t a “turkey cranberry” flavoured cake,  there was Choc Cherry Ripe Mud Cake, Vanilla, Red Velvet, Buttercake, Lemon and Caramel Mud Cake! All filled and frosted with delicious dark chocolate ganache.

Copper and metal tones are very much on trend at the moment, however, I’ve been loving them for years! For the last six or so years, I’ve loved all things copper and rose gold and have a nice little corner of the house that’s decorated with rose gold and copper tones.

I couldn’t resist adding a festive touch with these copper Christmas trees from Myer – and a lovely SCC client gave me these beautiful roses! Oh, and how can you forget Boss (my black French bulldog from Target) who keeps watch over everything!

Copper tones have also been used in many of our cakes and cookies lately – and what better way to celebrate Christmas than with some delicious cookies! This Copper and Ivory Christmas Cookie Set has been a SCC customer favourite this year!

But what about next year?! As 2016 is fast approaching, we’re already thinking about what’s ahead for Sweetcheeks Cookies and Cakes – and it looks like next year will be another sweet one!

We’ve already been talking to companies such as zenue.co (the AirBNB/Uber equivalent for venues!) and are their exclusive partner for all things cakes, cookies and sweets for their corporate and wedding functions!

We cannot wait to show you what we have in store for the new year – but you’ll have to wait for another post for that! 😉

Sweetly Yours;
Danielle

Sweetcheeks Barbie Cake

Ever since Barbie was ‘born’ on March 9th of 1959, as Barbara Millicent Roberts (who knew she had a whole name?!) we’ve seen her take on so many roles – over 150 actually! The creator of the Barbie doll, Ruth Handler, once said – “My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices” That’s why Barbie has been a rockstar, a registered nurse, an aerobics instructor, police officer, heck she even – as an astronaut –  went to the moon 4 years before Neil Armstrong! And in the 90’s Ran for U.S President, before any female candidate had ever made it onto the presidential ballot! Barbie represents serious girl power.

Now let me know tell you about another woman with serious girl power – Nelli Huié. The girl power gods certainly were looking down on me the day I came across her stunning and ‘out of the box’ work. Nelli Huié is a Melbourne photographer… gosh that doesn’t even come close to explaining the magic of what she does, but you’ll see that for yourself anyway. Nelli was born and raised in Sydney, just like me! Same same!!! but different…. she was a teen model and after a few years, became far more interested in what was going on on the other side of the camera lense. She picked up an old camera (A Minolta x-700 for those of you who know your cameras) and the rest is history! And a damn fine history she is creating!
Nelli has been known as Melbourne’s top photographer for Burlesque in particular, for the last 5 or so years – she’s incredibly sought after in that world, and always loved it, but does have a firm belief that you shouldn’t need the flashy costumes, props and stunning models to deliver a fabulous image (though they certainly help I’m sure!) This lead to Nelli honing her skills, experimenting with lighting techniques, with out of the box ideas, and has brought her to the photographer she is today and why I jumped at the chance to be able to work with this amazing woman.

Let me show you why Nelli Huié is the best photographer in Melbourne right now ….

Such creative photography, such beautiful images! and of course you can check out more here.

So, to my shoot … I got in touch with Nelli, as I’d heard she was known for some really ‘out of the box’ headshot/portraits for those in creative jobs/businesses, and I was really intrigued by this. Nelli came back to me after checking out my website and seeing my work, that I’m a third generation cake baker/decorator etc and said – “You know those old school Barbie Cakes ? Wouldn’t it be great if we made YOU into a Barbie doll cake”? Um YEAH it would!

Hellooooo Sweetcheeks Barbie!

Rebecca Romanin was my Makeup and Hair Artist on the day (she works with Nelli a lot) – and these girls together – what. a. team.

You can get in touch with Nelli via her website and like her on Facebook.

Do yourself a favour and also check out Rebecca’s website and Facebook.

So tell me in the comments below – which Barbie are you? Accountant barbie? Musician Barbie? Cake Pop Queen Barbie? Photographer Barbie?

It’s Easter!!

It’s Easter time!!! And although I’ve had orders for Birthday cakes, baby shower cookies, Christening Favours, Corporate Cookies, and just about every other event or occasion other than Wedding cakes – they’ve all been Easter themed! My buddy, The Easter Bunny will be so pleased everyone is embracing this time of year.

I remember as a kid, Easter was another family get together (I LOVED any reason for my whole family to meet up, Grandparents, Aunties and Uncles, cousins – omg I LOVED my cousins to bits and really looked up to my cousin, Naomi, in particular…. I still do, really) Like Christmas, we’d have it at a different house each year so as to share in the chaos and clean up – even though everyone helped with both anyway – but my most fond memories are the years we had it at ‘Biddy’s’ house. Biddy is what we called out Great Grandmother. Biddy had this awesome split level house In Sylvania, Sydney, with a spiral staircase down to the lower level – to this day I’m obsessed with spiral staircases, especially really tiny narrow ones like hers – I would play for hours, right there on those steps. Biddy had a beautiful sunroom off the back of the top level of the house, and a backyard that was just simply amazing, there was almost a cliff to get down to it – rough stone stairs (which, as a kid, I truly believe they were naturally formed – how lucky! she had nature build in a staircase for her!!) and so you can just imagine the Easter Egg hunts, the hiding places were endless. In fact now I’m thinking back on it… the ‘grown ups’ had at least a good 2 hours to themselves, while we were looking for the eggs, and playing with the cousins. Nicely played grown ups 😉

As I became a teenager, we just kind of stopped doing the family thing – everyone got so busy…. maybe it was just that the grown ups didn’t get those 2 hours to themselves anymore 😉 When I have a family I’m definitely bringing it back!

What about you? Did you/do you have any family tradtions, any family memories at Easter? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below – let’s get all warm n fuzzy like the Easter Bunny!