Does compound chocolate leave you confounded? Are you curious about couverture chocolate? What IS the difference between them anyway? Chocolate is chocolate right? Well, no, not really...
Read on to find out the differences between them both, which is better to use in particular situations and exactly what tempering is and why it's important.
We often get asked if the food colourings we sell are safe for dogs. Making treats for (wo)man's best friend is becoming big business, so to save you from barking up the wrong tree, we dug a bit deeper to find out what you can use safely...
Get ready to shamrock and roll - St Patrick's Day is right around the corner. I think we are all in a-green-ment when I say that even if you're not Irish, it's a day we can all celebrate and make spud-tactular!
If you have ever looked at #cakeguts on instagram and thought to yourself "how do they get such even layers?" then this blog post is essential reading for you.
Are you looking to invest in a turntable but don't know which one will suit you? Or maybe it's time for you to upgrade that wonky, off centre turntable you have? Perhaps you are looking for a present for the die hard decorator in your life but don't know which one they'd love? Don't get your head in a spin! We can help!
You’ve seen us post on our socials about Katy Sue Designs but what is the hype all about and should you be in on it?
As we say a relieved goodbye to 2021 and we say hello to a hopeful new year in 2022, here is a run down of trends to watch out for in the cake world for the upcoming year. Which ones are you going to try?
Halloween is just around the corner! Why not create some edible spooky Halloween slime to keep your children occupied or to care your Trick or Treaters!
Christmas (or Christmas in July) is the perfect time to pull out the old family fruit cake recipe. There is just one small problem - most of these tasty recipes include Parisian Essence, which is a difficult thing to find these days! If you can't seem to get your hands on Parisian Essence this festive season, why not make your own?
Is your mum into making cakes, cookies and other sweet treats? Here are some presents we know she’d love to receive.
We have to admit, piping a buttercream flower onto a cake is a painless (and very tasty) way to add some floral sweetness to your creations, but not even the most perfectly piped bloom compares to the aroma that comes with using fresh flowers.
If you can't go trick or treating this Halloween why not host an intimate Halloween party with an elegant Halloween themed cake as the show stopping centre piece?
We have ten extremely handy tips to melt white chocolate and if you follow these you should be well on your way to perfectly melted white chocolate every time, no matter the brand.
With the right tools, and a decent amount of patience and practice, creating lifelike sugar flowers will not only become much easier, but it will likely become one of your favourite creative outlets.
Whether your ganache is turning out too hard, too soft, or splitting, the good news is almost everything that can go wrong with ganache is fixable. Yes, even split ganache can be saved!
Follow these few secret tips and tricks and you’ll stop your cupcake cases peeling in no time.
Baking your own bread is healthier, more affordable, and rather therapeutic. Best of all it's super easy to do, no bread maker needed!
We're all going to be holed up in our homes this Easter with nowhere to go, so why not take a crack at baking your own fresh Hot Cross Buns? These tips and tricks will make sure your sweet buns full of spice and peel turn out perfectly.
What can you, as a small cake business, do to protect your business in this uniquely challenging time? The good news is you are probably already doing most of it.
Why give someone a bouquet of flowers they can't eat when you can bake them any one of these ten treats with edible flowers baked into them!
There’s no denying that next to Easter, Valentine’s Day is chocolate’s time to shine. But why is it that we give chocolates to the ones we love on February 14th? Why is February 14th even considered a loved up holiday? And why on earth does everyone think chocolate is so romantic in the first place!?
Now is the perfect time to set yourself some caking goals to achieve during the year ahead. We’ve scoured Instagram and Pinterest to find our top ten new cake decorating techniques that we think are going to dominate 2020!
If you have a cake lover in your life but have no idea what to buy them for Christmas, their birthday, your anniversary etc then look no further than this list of the top ten things every caker would love to have!
Whether you've been patiently basting your cake in booze for the past few weeks, or you've bought a ready-made one, it's only a few weeks until Christmas so now is the time to decorate! Turn a simply fruit cake into a showstopping centrepiece with our top ten favourite decorating ideas. From cake lace to crystallised fruit, there's a style for everyone.
Here at Lollipops, we have five main flavour product lines: the famous LorAnn Oils, LorAnn Bakery Emulsions, and Roberts Confectionery Essences, Roberts Confectionery Flavoured Food Colourings & Roberts Confectionery Flavoured Oils. They’re all amazing products but how do you decide which one you should use? Are any vegan, allergy friendly, or non-alcoholic? Read on to have all your flavoursome questions answered!
Cakes decorated with rock crystals are extremely popular and far easier to make than you might think! Colour your rock crystals with one of two methods.
Halloween might just be our favourite holiday of the year here at Lollipops! What else can beat dressing up, scaring people, and eating your fill of Halloween themed treats?
Unlike standard gel colours, Colour Mill is an oil-based dye, allowing you to better colour buttercream, Swiss Meringue and even chocolate! The secret is in how the colour binds to butter, fat, and oil.
Father’s Day is just around the corner! If you're stuck for cake inspiration we've put together five of our favourite cake ideas that Dad will love this Father's Day!
If you were at the Sweet Expo in Sydney this July you might have caught Caitlin Mitchell demonstrating how to create a super cute log cabin out of gum paste and royal icing. We have the very same template that she used so you can recreate her cute cabin at home.
Don't be intimidated by airbrushing - with these tips and tricks you'll be airbrushing like a pro in no time.
When to use Natural, Dutch, or Black Cocoa. And what exactly is 'Dutch' Cocoa anyway...
Give your baking a colourful, concentrated boost of flavour!
There are hundreds of piping tips out there, in a variety of categories such as open star, closed star, round, drop flower; the list goes on. They all have different uses and create different effects, so how do you know which piping tips you should buy when you are first starting out?
We asked all our caking staff members here at Lollipops what products they couldn’t have lived without in the beginning and the top choices were pretty common across the board! So here are the top ten essential tools you need when first starting out with cakes.
We're pretty sure you don't need 10 reasons to eat chocolate cake at Easter, or just plain chocolate for that matter, but just in case you were thinking of feeling even a little bit guilty about it here are 10 very serious, fully researched reasons not to!
Ever wonder how other cakers churn out moist, level cakes with no domes or cracks, time after time?
Let’s face it, baking can sometimes feel like half science, half magic, and there’s nothing worse than baking the most delicious cake only to have to cut half of it away because it domed so high.
Thankfully baking flat cakes every time is simpler than you might think, it comes down to three simple rules:
Have you been dreaming of a home filled with the smell of fresh bread but while you might be a pro at baking cakes you wouldn’t know where to start when it comes to bread? Well don’t worry, here is everything a beginner bread maker needs to know to get started on making delicious homemade sourdough bread.
Whether you are using just a touch of gold, or completely covering a cake here is everything you need to know about working with edible gold leaf.
Don’t have the energy to make a giant heart shaped cake this Valentine’s Day? Or anything Valentine’s themed for that matter? Don’t worry, we have six Valentine’s baking hacks that will impress your crush with minimal effort!
Australia Day is coming up this weekend and if you’re getting ready to throw a fantastic party, there may be a few things you want to keep in mind to make it a little extra special. Here are our 3 biggest tips to make your upcoming party a smashing success.
We’ve dived deep into the hashtags to determine what we believe will be the biggest cake decorating trends in 2019.
While 2018 was filled with glammed up looks of marble fondant, dazzling geode designs and metallic drips we think 2019 will see more of your clients asking for carefree, whimsical designs.
Here are our top five cake trend predictions for 2019!
This Easter, why not try your hand at making your own Custom Easter Eggs and Eggspress yourself :)
We show you how easy it is to turn those boring....yet yummy Cadbury easter eggs into something so much better!
Lamingtons are as Aussie as Lamb on Australia Day! On the lead up to Australia Day we cranked up the oven at Lollipop Cake Supplies and made a huge batch of lamingtons to share with our customers. Lamingtons can be dressed up in a few different ways, whether it be a lamington cake or my favourite, two slices of lamington with fresh cream in between!
We don't want to see the humble lamington fade away in history like our favourite chocolate bar, the Polly Waffle!
At Lollipop Cake Supplies, all of our staff have a list that contains their "Top Five" preferred products in store. For anyone who has been in and spoken to Heather at different times, chances are she has mentioned her love for the Wilton Checkerboard Cake Pan Set. Given her love for this nifty pan set, we thought it was timely to demonstrate this product and put it to the test!
Read on to be shown tips and tricks on how to successfully use the Wilton Checkerboard Cake Tins to create that Minecraft Cake your children have been bugging you to do, or a multi coloured design to surprise your family with that WOW factor! The best thing about the checkerboard cake is that minimal effort yields incredible results.
We get asked quite often.....can you reuse cake dummies? Sure you can, just recover them in the colour fondant you need! The only problem with recovering polystyrene cake dummies, is that what was originally quite a light object starts to become really heavy. Not to mention if you are trying to keep the cake within regular sizes, this might become a problem when covered with multiple layers on fondant.
In this blog post, we threw caution into the wind and decided to give it a go. What did we have to lose? What did we have to gain.....a new dishwasher?
When you’re just starting out with cake decorating there seems so much to learn… and well, let’s face it - there is. This shouldn’t put you off or make you feel overwhelmed… it should inspire you and empower you to realise there’s a whole world of cake decorating for you to explore and no matter your level of expertise or professionalism, there’s always something else you can learn.
Today’s post is really designed with the beginner in mind. We understand that when you first start using fondant it can get a little messy, a little stretched and a little frustrating. If you’ve ever struggled through a cake decoration and thought to yourself “What am I doing? I’m not cut out for this!” We hear you loud and clear.
The thing to remember though is that we all have to start somewhere and for those of you new to using fondant, this is where you can start!
With that in mind here’s our top ten tips for using fondant.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in. The smell of sugar and icing hit my nostrils like a rolling, sweet wave as I strode through the door.
My senses popped as colour and smell filled my head with the lofty promise of cakes, treats and all things sweet.
This was the place. I knew I had arrived.
If you’re into cake decorating (and let’s face it, if you’ve landed here then you no doubt are!) then you would have seen edible cake toppers floating around the web. You might have even used them or seen your friends use them. Hopefully you haven't had the colours run or the backing sheet tear the image (gulp!).
No matter where you are in your cake decorating journey you will come across or most likely want to use edible images on your cakes at some stage. This being the case we present to you The Ultimate Guide to Edible Images.
We’ve all had those moments. A family member or close friend sees some of your work or hears you’re interested in cake decorating and asks you if you can decorate a cake for a special occasion. It could be a wedding, baby shower, 1st birthday or Grandma’s 90th! Whatever the occasion, you want to help and you want to do a great job but how do you come up with clever, inventive and exciting cake decorating ideas for your next project?
This post will go through a range of different areas and ideas that will help you to create sugary, sweet and wonderfully attractive cakes each and every time.
First, let’s start with where ideas come from.