It's Christmas!

It's Christmas again, and this year I've ended up making four Christmas cakes, one sponge and three traditional fruit Christmas cakes.

Bad Santa. 

Bad Santa

This is the sponge one I did a few days before Christmas for a pre-concert meal at a local restaurant, so considering what was likely to happen later that evening, a Santa that had a couple more than he should have if he was going to drive his sleigh seemed appropriate. Made from flower paste, apart from the royal icing beard, the Father Christmas is made from 18 different pieces so was a little fiddly. The heads around the edges were paste discs with airbrushed eyes and royal icing beard.

A Christmas Trio 

Christmas Trio

These three were all made together, so I marzipanned and covered them with sugar paste one evening, then added all the decorations the following evening. I knew I had a lot to do so, including Bad Santa, I started work on the figures at the start of November and was ready just about on time.

Angels.

Angels

This is my favourites of the three, which I made for my Mum for her at-home the Saturday before Christmas. Holly and ivy around the edge with a silver bell, three praying angels and a three colour message looked really good on the table. The angels were the first figures I made and were the prototype for the santas and got my hand in for the animals. The Merry Christmas is the first time I've tried graduating colours with the airbrush and it turned out really well. The trickiest bit was the bell - even with a mould it was a nightmare.

Pingu

Pingu

This is the family Christmas cake which I produced for Christmas day. I admit that it looks like Pingu's eaten all the Christmas pudding, but it's more firsts - animals and Christmas trees. Robbie the seal was a lot easier than I expected and allowing the white body of Pingu the penguin to dry first meant I was able to do the black without it staining the white. I tried giving Robbie eyes but he just looked scary so I left them off. I'm really pleased with the tree, which is made of piped royal icing. It's a lot easier than it looks apart from getting it stay straight. Doing it again I'd have made the tree a bit bigger and Pingu and Robbie a bit smaller, but apart from that I'm happy with it.

The minimalist one.

Minimalist Christmas

I like Christmas cake, so I had to make one for myself, so I just kind of threw this one together. A lot simpler Santa than on the Bad Santa cake, only 12 parts in this one, just a sack of presents and another tree on top finished with a few trees airbrushed around the edge and I was done. Not my finest hour, but it just goes to show I shouldn't try doing four cakes at once. It's no so much the making and decorating, it's the thinking up the ideas.

Children in Need

I've been asked a number of times by work colleagues in our Bristol depot to send them cakes so I thought it would be a chance to do so and help a good cause at the same time by making them pay for the pleasure. Pudsey Bear is in sugar paste with a flower paste eye patch and the building blocks are also flower paste. The letters and Pudseys face are air brushed stencils. You can't see them all in the photo but around the edges are stencilled toy elephants, rocking horses and trains in different colours.

Children in Need cake

Andrews DIY birthday

The theme I was given for my nephew Andrew was DIY so I started to think about woodworking tools that would work. Planks of wood were hardly a challenge and the saw, mallet and first aid kit were quite straightforward but the paint pot and brush took a couple of attempts before I was happy with them. With the air brush stencilled figures around the edge of the cake work well so a few of those finished it off.

DIY cake

Mikes patriotic birthday

I was asked to make a 70th birthday cake for my Mums' friend Mike with a patriotic theme and with only a little notice I came up with this sponge cake. I can now make a rose with confidence so a red rose and a waving St Georges' flag made what I think is a pretty stylish result, the little red flowers around the edges tying it all together.



Mikes England cake



Halloween

With halloween coming up and a fruit cake in the cupboard it seemed the perfect opportunity to experiment with my air brush.
With the cake marzipanned and covered with white sugar paste I make some stencils and got to work. A round stencil protected the white paste as I sprayed several coats of purple, which I then covered to spray the ground and house, then the witch. A bit of sparkle coming from her broomstick and hey presto.



Halloween witch cake



Skull cake

I was given the challenge of making a skull birthday cake so I thought I'd give it a go. It took a lot of thinking about before starting but with a few photos of real skulls I managed a pretty good result I think. Three layers of sponge with buttercream filling gave me a good size block to start carving using templates I'd made from the photos. I was going to put red jam in it but I thought that might make it a bit unstable. A thin layer of black paste for the eyes and nose was covered with the white paste, leaving the lower jaw, which I made separately. Then I just added the teeth and stuck the knife in the top of the poor guys head. A few drops of blood dripping onto the rose, air-brushed blood red, and the job was done.

Skull cake

Swimming pool cake

A friend asked me to produce a swimming pool themed cake for her daughters 9th birthday, mentioning she was also into mermaids and this is the result. It's a lemon sponge with buttercream and lemoncurd filling and again there are a few attempts at new things. After practicing with plasticine I ended up with pretty successful kids based on Trinity's friends and I added the little girls swimsuit with my new toy, an airbrush. I made a template for the mermaids from a silhouette on t'internet so I could put them on all sides of the cake, and you can tell I've been practicing my writing as it's starting to look neater. Then just a sprinking of glitter to finish it off. According to her mum Trinity loved it, which is the most important thing.

Mermaids in a swimming pool

Mums Birthday

It was Mums birthday soon after the training course so it was an ideal time to practice my new-found flower making skills. It was another jam and buttercream filled sponge which I found easier to cover now I know how to do it properly. With roses made as I've been taught I added the stems made from royal icing and leaves of flower paste. It was the first time I'd tried working with royal icing, which I also used for the writing and the beading around the bottom, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.



Mums Birthday cake






I've been on a training course!

I thought it was time I learned how to do the job properly so I went on a training course, a Christmas present from Mum.
The course was at Sugar Celebrations in Gloucester, run by Carole Stafford. It was a really good course, I learned so much from it and the result was all I could have hoped for. Based on a six inch round fruit cake, in four lessons we learned how to marzipan and sugar paste the cake to get a flat, even covering, and how to make flowers and produce the impressive decoration topping the cake. The arrangement on the top took almost ten metres of ribbon and, as well as the large flower at the front, had thirty little flowers and thirty assorted buds on it. This took up a lot of the course but was so worthwhile.  I had to miss one of the sessions so missed out on making a frill that should have gone around the side of the cake, but even without that I was really pleased with the result.

Training course cake

A spectacular arrangement.

Rosemarys' Birthday

It was my sister Rosemarys' birthday in March and as she plays the piano and sings in a choir it had to be a musical theme for her cake.
It was what's become my default birthday cake - two layer sponge with buttercream and jam filling. My first attempt at a shaped cake which worked out as I hoped, although covering the awkward bits around the keyboard was tricky. I went for the pale yellow as a white piano wouldn't have shown up the keyboard as well. The notes were really fiddly to do but were worth it.

Rosemary's magic piano

Chinese New Year

At Christmas I made three Christmas cakes. I used one at Christmas and kept the others to use later, and this was the second one. I was looking for a theme to decorate it and found it was Chinese New Year, so voila! Especially when I found it was the year of the snake - surely I'd be able to manage to make one of those.
So a Delia Christmas cake covered in marzipan and paste was the start. The snake was marzipan covered in paste with a light spray of silver and the paste roundels are the Chinese symbol for good fortune.

Chinese Year of the Snake

Daves' 60th Birthday

This was a sponge cake with buttercream and jam filling for my brothers' 60th birthday back in January. As he's a Gloucester Rugby fan I went for the rugby ball shape in Cherry and white. Working with two colours and managing to get them even and level was a challenge and I was glad I avoided staining the white paste red. A bit too simple really but it went down well.


Daves' Gloucester Rugby Birthday cake



Christmas cake 2012

This was the second time I'd tried to decorate a Christmas cake. I had no idea what I was doing really, just knew what I was trying to achieve.
I made a fruit cake from a Delia Smith kit from Waitrose - really good cake and the instructions were a doddle to follow - and the results were exactly what you'd expect from Delia; perfect.
Marzipan and paste all from the supermarket and I just had a go. Surprisingly the marzipan and paste went on smoothly but as I made the red ribbon from sugar paste too it was too soft to hold it's shape very well so the bow looked a little tired, but the family all admired it and I was happy with what I'd achieved. Certainly encouraged enough to have another go, work on getting better and learn how to do it properly.

Christmas present cake

Yule logs 2012

 I made three Yule logs - one for a friend, one for work and one for Mum. They were a simple roulade with buttercream, decorated with piped chocolate buttercream. It was the first time I'd made a chocolate roulade, the recipe for which I got off t'internet, so I was happy the result was a success.  
Mum's was the one I liked best - sugarpaste snowflakes and holly, icing sugar snow and a bit of glitter looked good I think. Kim's was a much simpler afair with just the little robin and Happy Christmas decorations, and I kind of went to town with the plastic toys for the one for work.



Mum's Yule log



Kim's Yule log



Work's Yule log








How it all began

I've been baking cakes for many years - fairy cakes, sponges, fruit cakes, loaf cakes - nothing too complicated but almost always tasty. A couple of years ago I made a Delia Smith Christmas cake and fancied having a go at decorating it.
A few weeks before Christmas, however, I broke my little finger so my efforts were pretty limited but I enjoyed doing it, and the plain sugar paste covered cake with a marzipan and paste Christmas tree surrounded with presents seemed to go down well with the family.
I hadn't achieved what I wanted on that occasion so I decided that the next Christmas I'd have another go. And the rest is history, as they say.
Since I've starting mentioning to people I decorate cakes they always ask if they can see any pictures, so here you are, all my cakes from Christmas 2012.