Happy New Year

I'd been invited to a New Years Eve party so I said I'd bring along a cake.

A simple sponge cake, filled with buttercream and strawberry jam, it was a pretty obvious theme. With a nod towards Dali's 'Persistence of Time' the watches on the clock face of the cake are distorted but still record the midnight hour. The guys around the edge of the clock are Father Time, although I know they look like the grim reaper.

Tempus Fugit

Happy birthday Bridget

My brother asked me to make a fruit cake for his wife's birthday and as her birthday is on Boxing day I made it alongside the Christmas cakes. I'd been asked to make this one without any citrus so instead of mixed peel I used dried apricot instead, which worked out really well.

I had a free hand as the only brief I had was 'flowers' and not to make the number too large. Having been on a course on making bluebells and snowdrops I thought I'd give them a go. Not exactly a likely combination in reality they make quite a pretty little posy. Being small they're really fiddly to make and using angelica for the stems instead of wire (I don't think there should be anything on the cake you can't eat) I had to make them thin enough to be able to bend them but not too thin so they didn't break, which was also a challenge.

Flowers for Bridget

Merry Christmas

It's the highlight of the cake decorating year again. Last year was a really hectic so this year, with a birthday cake to make as well, it was just two cakes.  They were both traditional fruit Christmas cakes (a 1970s Good Housekeeping recipe) baked in November.

The first one was for my Mum's annual 'at home' the weekend before Christmas. They had angels last year so this time it was a simple snowman and tree theme. The snowman was as simple to make as the real thing, two balls of flower paste, paste nose & hat and royal icing buttons. I'm really pleased with the tree. With a core of a cone of marzipan my new fancy piping nozzle has made a pretty good royal icing tree I think. Air brushed stencils and snowflakes around the edges finished off this fun cake.

Snowman & tree

The second one was the family cake. It's my version of the nativity. With the Virgin Mary, baby Jesus and three wise men (they were going to be kings but the crowns looked a bit silly when I put them on so I had to demote them) it's a pretty simple version. My favourite bit is the stencils around the edge. There was a different one on each side - the three kings on their camels, the shepherds in the field, Mary & Joseph travelling to Bethlehem and an angel announcing the birth. It's simpler than I would have liked but I didn't want to overload it with shepherds, donkeys and sheep.

Nativity

Children in Need 2014

Time for another charity cake.
Another try at modelling produced a pretty good Pudsey bear, his face and the dots on his eye patch air brushed on. The building blocks were sponge squares covered with paste and moulded letters added to each face. The faces round the edges were air brushed on and instead of royal icing around the bottom I used dolly mixture sweets to complete the children theme.
It was an 8 inch sponge cake, and selling slices of the cake at work I managed to raise £26 for the cause, which I was more than happy with.

Children in Need 2014

Tour of Britain

Having just been to watch the Tour of Britain - seeing them climbing the hill out of Cheltenham, which any human being would struggle up on a bike, treating it as if it was hardly there - I was inspired to decorate a fruit cake in celebration.
Flower paste jerseys of the race leader, king of the mountains, points and sprint leaders were air brushed, as were the Tour of Britain logos, so it wasn't much of a challenge but I think it was worthy of such a great national event.

Tour of Britain celebration
 

Claires birthday

Claire's partner Graeme gave me just a few days notice when he asked me to make her a birthday cake so a simple floral cake had to be the way to go.
I've got the hang of making roses now so one full bloom on the top and three buds around the edge were straightforward. Rather than just putting the buds just on the top of the paste I made indentations around the edges and recessed them a little, a touch that looked quite effective I think. I don't think there should be anything on a cake that you can't eat and I don't use wires on my flowers, so I make the stems from angelica, which ran down the sides to a couple of leaves. The other flowers around the edges are my version of gerberas, though I don't think you'll see one quite like this in the garden. The little fleur-de-lis around the bottom were just an experiment to see what I could do with royal icing.

Claire's floral cake

A major commission

I like to give myself a challenge with every cake I make and the challenge this time was simply the scale of the thing!
It was my sisters company's 20th anniversary and she asked me to make a cake for about 100 people. After a moment of thought I agreed and spent a while thinking about what was involved. Between us we decided a ten inch square fruit cake and a ten inch square sponge should feed them all and give them a choice. The biggest cakes I'd ever made before were 8 inch square and even though 2 inches doesn't sound much it can make a huge difference. With the fruit cake made a few weeks before all was calm until about a week before I was due to deliver the cakes. I first made a template for the company's logo and made them from flower paste (plus a third just in case) and then produced the banner, also in flower paste. By then it was time to bake the sponge, a bit of a challenge in itself to manage to bake such a big cake without over or under cooking it. I knew it would be too stressful to cover and decorate them in the evenings after work so I took the day off and thoroughly enjoyed the day covering and decorating my monster creations.
I had been invited to the celebration and it was nice to receive many positive reactions both to the appearance and the taste.  It made the time and hard work all worthwhile.

Congratulations ARC Energy

Happy Birthday Mum

For Mums birthday this year I just wanted to make something pretty. With a yellow theme I had the chance to practice a couple of new things too. The flower was a new one for me, based on a Gerbera but I don't think you'll find one in the garden centre, and the ribbon on the top was another experiment too. With the colour working and the flower and ribbon both being successful too I think I achieved the pretty cake I wanted and my Mum deserved.

A pretty cake for my Mum.

Mr Grumpy

One of my colleagues in our Bristol depot was 60 and I was asked to do him a cake, and as he is known as Mr Grumpy that had to be the theme.
It was short notice so the Mr Grumpy on the top is not as good as I'd have liked but I didn't have time to do it again and, being who he is, it can't be too bright and cheerful, but it seemed to go down well.
Airbrushing stencils around the edge are turning out to be an effective way of edging my cakes. The 60 was simple but the Mr man took four stencils overlaid, not difficult just a little tricky to line everything up.

Mr Grumpy

 

90th Birthday heart

From one end of the age spectrum to the other, I was asked to make a cake for a 90th birthday. The brief was for heart-shaped, pink with red flowers, but also to be half chocolate and half vanilla inside.
Heart-shaped cake tins sorted out the shape, then I made one chocolate cake and one plain, cut them in half so I could make the right hand chocolate, which I filled with chocolate buttercream and chocolate spread (you can't have too much chocolate), and the other side I filled as usual with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam.
Pink paste covered the cake and I made a little vase for three roses on top. Round the edges little paste flowers and piped red dots. Simple but effective I feel and the feedback was positive so I think I met the brief.


Ednas 90th

18th birthday butterflies

Charlotte, a new colleague at work, celebrated her 18th birthday soon after joining us so I thought it would be nice to make her a cake.
Pink butterflies seemed like a suitable theme, so a pink board and pink paste butterflies on top and pink butterflies stencilled around the edge has produced what I think is pretty cake.

Pink butterflies
 

A nautical theme

I wanted a sailing theme for this one so I made a couple of yachts for the top and a message in signal flags round the edge, finishing it off with waves around the bottom in royal icing.
The sails on the boats are pretty effective I think but I misjudged it a bit between looking thin and being too delicate. The flags were good practice for my air brushing skills and it was fun watching Dave work out the message before finally googling signal flags. 

Birthday Ahoy!



Birthday message



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