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