Horsing Around with Twins

This week, like an idiot, I agreed to make 3 cakes.  I had a decent amount of notice on all of them, so thankfully I was able to make a start on the decorations, particularly the models of the people.  The Horse cake, for a friend's niece's 8th Birthday was put together using Patchwork Cutters which are really useful and I was able to make the bits and pieces in advance.  Painting and dusting the dried cut outs was all a bit last minute though and so John had to help with that part.  I was happy with the overall look of the cake and my "client" was happy too (as was Morgan so that's the main thing!)

Mission number two was for two.  Twins!  Again, Patchwork Cutters were used for the guitar and playing cards and I made the models as best I could to represent the cake's recipients.  For speed I used flower paste from A Piece of Cake which works well enough with the patchwork cutters.  In the past I have made the Patchwork cutters suggested recipe for Mexican paste which come out a little dryer.  Either is fine, just need a bit of cornflour to help things along with the flower paste.  Glasses are a particularly difficult thing to do when making models of people and so I attemped to make some from wire this time.  They turned out OK, but I'm still not 100 % happy with this technique either?  I'll have to attempt something different next time or have a practice.

I felt that again time was not on my side so there were a few details and bits that I wasn't happy with for these cakes.  I think that's because I am a perfectionist when it comes to creations.  Again the client was happy and the cakes were, I'm told, very well received so what felt like mission impossible was mission accomplished in the end.  3 in a week again.....  I think not.

Birthday Books

 This was a surprise birthday cake for a book worm commissioned by someone else she knows.  It wasn't the easiest to put together and, to be honest, there are things I would do differently.  Worst of all, was that it was so hot and humid, the sugar paste just wasn't doing what it ought to, so this was something of a challenge in more ways than one.

Tried a slightly different technique on modelling the figure's face which worked out alright but does look a little bit like botox has been deployed in the kisser!  ha ha!  Oh well.

The surprise didn't really go as planned so I think my efforts may have been in vain, but it was an experience and a learning curve but maybe not the best way to spend what has probably been the hottest weekend so far this year!

Richard & Rachel's Wedding Cake

I must admit to feeling a little daunted when Rachel said she would like roses and peonies on her cake.  I didn't know what a Peony was?!  So, lots of research, lots of trial, error, Googling, YouTube and advice from A Piece of Cake Thame and I think in the end, I pulled it off.

It was a long haul over the flowers though I must say.  It took weeks and weeks to get them all done in the evenings and weekends.  I stressed quite a bit over whether the peonies looked right or not.  I think I probably started about 12 and eventually there were 6 on the cake.  They had to be made using each individual petal, then curled so that they look as though they are unwrapping themselves into blousey flowers from the tight ball they start out as.

Wiring them together was interesting, and I hadn't made daisies before either, but they also seemed to turn out alright.  It was down to the wire with my wiring the flowers into posies for the top of each tier on Sunday morning, the day of the wedding.  We had to get to the venue at at least 1:30 with the ceremony at 2 o'clock.  I finished the cake at 11:20 in the morning!  Yikes!

Bride and Groom were pleased and I received lots of compliments, so I'm happy and, dare I say it, rather proud of myself.  ha ha!  Modest eh?

The wedding was fantastic, the bride and groom looked fabulous and the venue was gorgeous!  All in all a success for all.

Congratulations to Richard and Rachel on their marriage. xoxox

Stephanie, Stevie, Steve & Shayne's Wedding Cake

This has been a fair bit of work but I'm relatively pleased with the finished article.  Most importantly of all the Bride and Groom in question were pleased.  They seemed happy when I delivered it and that was reinforced with a lovely text message which made me all the more chuffed.

It read "Your cake was DELICIOUS!!!!! I don't even like cake and I scoffed 2 slices!!  Thank you so much for making it - everybody commented on how lovely it was!"

Mission accomplished I'd say!  Thank goodness!  I always get a bit anxious with wedding cakes.  I just want them to be perfect for such a big day.

Carol's Handbag

 This cake was made as a gift for a colleague who was celebrating a big birthday.  She's a lovely lady so she very much deserved a nice cake.  I tried to incorporate a few things that she's into to make the cake more personal.  She was very pleased and wouldn't let anyone cut it at work it was for "display purposes only" and everyone had to make do with bought cake for the office.  ha ha!  Bless her.  She said she'd never had a special cake made for her and gave me a big hug.  I guess it was worth being up until 1 am finishing this baby off then!  ha ha!  Gives me a buzz to think someones so pleased with their cake.

Simple Birthday Cake

This one was a commission from a colleague for his mother-in-law's 70th Birthday.  He just wanted something fairly simple and feminine which is a Mum sort of thing.  I'm not very good at doing dainty looking cakes.  I think the overall look of the cake was nice, but my piping is really not good!  More practice needed at piping for sure!  D'oh!  I hope mother-in-law was happy, although I'm told she was???

Farewell to Aus

This cake was for some friends of friends as a commission for their farewell party.  They've been over here for 10 years or so from Australia and they're headed home now.  They've made lots of lovely friends here by all accounts and so they had a bit of a get-together to wish them well and show them they'll be very much missed here in the UK.  This one was a chocolate cake with chocolate flavour Renshaws sugar paste.  This looks quite leathery when it's applied to the cake and so is ideal both for flavour and for the texture and look of it.  I made this old fashioned suit case and had some flags printed on icing (much the same as the birthday cake I made for Alix a couple of years ago, only a smaller, simplified version.)

Uncle Mart's Spitfire Cake

My Great Uncle Mart turned 94 this year!  Pretty amazing going really and he's doing very well on it.  My Dad's cousin organised a big family get-together and a bit of a birthday shin dig for him.  There have been some sad losses this year in our family so it was nice to have a get-together for a nice occasion.  I made the Spitfire (yes that's what it's meant to be) out of grey sugar paste mixed with Tylo powder.  I mixed the powder in really well and left this to kind of activate for a few hours before using it to mould into the shape of the aircraft.  I used a schematic drawing I found online and cut out the elliptical wing shape first.  I then fashioned the fuselage out of paste and used some spaghetti to fix on and stabilize the whole tail section.  It was tricky.  Once the paste had hardened off I painted it to try and look Spitfire-ish and added the nose cone.  I decided it was far too adventurous to attempt propellers, so I left it at that.  I got some white food colouring, thinking that would be the best thing to add white detailing, but it was a bit rubbish.  In the end, I let down some white dusting powder with an alcohol solution and that was much, much better!  Everyone seemed to like the cake and, most important of all, Uncle was really chuffed.  Bless him!

No.1 Cake for Logan

A friend at work asked for this cake for her Grandson's first birthday as they were having a big family party.  It's vanilla sponge cake and I carved it into a number one and used the cut cake to make into blocks.  Tricky covering small squares of cake, particularly as I used an ordinary sponge cake recipe which comes out light and fluffy and not perhaps the best for carving.  Maderia cake might have been the better choice in hindsight but it all worked out OK in the end and my friend seemed pleased with the result.

Tractor Cake

This week's project was a tractor cake for a colleague.  It was a for a joint birthday party for his son and their friend's son.  I think his boy was turning 2 and the other lad 4?  Not 100% but Kit is apparently tractor mad at the moment and blue is his favourite colour.  I'm not sure that New Holland would be every impressed with this, but I suppose as it's blue it'll have to be one (sorry John!)  I baked 2 layers of vanilla sponge using my Grandma's fail safe recipe.  I sectioned my Silverwood "mechano" tin in half and divided the mix so it would bake faster and I could sandwich the layers together.  That part worked well and was reasonably hassle free.  Cutting the cake to the desired shape, crumb coating and applying sugar paste, on the other hand, was somewhat tricky!  Not too much swearing involved, but not the neatest job in the world.

 The cake needed to serve 10 people so I figured a trailer would be a good use of spare cake.  To add a bit of interest, I put some simply made sugar paste sheep and a Sheep dog collie in the trailer.  ha ha!  Well received commission, so I'm happy.  If I'd had more time, might have been fun to put the farmer in the tractor though.  I think that would have appealed to the kids more OR perhaps put two little faces in the window as though it were the two boys.  Don't know what they look like so didn't want to risk that!  Tyres, mudguard and creatures are given a little extra body and support by mixing Tylo powder through the sugar paste.  I bought Renshaws paste - that always seems the nicest to work with and the best tasting to me.  All stuff purchased from A Piece of Cake in Thame (of course!)

Farewell Gran

To my Grandma who made the most amazing cakes, who had me using up left over pastry for jam tarts as a little kid, who taught me so much, who appreciated my baking and whom I'll miss for ever and ever.

Jack Daniels

I'm trying to catch up to myself at the moment.  I haven't posted any of my cake creations for a while - since Christmas actually - so I'm just trying to get a grip here!  This is one for a friend who loves Jack Daniels and was turning 60.  I baked an oblong dark chocolate sponge cake (thank you Mum-in-Law for a great choc cake recipe) and then made another one in a loaf tin.  I put a thin layer of sugar-paste over the oblong base cake, then iced the bottle separately.  The neck is made up from pieces of "spare" cake from he loaf tin cut with a round cutter, then cut into semi-circles.  The sides of the presentation box are stuck on with Royal Icing and I mixed Tylo powder with the sugar paste to give some stability.  I let it dry out a bit before sticking to the sides.  The staw/raffia packing is made by extruding sugar paste through a clay gun.  That's fun but takes a while.  Piping is in Royal Icing (let's call it impressionism rather than an entirely accurate depiction of a JD bottle label) and I used a little brown dusting powder to give some dimension to the bottle.  That would have been a great time to have an airbrush I think, but this isn't part of my kit right now.  One day maybe (although I'd need much more room in my kitchen I think.)  Just for extra bite, there was a little drop of Jack Daniels bourbon in the chocolate butter cream filing.  Main thing is the cake was well received and enjoyed!

Jo xoxox

Mum's 60th

I put this cake together for a little family celebration for my Mum's Birthday.  It's a milk chocolate cake with milk chocolate paste on it.  The piping is done in Royal icing and the flowers are pink sugar paste.  The balls around the bottom of the cake are white chocolate flavoured sugar paste.  As it was a special occasion I shelled out and used Tracey's Cakes Belgian Chocolate paste, which is expensive, but proper chocolatey!  It's a bit tricky to work with.  I'm not sure I had this worked up quite enough - there's a little crack on the edge!  Hmmm, must try harder!  it tasted good though and Mum was really pleased.  The cake inside was really moist and the butter cream filling brought it all together.  Happy Birthday Mum!

Christmas Cakes

Here are my Christmas offerings.  I baked 4 fruit cakes at the same time in my Alan Silverwood folding 12" square tin and used the dividers to batch bake 4 x 6" squares.  I left them a few weeks before putting on my marzipan and then, after a few days allowing that to dry a bit, applied white sugar paste to 2 and navy blue to the other 2.  This is the result.  Hubby did the snowflake one which I think was simple but effective.  Square cakes are trickier to cover than round ones, but I didn't do too badly.  Santa and his sleigh were made using a patchwork cutter.  My Mum sat and patiently cut that out and so the pieces had dried out and were ready to assemble so I had the easy bit.  Christmas candle cakes were inspired by a bigger design in Cake magazine from a couple of years ago.  I added a few ideas of my own, but I think it turned out to be quite effective.  Hubby picked up some really nice boards and presentation boxes from A Piece of Cake so that cakes could be presented to Grandmother's and parents.

Angry Birds

Another year has passed and another party for Leo.  This time, the theme is Angry Birds as I suppose that must be all the rage.  I just about know what it is although I'm not down with the kids of today, so some Googling was required.

This is what I came up with in the end, although my piping went somewhat wonky.  Not my strongest point my piping!  Leo was happy with it and so was his Mum and the guests at his bowling party so I guess mission accomplished none-the-less.  It was a chocolate sponge cake which was apparently tasty, so it's all good.  Fancy being 5 already! Wow!

Under Pressure

Wedding cakes are always a bit of a worry because they have to be just so for that special day.  Agreeing to take on a commission to make the Managing Director's daughters wedding cake probably wasn't all that wise a move for a stress free wedding cake was it?  I think it turned out OK.  Hopefully the bride and groom will be happy.

Oooh Baby!

Zoe's baby shower cake.  Go faster pram!  ha ha!  Mum to be was chuffed with this.  Nice!

Ma & Pa's Ruby Wedding

Happy Anniversary Mum & Dad.  40 years!  Imagine that.  Pleased with this one.  Tried a few new things that I somehow managed to pull off, so that's good!  Recessed jelly gem hearts were a bit of a gamble, it's a bit scary gutting through the sugar paste, but it worked well in the end.  Not sure I'd be so confident to try that with a sponge cake though.  This one was fruit so had marzipan underneath.  I guess I'd have to put a thin layer on underneath on sponge then cover and cut through.

Wedding Lace

Phew!  I've finally finished my cousin's wedding cake.  I do hope she likes it as she has given me a pretty free rein to do what I think.  Creative control let's call it.  I hope this should fit in with the colour scheme and have a good nod to the themes and personal touches of their wedding day.

I'm pleased anyway, so fingers crossed!  Just has to get down to Bath without incident now.  Should be OK.  I can recommend the big sturdy boxes for stacked cakes.  I think Culpit make them and I've used them before when I've had to transport a cake myself.  They're expensive but it means that the cake can be protected and carried safely.

Raise a glass to Sara & George!

Jo xxx

Flower Power

This week has been sugar flower mental!  I've been busy making flowers for this pink rose spray for me old china Paul's Silver Wedding Anniversary and also making even more roses for my cousin's wedding cake.  It's fiddly stuff but the results were quite pleasing.  He's just been to collect the cake (which is  pretty heavy as it's a fruit cake but then it should be OK - not like he's going to bench press it!) and he seemed to think it was alright, typical bloke reaction really.  ha ha!  Anyway, not the best at piping lettering etc, but on the whole the cake looks good I think.  Hopefully it'll taste good too.  Many congratulations guys and have a cracking party tomorrow!  Hopefully I'll get the job for your Ruby Wedding Anniversary too eh?  ha ha!  Right!  Best get busy again with wedding cake decorating.  Cakes are like buses........  xx    More pics on flowers and toppers page.