I am a cake obsessive, based in West Sussex, UK.

I started off making cakes for family and friends before giving up a proper career in favour of playing with sugar full time. Having worked for two bakeries making their wedding and celebration cakes, I am now looking toward world domination with breaks for coffee and chat.

If you are interested in seeing future projects, enter your email address in the box on the right for updates.

To see my website go to: www.kasserina.com. You can email me on info@kasserina.com.

I also sell some sugarcraft items on Etsy. Please go to https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KasserinaHome?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Thanks for looking!

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Lovely Laura's birthday cake - September 2014

It's Laura's birthday (I love that girl!) so what else could I bring to her party but a little cakey gift.  


A two layer vanilla 4" cake with orange and elderflower buttercream frosting and a core of blueberry and elderflower jelly in the middle.   


Happy birthday gorgeous, and happy house warming too. X








Sunday, September 21, 2014

A few of her favourite things birthday cake - September 2014

Our gorgeous girl is 7 (wow, that came up fast!), so of course she gets a birthday cake!



She was asked what she wanted as a birthday cake and reeled off a massive list of random things.  

Thought about how to turn this list into a coherent cake design, and just got myself confused really, but luckily my lovely cakey inclined friend Sophia helped me navigate the fog in my head.  

The finished cake shows the amazing Mrs Dee surrounded by some of her favourite things.

First thing to make was her comforter, which she has always called her "moo-moo", but is actually a giraffe.  I made this quite big because moo-moo and her other comforters (which now number 4) have always been very important to her.


I modelled the legs and set them on top of some pink flowerpaste folded to look like part of the skirt. I modelled the torso and put it on top with a central skewer support.


Meanwhile, the head for the figure was hardening up.  


I used a silicon brush to model the nose and mouth, and a small ball tool to add the dimples at the sides.

Sugar figure making has not come easily to me (I think you can see this from how chunky the legs look) and I find it really frustrating if I'm honest, but I'm starting to get better at it.  I've found two books invaluable in this recently. 


The details in the Molly and Jasmine book are fantastic and the figures are amazing, although the translation is shocking and the figures themselves are a bit... um... like overly sexualised kids.  The Carlos Lischetti book is great, the instructions are easy to follow and it has a really useful section on how to proportion your figures.

Meanwhile, I made a little book, which I painted and set aside to dry.


I put a semi-circle of flowerpaste over the legs to finish the shirt and added a sash, with a bow at the back to cover the seams.  

I used a silicon brush to indent the eyes, then immediately wished I hadn't as I made them too big and couldn't get the dents out properly so now she looks like she has bags under her eyes. I painted a little white, then brown iris', a tiny black disk for her pupils, a dot of white for highlight and a tiny sausage of flowerpaste over the top for lashes.


I cut a disk of hair coloured fondant, placed it on the head and textured it with a cocktail stick.


I added some capped sleeves, arms and put the book in her hands.  

I stuck some pins under the arms to help them stay in position while the glue was drying.  I didn't want to use wired supports that stay inside on this figure as I knew that there were going to be small kids around.  

Stupidly, I managed to snap the book (doh!) so you can see where I've quickly had to add an extra bit of purple fondant to the back to fix it.

I started to stick textured pieces of fondant hair on to create movement.


Then I started to add curls.









Mrs Dee was really happy with her cake, which was by the way a 3 layer, dark choc, red velvet, and banana chocolate cake with dark choc buttercream, white choc buttercream and vege raspberry jelly layer.  

As you can see she eagerly placed the candles herself and was adamant that she would be eating her moo-moo first! 

You can also see that there was an impressive number of kiddy fingerprints in the cake almost as soon as the lid came off the box!


Darling girl, 
we love you so, so much.  
We are so glad to have you in our lives and we are ALWAYS here for you.
xxxx K&S xxxx










Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Chocolate lover's birthday cake - September 2014

Otis' birthday this week. Otis loves cake. He especially loves chocolate cake.  


Inspired by my visit to Julie's House in Ghent last week (gorgeousness!), I wanted to have some fun combining fillings, flavours and textures. 

I baked 3 different kinds of chocolate cake, and made a 4 layer cake comprised of
(from bottom to top):
chocolate fudge cake, 
dark choc buttercream, 
dark choc and beetroot cake,
dark chocolate ganache, 
orange jelly (Jaffa cake style), 
red velvet cake, 
white choc buttercream, 
chocolate fudge cake, 
dark choc buttercream, 
dark chocolate ganache, 
salted caramel and hazelnut crumbs.  

I surrounded the layers with a sheet of vanilla sponge to help stabilise the cake on it's journey (plus a central dowel), and covered the sides in choc buttercream.  


To assemble, I lined an 8" tin with card, cling film and waxed paper 



I put vanilla sheet cake around the sides, spread chocolate buttercream on it and started stacking 6" layers inside.  

I used the waxed paper to stop the sheet cake from collapsing in during the stacking process.


The orange layer I made by reducing orange juice with orange zest and sugar and setting with vege geletine substitute (all my cakes are vege).



Once stacked, I chilled the cake before I took the supports away.


Each layer of cake, and the vanilla sheet cake, were doused in vanilla syrup during assembly.

I covered the whole thing with a crusting chocolate buttercream and topped with ganache.

Plan number one was to top with Italian meringue, which looked fine on paper, but actually I didn't like the look of it and overnight the meringue started to leak sugar syrup which dripped down the side 


I have since looked this up in "Bakewise" and maybe my syrup wasn't quite hot enough when I poured it into the egg whites.  Had it been on another surface it would not have been visible, but as the ganache under it was a impenetrable barrier so it came out sideways instead. 


Anyway, it looked wrong, so I changed my mind, made more salted hazelnut brittle and blitzed it for the top.

I also wasn't keen on the overall dimensions (I must have made the fillings thicker than I'd planned) so I chopped off the bottom layer of the originally 5 layer cake and made it 4 layers.



The topper I made from craft foam.


I took the cake with me to the restaurant where we all had a great meal and Otis managed to get 28 candles on top without setting fire to himself.  

Happy birthday gorgeous.  You are a very, very loved.
xxxx