Sharing the cake love...

Just registered with a charity who... well, I'll let them explain;

Baking A Smile is a VERY special cake store, we are a not for profit organisation that provides FREE beautiful custom made celebration cakes to children with life threatening and life limiting health conditions throughout the UK and Ireland.

We are committed to providing a smile and a little happiness to children dealing with illnesses by providing the child with a custom made cake free of charge. We not only provide this service to children with life threatening/limiting illnesses, but also to the siblings of these children, as we understand that it can be tough on them too.

We believe in the power of happiness and smiles and the positivity it can have. If we can bring a smile to a child & their family then hopefully, just for a moment, they can have something happier to focus on.

Baking A Smile was established In December 2012. We have a large team of amateur & professional bakers on hand, donating their time, experience & money to provide amazing cakes for ill children and to fundraisers - which are not only full of yumminess but jam packed with love.

If you're a baker too, why not register and help bring some happy into the lives of people who deserve it!

http://www.bakingasmile.org

Toadstool cake - April 2014

 Toadstool birthday cake for a little girl.

The cake was a red velvet stalk and vanilla dome, both with vanilla buttercream.

Structurally it was dowelled as per a standard two tier cake, but I used foam core as a board on the top tier (the dome) and cored it so I could add a central dowel that reached through both tiers to add strength.

I made the ladybird with sugarpaste and florist's wire (customer was warned!).

The butterfly was cut out with a standard plunger cutter, then the wings frilled using a ball tool as per flowers.

The foliage is a mixture of painting, royal icing and fondant pieces.

Another advantage of the foam core is that it gave a good white surface for the underside of the dome.  

The dome is actually a dark "hot" pink as requested by the customer.

This cake was made for The Angel Food Bakery in Brighton's iconic South Lanes, where the Cake Angels bring Cake Love to the public on a daily basis!

Vagina cake (sorry!), subtitled "what the customer asked for" - March2014

There really is no accounting for taste!

Based on the amazing Debbie Brown's crying babies.

24 cupcakes to go with the giant cupcake.  

These ones feature emerging babies and monsters.  

As I said, what the customer wants...

Thank you cake on behalf of the Tinies - November 2013

A cake for a very, very special lady… 

who we can never thank enough for all she's done for us.

Orange and raspberry top tier, double chocolate fudge bottom tier.
Little people, lettering and flowers made from modelling chocolate.

1920s Vauxhall cake - October 2013

My first ever car cake.  This is a cake copy of Rob's vintage racing Vauxhall.  I couldn't have chosen a more tricky car to make as my first attempt at a car cake, but it's been a really good learning curve and it turned out pretty well. 

First step, bake A LOT of cake!

It's always really hard to show the scale of a cake.  Invariably my cakes are pretty big though.  I put the mug in to show scale here but I still don't think you can see it very well.

I baked 4 sheet cakes for this, with 9 eggs in each (so that's a 36 egg cake, the average Victoria sponge has 4 eggs in).  As with all sculpted cakes though, once I'd shaped it there was a lot of waste (which is currently in the freezer to make cake pops with later).  The finished cake is big, around 20 inches long.

Stacked the cakes with real chocolate buttercream filling. Sculpted the basic shape of the car body.  Put on several thin layers of buttercream (with extra melted chocolate added so it would cool to be fairly firm and help to support the structure of the cake).  

Finessed the shaping of the body.  Added modelling chocolate walls to the side of the car for extra strength.

Covered in fondant.

My new favourite is the Carma Massa Ticino Tropic fondant.  It's really elastic, so doesn't dry and go scaly, but tastes better than many of them.  As far as I know, you can only buy it from Town and Country Foods in the uk right now though, at £49 per 7kg with a minimum £80 order (but free next day delivery which is very handy).

Cut out seating area and used modelling chocolate to make the interior walls.

Built a base and support from foam core sheets.

Glued cake card to base.

Made wheels...

Radiator...

and fenders out of modelling chocolate (fenders had card and dowel supports inside)

Add bits and bobs

(Please excuse the corn flour on the seats that hadn't had time to disappear when I photographed it)

Delivery of enormous cake to birthday boy!

And here's the original...

For a much better lesson than this on how to make a car cake, 

have a look at Mike McCarey's tutorial on crafty.com. 

Well worth looking at, the man is a genius!

...

P.S. Post party car carnage!

Hungry catapiller cake - June 2013

Aah, little boo is 3. Time for a cake. Never been a huge fan of the artwork in the hungry catapiller but love the story and its one of her favourites so here we are... Plus the theme gave me the excuse to put out lots of fruit as party food without looking like a zealot!

Star Wars R2D2 cake - November 2012

Lets face it, five year old boys and Star Wars are a match made in heaven (or even 45 year old boys for that matter). Ron-star wanted an R2D2 so that's what I went for.  

Had a slight problem with slippage on the M25 (that'll teach me to use supermarket bought fondant!), but repairs made on arrival and I seem to be the only one who cared.

One very happy god-son, but that may have been down to the Star Wars themed snacks, space age bouncy castle and his dad appearing as Darth Vader and getting his butt kicked by 25 hyped up kids with foam light sabres!!

Glamping festival cake May 2013

Well, this challenge was to make a joint 40th birthday cake, big enough to feed up to 100 people and make a statement in the middle of a festival site.

My best friend and her husband (also rather special) were having a mini-festival weekend to celebrate so hired a lovely little camp site, complete with river for paddling in and lots of bell tents.

Had my usual brainstorming session on Pinterest but didn't really feel very inspired and was quite concerned that making a tiered cake that might have to be kept in our bell tent with us and three kids overnight might spell squished cake.

Then it occurred to me that I could make three cakes of different sizes that would be big enough to feed everyone, but narrow enough to store.  Also, just liked the idea that it was a kind of horizontally tiered cake.

I made one cake into the woodland area, another the camping area, the bonfire area a third and a tiny bell tent cake out front.  I mounted them on a 16" cake drum decorated with a marbled blue fondant river and royal icing flooded grassy camping field.

The tallest cake was a multi-coloured vanilla almond sponge with clementine butter cream. The others were chocolate marble cake with marbled white and dark chocolate ganash.  Then they were all covered with fondant and royal icing decorations with added bunting made from florist's wire and icing.

...because, kids love rainbow cake!!!

... and by the way... Bell tents look great but we won't be doing that again!! If there's ever a next time, we're hiring an airstream!

happy birthday baby bean

Jacob is one, can't believe it.  We call him Bean but he's also known as the night owl so an owl cake for him.  My first proper multi-coloured layer cake, but of course once you start cutting cake with little people around its mayhem so forgot to get photos of the inside, doh!