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

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

Penguin Grooms Wedding cake toppers - July 2014

So... on an amazingly humid and hot day, while thunderstorms raged outside I made toppers out of black fondant...remind me not to that again until winter.

For those of you who don't know, black fondant is horrible to work with as it get really soft and sticky with so much colour in it.  I had to keep putting the fondant, and the toppers, in the fridge just so I could have them keep their shape as they refused to harden up at all (I am making them a few days in advance of the cake just so they have a chance to harden up before the wedding).  

The trouble with putting things in the fridge when you're fondanting though is that, unless you've got a humidity control environment, you've got a very small window to do things in before the fondant gets 'sweaty' with condensation.  It's frustrating and time consuming, but you just have to be patient.

Anyway, got there in the end!

I used polystyrene (styrofoam) balls in the middle to reduce the weight and covered them with fondant mixed with a little Tylo.  You can see below how the cooled fondant is "sweating" in the heat and humidity.

 

The penguins wait to see.

One penguin finds his inner Dalek.

(keeping his eyes in place while the glue dries) 

These toppers are for an upcoming same sex wedding. I think the penguin suit thing has become a bit of a running joke between the couple.

I've positioned the penguins flippers so they can hold hands when they go on the cake.

These were 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!

Bunny comforter / blanket cake topper - July 2014

A cake for a small person's birthday.  

The customer brought in a favourite comforter for us to photograph and recreate out of sugar.

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!

Twin naming cakes - July 2014

My brother's friends are having a naming day ceremony for their twins.  

The cakes themselves are being made by The Angel Food Bakery in Brighton, but I have made toppers for free to go on the cakes.  

The toppers are sugar representations of the children's favourite things, so we have... a cuddly chimp, a kitty hand puppet, a spade and a Beatrix Potter book.

Happy birthday little people, hope it's a great one!

Boo's Strawberry cake - June 2014

So our little Boo is about to turn four (can't believe she's so grown up!), but I'm going to be away in Spain so I've been charged with making a topper for her birthday cake which I'll deliver a week before it's needed. 

At first she wanted Mr Tumble's spotty bag, then a dinosaur, but then she saw a photo of my buttercream strawberry cake from last month and decided she wanted that.  Couldn't do that a week in advance so I've made this instead.

First I made the flowers and leaves and left them to harden for a day.  I decided to keep them simple and not airbrush them.

I made the strawberries out of rice krispie treat (made with marshmallow fluff, not gelatine so they are vegetarian), flavoured with strawberry and coloured pink.

Once the rice krispie treats were set hard I carved off a bit of the bottom, so they'd lie at the right angle, covered them in fondant and airbrushed them a deep red with a little black shading.

I love my airbrush!

When the strawberries were dry, I piped the seeds on with royal icing and added calyxes.

I arranged the finished pieces on a fondant disk that can just be popped onto a layer cake.  

Now I just need to wrap the presents and I'm ready to deliver.  

Hoo ha.

Happy birthday my darling girl.  We love you very much.

P.S.  There are 2 strawberries because I'm pretty sure her sister will want one too!