Giraffe birthday cake - October 2015

Small three layer 6" chocolate fudge birthday cake with a theme... 

think you can tell what that might be!

NOTE:  This and many other toppers are available in my Etsy shop.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KasserinaHome?ref=hdr_shop_menu

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!

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!

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!