Macmillan coffee morning cake - September 2013

Chocolate fudge sponge with vanilla buttercream.

Bit annoyed with myself as used a very tasty, but slightly unstable sponge and forgot  (it was 1am and had been a long day) to use some dark choc ganache as a crumb coating around the outside to stabilise the cake before I put fondant on it.  As you can see the cake settled a bit overnight as a result.  Doh!

Nevermind, I'll remember next time!

Currently up for auction to raise money for Macmillan Nurses.  Hopefully it'll make a few extra £'s.

Sherman Tank - September 2013

So, here're the construction snaps:

Randomly shaped cakey bits on the base board, glued down with buttercream.

Covered with fondant.

Then green royal icing scrub, brown piping gel mud and cookie crumb earth.

Airbrushed to give it all a bit of tonal definition.

Meanwhile, carve the cake into a tank shape (I chose a Sherman and had a look on-line to see what they looked like), crumb coat and cover with fondant.  

You need a fairly firm cake for this, if it's too soft you wont be able to carve it well enough and it won't support itself.

Carve and cover turret separately.  Glue turret onto main tank body with royal icing.

Cover a sturdy straw with fondant stuck down with edible glue.  Allow to harden.

Start to add fondant detail.  

You need something sturdy to take the weight of the cannon barrel.  I used a wooden skewer, then some narrow straws split to fit inside each other and pushed these into the cake quite a long way to allow for leverage.

I slipped the barrel over the narrow straws and used edible to glue to anchor it.

For the tracks, I made a chevron design.

I glued the tracks on and dusted the tracks, wheels and gears with edible metallic dusting powders then airbrushed the whole tank.

The final details...

...then place the tank on the base and have a nice cup of coffee.

Neon / Rave birthday cake - September 2013

12th birthday cake for friend, the girls had an amazing blacklight party with dayglo decorations and costumes & their own personal rave.  Fantastic!

Bottom 8", 4 layer chocolate cake with white and dark marbled ganache. Top 6", 2 layer vanilla sponge with clementine and elderflower buttercream.

Colour airbrushed on bottom tier. Base black fondant with neon coloured royal icing splatters.  Stars are candy melt.  Dancer is Fimo, but everything else is edible.

Autumn Flowers - September 2013

A two tier birthday cake for a friend's mum.  

Bottom 8", 3 layer tier of chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream.  Top 6", 2 layer tier of vanilla marble cake with vanilla buttercream.  Both tiers have a marzipan layer under the fondant as requested.

Colour airbrushed on, plus airbrushed details on decorations.

Halloween Cake - July 2013 (Yes, I know it's July!)

Yes, I know Halloween isn't in July, but for this particular birthday girl everyday should be Halloween so who are we to argue!

My first ever commission project... well, expenses at least... and got to have a great lunch and hang out with old friends so I'm a happy girl too.

Happy birthday Flip-Flop, it was lovely to meet you and have a great 4th birthday party.

Have always been a bit of a purist about making everything possible edible, but decided to use polymer clay (Fimo) for some of the props on this and it was so successful that I might succumb to that again, sorry.  Does mean that the birthday girl can keep them of course too.  

The clay props are the signs, the cauldron, the gravestone and the top three pumpkins... oh, and the bat.

Inside the hill (or Glastonbury Tor as we're now calling it), the layers are black (chocolate), orange (Orange) and purple (vanilla). Inside the house are orange and purple layers.

There's butter icing between the layers and milk chocolate ganash as a crumb coating under the icing.

Had some trouble with the purple cake as my first attempt went pink in the oven so did some testing and discovered that the Squire's Kitchen colour that I have becomes unstable in heat and changes colour.  Bit disappointing as I really like a lot of their products, so used a combination Sugarflair's ruby red and baby blue colours and it came out just fine.

Thanks Georgie for sending over some photos of the inside of the cake. Xxxx

The Bean's 2nd birthday - July 2013

Lovely Bean is 2.  He is mad about Mickey Mouse so here's his Disney themed cake.  Vanilla sponge with white chocolate ganash.  Held up pretty well considering the heat yesterday, and tasted great,

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!