Unicorn Poo - Cupcake

Would you believe me if I told you?

I was just making simple cupcakes, minding my own business and before I knew it ... this unicorn sneaked into my kitchen and did this on my cupcakes. Lol 

Russian Tip Roses - Cupcake

This was my first effort using my new Russian Piing Tips, I see I need more practice

Swansea City FC - Cupcake

This post is just to showcase a cupcake I've made.

Football Cake - Blue

I love it when I'm asked to make a football cake - for a girl! And this young lady has no idea that she's even having a party, let alone a cake :-)  

She's a bit on a Cardiff City fan, but a small cake, like the Bluebirds one, would simply not do. I seem to be making quite a few football cakes, there's ...

1. The Liverpool one
2. The Bluebirds one
3. The Red one 
4. And now this one

Once again, this was two separate cakes, only brought together for the final decoration. Using my faithful sponge mix, with Trex for the top and Stork for the bottom, I cooked two layers for the grass and one large dome for the top. Inside the dome top is a yummy surprise for the recipient.

Due to some technical issues, again with the fridge, even though I had soaked the sponges in the simple syrup, the top seemed to have turn out quite hard. I hope it softens up by the time of the party.

The top sponge was placed on it's own cake card, then crumb coated, chilled and covered in white fondant ...

Each white and blue piece was individually cut, using a template I had made myself, then fixed to the cake, using a little water as glue ...

... And trimmed down to fit.

The next step was to add some stitching. Using a quilting tool, I ran a simple line at the edge of each section of the ball.  

Once this was completed, nine stabilising dowels (bubble straws) were used in the bottom layer to prevent the tops shifting and squashing the bottom layer.  The top is rather heavy.

The sponge for the top is coloured in blue, to match the theme for the cake - blue and white, not the standard black and white football.

Below the recipient's name on the cake is a bluebird and a CCFC logo (made previously) has been added to the one side. This portion of the cake has been pipped in the same colour green as the sponge is made with.

Surprise inside the cake ... Chocolate M&Ms

Wedding Cake - June 2017

This cake has been months in the making, yet nothing had started to be made until three days before the actual wedding day!  The bride-to-be wanted a sponge cake and on an extremely tight budget.  The cake topper, however, was made a few weeks in advance.

I only have a small oven, and it's not fan-assisted, so it took me about nine hours to bake, including stopping for lunch.  Each of the six mixes that would make up the three tiers had to be cooked one at a time.

I measured the mixes by the quantity of eggs and were as follows:

• Tier #1 - A 6" sandwiched sponge required six eggs
• Tier #2 - An 8" sandwiched sponge required 12 eggs
• Tier #3 - A 10" sandwiched sponge required 16 eggs

Three stacked tiers, for measure

Each sponge was delicately flavoured with vanilla and sandwiched together and crumbcoated using a complimenting buttercream.

Tier #1 (top) - 6" Cake
This tier has a quilted effect with silver balls in each part of the pattern where the lines cross.
To do this I needed mark the cake into equal sections and place markers. Next I had to ensure that the bottom marker is directly below the top marker. Marks were made from the bottom marker on a slant to the marker two points away.

Image from public domain

With a steady hand, a ruler for be sure, a quilting tool was used to simulate stitching. Using the other side of the quilting tool, small star bursts were added to simulate creased material ready for the 'buttons' aka silver balls - the silver balls were then added where the lines cross.

Tier #2 (middle) - 8" Cake
This layer is not quilted, to ensure the quilting does not overpower the cake, I successfully convinced the bride-to-be that a simple lace layer would look far better. Now that it's done, I quite agree with my decision.

Tier #3 (bottom) - 10" Cake
This layer was also quilted, in the same way as tier #1.

A significant amount of hours was spent on decorating this beauty. The day started at 11am and it ended at around 5.30pm - on my birthday too lol.

The cake has been decorated with a designated back and front, but no actual centre-front. The whole front is the front and designed to look it's best from all three, relatively front facing 'sides'.

Delivering the cake was a two-man job, or in this case, two women. But we managed it with such ease, I have no idea what all the worrying was all about.

All that's left for me to say is ...

Good luck to the Bride and Groom

Floral Cake Topper

I was tasked with a commission a little out of my comfort zone, making a cake topper to compliment / match a bride's bouquet for the wedding cake I have also been commissioned for.

Issues to overcome were:

1. I can't make bouquets
2. I had to match the artificial roses in her bouquet, exactly!

The best way for me to go was delegate the task to my faithful topper maker, whose crowning glory finished off the Naked Engagement Cake I made for a family member back in April.

Below is an image of the bridal bouquet ...

It's a simple, yet elegant bouquet. For the topper, it was not possible to use the blue 'glitter' pieces as it wasn't possible to find food safe ones where the glitter wouldn't fall onto the cake.

I sent my topper maker off to source and purchase, on a strict budget, the artificial roses that exactly match the bridal bouquet. Full credit and thanks to them for doing such a perfect job and sourcing the perfect match, if not exact same ones.

As the bouquet topper's assistant, I simply made suggestions and took pictures to check back on later, blow is an image of one of the suggestions / ideas that we had ...

I'd promised the bride-to-be some pearls, but the ones I wanted did not look the best when in the bouquet, so I chose small flower and pearl pieces. I think it looks quite nice!

The bride-to-be's cake is to be ivory (by request) with silver balls in the quilted design on the top and bottom tier, with that in mind, we added some diamante pins.  These would compliment both the cake and the bouquet.

The finished topper (image at top of this blog post) will crown the wedding cake that I am making for the June wedding.

I would like to take this chance to thank my faithful topper maker for another wonderful crowning glory. Without their help, what would I do to compliment my cakes? The toppers make the whole thing perfect.

Guitar Cake

This cake had shrunk and changed shape, dramatically, from the original idea. At the request stage, no size was given, just a carved electric guitar shaped cake was required. A small carved cake would have been looked completely out of proportion, so I opted for one to fit on a 20" board but, alas, following some discussion, it transpired that the cake was only for six servings.  I suggested this smaller cake with a fondant guitar topper. 

The sponge was a simple vanilla one from my faithful recipe book, sandwiched together with vanilla buttercream. 

As with all my cakes I guess, this one was not without it's trials! As this is only my hobby, I don't have a professional kitchen.  Baking a three tier sponge cake at the same time as you're trying to crumbcoat, chill and decorate a cake is not helpful. The kitchen was simply far too warm and both the buttercream and fondant became very sticky. At one stage, almost at the end, the fondant peeled off onto my paddle! But I managed!

That was all day #1, I got it ready for day #2 and this happened ...

Having stripped the cake, I recovered it. My kitchen was much cooler so I had some success!

I mostly cover every board, but I wanted to try something different. So I made individual fondant balls (later to have silver balls between each) to fix to the cake and board.

The cake was chilled again, to prevent a repeat of day #1, then the guitar was fixed on using cocktail sticks as dowels. Silver balls were fixed in between each fondant red ball. As the cake looked a little plain I cut two white guitar silhouettes, affixed them to either side, added some stars and a hand made treble clef to the front, made by using an extruder and some very thin fondant.