Baby Shower Cake

I LOVED making the fondant baby booties for this cake. In fact, I wish more people would ask me to make baby cakes so I could do more of these. I may have to make some in preparation for my own new arrival due in October. I used this excellent tutorial http://bronniebakes.com/2013/09/30/how-to-make-fondant-baby-shoes/ to make the shoes.

So cute!

Fozzie Bear Cake

My brother celebrated his 37th birthday yesterday. Last year I made him a Dalek cake, this year I was asked to make a cake of his childhood hero, Fozzie Bear of The Muppets.

I baked and levelled four 8 inch chocolate cake rounds. I trimmed the lower third of the top level off to make Fozzie's mouth and used the cut-offs for his ears.After crumb-coating in chocolate buttercream, I covered the whole thing in orange fondant.

He was so pleased he couldn't bring himself to cut into it at the restaurant last night, but I've been told it'll be shared out this afternoon when the kids come to visit.

Star Wars Cake

This cake I made for my cousin. I was in a bit of a rush so had to do something simple. I made a fondant light sabre and a death star to decorate it and put the Star Wars logo on the side. I did this by printing the shapes out and then cutting around them with a scalpel.

50th Birthday Cake

This cake I made for my sister's friend's birthday. The topper was fun to make, a fondant bow with the number 50 on it, detailed with gold dragees. I think I'm finally getting the hang of using Tappits.

I hated them when I first got them as I just couldn't get the hang of them, but I think I have finally worked it out. I add a small amount of tylose powder (a little at a time until the fondant "pops" when pulled apart), then roll the fondant out as thinly as possible on a well dusted surface and let it sit for a few minutes to firm up. I cut the fondant into small, thin strips, just wider than the letters.

I then turn the tappit over so it is face down on the table and give it a good dusting with cornflour. I put the fondant strip on top and roll over it with my small rolling pin. I then use the bottom end of the rolling pin to smooth the edge of  the letters. I remove the excess and then smack the tappit off the rolling pin so the letter pops out.

Doc McStuffins Cake

I had such an enormous brain-fart while making this cake. I was struggling to get the band on around the bottom of the cake as it was stretching and tearing and generally becoming a total mess. Then someone said to me, did you roll it up before putting it on?

Seriously?

How on earth did I miss doing something so patently obvious as that????

The lesson here is if you are applying fondant ribbons or strips, ROLL THEM UP.

I am an idiot.

Rainbow Cake

The baby (I suppose I should call her toddler) celebrated her 2nd birthday recently. She's my little rainbow baby so we went with that theme for her cake. I would have dyed the cake layers in rainbow colours but she breaks out in rash if she comes into contact with heavily coloured stuff so it had to remain plain sponge.

I think I need to work a bit harder on how neat I am in my finish. I can be a bit slap dash and messy. I can't believe too that it has taken me all this time to work out that if I want to apply a strip of fondant around the base (as above) I need to dust it, roll it up and then unroll it around it. I just learnt that today, a few cakes too late to save them from a messy finish. 

Minecraft Cake

I was asked to make a minecraft cake and I'll admit I had no idea where to start. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what Minecraft is, beyond a vague awareness that it is a computer game. I found this wonderful tutorial on youtube from My Cupcake Addiction.

It's a fairly straightforward cake to make, but I did find it to be quite time consuming, and very messy when it came to applying the oreo crumbs to the side of the cake. I was worried that the biscuit crumbs would go stale overnight (I made the cake on Friday and it was eaten at a party on Saturday) but there were no complaints.

The cake itself was four layers of 8" square chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream inbetween. You need to apply the oreos while the buttercream is still soft so don't put it in the fridge to firm up or the crumbs won't stick. I used three sleeves of oreos with the cream scrapped off for the crumbs. The top was buttercream dyed green. Definitely watch the youtube tutorial and it was very, very helpful. 

Princess Jasmine Cake

I made this cake for my cousin's daughter. The flowers were made with gerbera cutters and painted with edible gold paint, I then stuck on edible jelly jewels. The Jasmine figure was purchased from The Craft Company. 

I haven't gone!

I just realised today that I haven't updated this blog in almost six months! I've still been baking, but not too often to be honest. I had some emergency surgery in December that put me out of action for a few weeks and then not too long after that I found out that I am pregnant. Morning sickness and baking did not mix. I had also found I just wasn't enjoying it like I used to but the cake break has helped. I have one to make this weekend for my cousin's daughter and for the first time in ages I'm actually really looking forward to it. In the meantime though here are my few very minor efforts of the last six months

Hopefully I'll be much better at posting from now on!

Rudolph Reindeer Cupcakes

Cupcakes aren't really my forte, largely because I'm not very good at piping, but after the success of the snowmen cupcakes last week I decided to try making some reindeer cupcakes this week.

I used this recipe (it's gorgeous, try it, you won't regret it!), a small amount of white and black fondant (for the eyes), 8 glace cherries, mini pretzels and amaretti biscuits. You don't have to use amaretti, not everyone is a fan of their almond flavour, you can use any sort of mini biscuit/cookie that you fancy. I halved the glace cherries and glued them onto the biscuits with a tiny amount of melted chocolate.

They take minutes to assemble and look pretty good for minimal effort!

Christmas Tree Giant Cupcake and Snowman Cupcakes

Today it is the Christmas bazaar at my kids' school. They asked for home baking donations for their cake stall and I was happy to oblige.

These were all wonderfully easy to do and I had them completed within a few hours yesterday afternoon. 

I have absolutely fallen involve with PME lustre spray (see I don't hate the company despite the awful experiences I had with their Release-A-Cake). I used it to get the nice shine on the baubles for the Christmas tree. The silver baubles are left-over metallic smarties from the Darlek cake I made back in the summer (yes I grossly over-estimated how many of those I would need. I still have an enormous bag of them). The snowmen are buttercream icing and marshmallow with fondant accents. 

Grand Theft Auto 5

I think this cake suffered a bit from a lack of planning on my part. In hindsight if I was doing it again I would have just put the GTA logo on the top of the cake instead of the icing cake topper. I think it would have looked much cleaner and more effective.

I am absolutely loving the silhouettes around the sides though. I did those by printing them out and cutting around them, placing them on black fondant and cutting around them again with a scalpel. I let the silhouettes sit for a few minutes to dry a little before applying them to the cake.

Unfortunately I didn't have my dad to take pictures this time, so I only have the ones I snapped with my phone.

Starburst Cake

Really pleased with how this one turned out. Think I got fantastic edges. It's taking a while but practise, practise, practise really does make all the difference.

Burger Cake & Gingerbread Glasses.

My cousin turned 21 last week. It's freaking me out a little. I remember when he was born, I was the age my eldest daughter is now and it really doesn't seem like it was 21 years ago. Anyway, for reasons unknown to me he no longer goes by the name that it took my aunt a week to decide on (Michael), and is now known as "Burger". also he wears glasses.

Makes perfect sense, no? 

The glasses were made from gingerbread (I cut them free-hand, thus why they are a bit shonky looking). The arms are attached with a small amount of melted chocolate. 

To get the glass effect for the lenses I put a handful of Foxes Glacier mints into my food processor and whizzed them until they were broken into small crystals. I put the cooked gingerbread specs onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper and filled in the holes with the crystals. It then went back into the oven at around 170oC for about 5 minutes until the sweets had melted. I then let them cool on the tray for a good half an hour before moving to a rack. 

Doc McStuffins Clinic Cake

I try to put a lot of energy into doing really ambitious cakes for my kids' own birthdays. This weekend we were celebrating my daughter Darcy's 4th birthday. She's a big, big fan of Doc McStuffins and asked for a Doc McStuffins' themed cake. I decided to attempt to make her clinic.

Sadly this is one of the occasions where I was really disappointed with the result, though it took me about six solid hours of work to do the thing. I think I just came out looking a bit sloppy and not at all how I envisioned. Lucky for me she is four and easily impressed.

A little side note: For a while now I've been using Dr Oetker cake release spray. I think this stuff is brilliant, my cakes don't stick at all, they come out of the tin like a dream. My local tesco appears to have stopped stocking it so I ordered some from The Craft Company. Now there is a bit of a post-office mix up which involved the Craft Company's customer service doing their absolute best and Royal Mail blowing up a parcel, but long story short I had cakes to make and no cake release spray yet. I got the husband to call into the craft store in town to see if they sold it. They didn't but they did stock PME Release a Cake. Now maybe I was doing something wrong but I found this stuff to be absolutely dreadful. Two cakes in a row ended up with half of stuck to the bottom of the tin so when I turned them out great hulking wedges of cake were torn from the centre. I was NOT impressed. Thankfully a day later the Dr Oetker spray arrived and balance was restored to the universe, and the PME Release-a-Cake swiftly went into the bin. 

Chelsea FC Cake

Sometimes you are asked to do a cake and you end up scratching your head wondering.... how the heck am I going to manage this? My aunt asked me to make a Chelsea FC cake for my cousin's birthday and I looked at the logo (easy to do as the husband is a devoted Chelsea fan) and thought I can't model this!

eBay came to the rescue. On a few occasions now I have ordered printed icing sheets from there. They are fairly cheap and very easy to use and give a lovely professional looking finish to cakes. I really recommend these over toppers printed onto rice paper as I think they tend to look really faded out and a bit rubbish.

I actually love getting to do the occasional cake like this but they look great but take about half an hour to assemble so are hugely relaxing to do. 

Minion Cake

Last weekend when I friend asked me to make a cake for her little boy's birthday I was quite pleased at the vote of confidence, but I was also ridiculously pushed for time because it was also my daughter's 4th birthday and she was looking for a quite complicated cake herself. 

Luckily, pinterest came to the rescue once again and I got the design for this very simple and incredibly easy Minion cake. It was the work of minutes with my round cutters and some silver metallic food paint to create this. 

Fire Engine Minion Cake

Two year olds love Fire Engines and Minions apparently, so that was the brief for this creation.

Minions are great fun to make, and very easy, though it did take me two attempts as I made the head on the first one too small and had to start over. The sirens on the minion's head were made with halved glace cherries.

Golden Anniversary Cake

This cake broke my heart. I had so many issues trying to get the roses to sit nicely on the top, can someone please tell me how to do it? so they sit all nicely together in a bunch? I'm thinking maybe I need to trim back the wires and sit them on instead of trying to insert the wires (safely tucked inside a straw) into the cake?

And sadly there were some other mishaps, some of the petals and lettering were damaged in transport. I am gutted as I really wanted this to be special, but on the plus side I am very pleased with how the quilting turned out.

I'm off now to google placing fondant roses on a cake to see if someone out there can help me.

Tinker Bell Cake

My cousin asked me to make this for her daughter's 5th birthday. I made the stem of the mushroom using the bottom of a giant cupcake mould and the top was baked in a 1lt pyrex bowl. I think if I was doing this again I would use a bigger bowl but I was worried that if the top overhung too much it wouldn't be stable.

I found smoothing the buttercream on the dome was quite difficult. Initially I tried bending my scraper so that it matched the curve, but I found it very hard to keep a consistent angle and pressure. In the end, I stuck the cake in the fridge to firm up and then smoothed it by placing a paper towel on the top and using a cake smoother.

The flowers etc. are all fondant. The grass was made using royal icing and a grass piping tip.

I bought a Bully Land Tinker Bell topper from Amazon.