Money at last!

So in the last week I completed my first two paid commissions. The first was the 60th birthday cake I mentioned in my last post. I still have to work on my piping, but hey, everything takes practice right?
And a couple of closer views of my roses.


Next up was a congratulations cake for a colleague. She and her fiancee had gone away on holiday and got married while they were away. Some of the other women at work asked me to make a cake. I would show you more photos, but my camera was being evil and over exposing everything so I only have one rather dreadful picture.


I've also had 3 further commissions from people at work. A Halloween cake, a 19th birthday and an 18th birthday cake so I've got quite a bit going on at the moment. I also start a cake decorating course at college this week, 6 classes on flower work, modelling etc. I'm really excited about it, but a bit daunted by the equipment list they sent out. I guess I shouldn't be since it's all stuff I'm going to need for doing the work in the end.

Well, hopefully will update after my first class and let you all know how it's going.

It's been a while...

No, I haven't given up if any of you are still reading this...

This weekend just past I had a trial run at a cake I'm going to be making for another convention, this one taking place at Halloween. I wanted the cake to be a red velvet cake, and sice I had never made one of those before I gave it a go. The cake was a success, the decorating even more so. However, I'm keeping pictures under wraps until nearer the time, cos I don't want to give too much away to the people who are going to be eating it.

I also got my first, proper, confirmed commission today. I've been asked to make a 60th birthday cake for a lady for next weekend. I've been given pretty much free rein on the decorating too. They've asked for a piped Happy Birthday message, and told me she likes flowers, that's it! So to celebrate, and also to practice, I bought 3 sets of flower petal cutters and I'm off to practice with them. Expect lots of pictures by the weekend as my flower making progresses.

Birthday Party/Baby Shower combo

One of my closest friends is expecting her first baby in about a month's time.
Yesterday was her birthday so her mother and sisters organised a surprise combination Birthday Party/Baby Shower for her. I volunteered to bring cake and thought I'd try and do something a bit different.

The basic idea was toy blocks, so I started out with a simple chocolate sponge, and cut it into 4 equal squares. Each one was cut in half, filled with buttercream, and then crumb coated.


These were then left to set for several hours while I went off to work, ready for me to come back and finish them off before the party.

When I got back from work I started off by covering each block in another layer of buttercream to smooth them out. This was nearly a total disaster as haflway through covering the last block I slipped and knocked it upside down onto the counter top. I was able to rescue it though, and the damage was, thankfully, not irreparable.


And then I worked on the piping. This was my first attempt, so yeah, it's a bit messy. Please god though, don't send it into Cake Wrecks!



The birthday girl/mum-to-be loved the cake, and all the other guests were very impressed too, it certainly got eaten pretty quickly, I only just had time to get this picture.

Going for Gold

As well as making cakes, my other hobby is Archery. Been doing it for a couple of years now and I really enjoy it. 2 weekends ago my club held their annual family fun shoot. A lovely afternoon was had by all (in between huge rain showers) and after we finished shooting and were having our picnics, talk turned to the club's annual tournament, which was to be held the next weekend. I volunteered to make a cake for the refreshments table and they said that would be great, so I went off home to decide on what to do.

I settled on something relatively simple, a round cake with black, blue, red and gold rings, representing a target. Like so...

I went and picked up a lovely little box of paste colours from Lakeland plastics, 8 colours for about £15, which seemed like a bargain to me and then worked out what I could use as templates for the rings.

I assembled all my equipment and got started

Now, here's the thing. I'm really regretting this now, but I didn't take any photos as I went along. I got so focussed on getting the ruddy thing finished in time that I just cracked on with it. I finished up the basic cake and was pretty pleased with it over all. The black ring was a little too grey for my liking, but I think it still looks good.


So after I had completed that, it was time to craft my arrows! using some chocolate covered biscuit sticks found in a local asian supermarket and some leftover coloured icing for fletchings I (k)nocked* up 6 arrows and them got everything ready to take to the tournament. Once there, I stuck the arrows into the cake and left it on the refreshments table for a bit while I had to sort something else out. When I returned I was asked if they could please use my cake as a raffle prize. I was a little shocked, but I said yes, and I'm glad I did. It sat on display during the afternoon and was won by one of our club's junior members.

I spent the afternoon chatting to one of the other women in the refreshment tent and ended up having her ask me to quote for making her daughter's birthday cake for this coming weekend. The plan is ready, I have my basic ingredients, now all I am waiting for is the go ahead to make it. So watch this space.

*please excuse the awful archery pun.

More Supernatural Cake-age

So following the Metallicake's success (but not triumph, I didn't win the contest), I wanted to do something else with a Supernatural theme, but that was going to be a little less time consuming, and a lot less nerve wracking.

In late season 3 of the show, The Winchester Brothers revealed some rather nifty little anti-demonic possession tattoos.

Now, I know you can't really see them very well in that picture, which is another great reason for you to go watch the show if you haven't already, but I decided it would look really cool on a cake.

Cutting the template for the damn thing was a pain in the behind, the pentagram bit in the middle is rather intricate, but I managed, and after that it was quite easy.





I rolled the black icing out between two sheets of cling film so it didn't stick to the board/rolling pin. When I flipped it over on to the cake I noticed that the cling film had wrinkled a bit under the icing, but it had created a rather funky effect on the icing, so rather than smooth it out, I left it. There's a close up here so you can see the wrinkles.

The Metallicake

I had this big idea when we were in New Zealand, that for the upcoming Asylum Supernatural convention that I was going to attend, it would be fab to make a cake and enter it in the art competition they were having. Then I thought, what would be really cool, and all about Supernatural, yet easy to make in cake form. The Impala.

For those of you who aren't fans of Supernatural, first of all, why not? It's a great show that goes from strength to strength every season. Grab the first three seasons on DVD now, you've got most of the summer to catch up and then grab season 4 on DVD before 5 hits the airwaves in the fall. (Thursday nights, 9pm, after Smallville on The CW).

Right, back to the point, yeah, if you're not a fan you won't know about The Impala. The two main characters in the show drive around the US hunting ghosts and demons and stuff in a beautiful, black, 1967 4 door hard top Chevrolet Impala. This one...



Right, got that fixed in your mind? Okay good. So while we were still in NZ I was sketching it (from memory) and trying to work out what I would need to put it together. Bear in mind at this point, I still hadn't baked a cake...

Right, so after we got back, I had my few practice goes, which you can see in my previous posts, and then figured I should get cracking on this bad boy. I found the specs online for the Impala and scaled down to work out my dimensions. 21 x 8 x 5.5 inches was what I ended up with, which meant a grand total of 4 x 8 inch square sponges.

The ingredients list for this creation was terrifying. 2 dozen eggs, over 2.5 kilos of flour, not to mention I could only bake one cake at a time in my small oven, and each one took around 4 hours to bake evenly!

So, once they were all baked I assembled them and carved the basic shape.


It took an entire day to decorate it, I kept running backwards and forwards to my computer, checking all the reference pictures I had from the show. Unfortunately my printer had decided to play up otherwise I'd have had them in the kitchen with me.








Once the basic black was done I started on the windows. These were made of pastillage so they would be rigid and hold their shape.



With the windows in, all that remained were the front and rear ends, most of which are chrome on the car. With some white icing and some edible silver paint, I got going.



The number plates were pastillage plaques with the writing done with sugar art pens.


The finished article (minus wheels, which were half moons of sponge, covered in black icing. The rims were more edible silver paint).

And finally, the complete car, with wheels, varnished and waiting to be boxed up and taken to the convention.

The Lady...uh, Pig...

There was a design in one of the books I got from the library, it was for a Ladybird, and I figured it would be pretty easy to try out. Red icing covering the cake, and the black dots etc I could do with one of the sugar art pens I had recently gotten. All was awesome until I tried to get my icing to go red.

Epic fail, no matter how much liquid colouring I used, all I managed to get was a lovely pink. Feeling a little disheartened, but determined not to be defeated I had a think about what I could do with the large ball of pink icing I now had.


I think you'll agree that for a salvage job this turned out pretty well. My archery club certainly agreed and polished most of it off in between ends.

My first cakes

After my return from New Zealand I got cracking pretty quickly on the cake front. My boyfriend's father is particularly welcoming of my efforts.

So, the first thing I did was hit the library and grab a stack of books on making kid's party cakes etc. I tried out the most basic sponge recipe first of all, since my previous cake making experience was severely limited.

My first cake was a madeira sponge with a bitter chocolate ganache.

This was demolished by the family in short order, so another cake was needed.

This time, same sponge, but with a chocolate fudge icing. I have to say I prefered this to the bitter chocolate ganache as I have a major sweet tooth, no-one else seemed to mind though.

Welcome

Thanks for coming.
There's a couch over there and some cupcakes on the side, make yourself comfy and help yourself.
This blog is hopefully going to be an ongoing chronicle of my attempts to create some fun, unusual cakes, and maybe even sell some of them.
I spent 6 months in New Zealand recently, and while I was there I tried to decide what I wanted to do with my life once I got back to the UK. Almost everyone we stayed with recognised that I had an interest in food, and told me I should pursue it.
Please feel free to comment, especially if there is something you really like the look of.