Cake Catch Up

It was my fiftieth birthday last year and Jen helped me celebrate in style with, what I think, is her best cake to date. I requested red roses, which are my favourite flower and that's exactly what I got. Jen has spent a lot of time practising get clean sharp edges with her icing and this cake really showed it off.

We treated ourselves to a Kitchenaid cake mixer at the start of last year and it came with a free pasta attachment, which is a great help to achieving a consistent fine thickness with sugarpaste petals and leaves. I was keen to have a go with the pasta attachment myself, so when Jen's birthday came round later in the year, I decided to try the  striped tier from "Wedding Day Dots and Stripes" by Trudy Mitchell in the October/November 2017 issue of  Cakes and Sugarcraft.

I picked a couple of different flowers and made them over a couple of weekends. I was busy at work during this time and although I managed to bake the cake, I wasn't able to finish it before Jen arrived on her weekend visit home from university. From this point it became a family effort. Graeme helped get things moving by "plastering" the buttercream and I managed to get the base layer of sugarpaste on the cake. Jen applied the stripes herself. Then together with Christina, she made the leaves and small blossoms. 

The flowers were arranged on the cake using posy pickers. It was the first time we had tried them and they worked really well. I like the way every angle looked different on this cake. 

Finally there is the Christmas cake. Jen was busy with project work at Christmas so she chose a simpler cake design this year. She found this super cute  Snow Foxes design on Pinterest. The snowball idea  was from the Red Nosed Reindeer cake she made a couple of years ago. The end result was an elegant ands understated cake. 

Clank Cake

While Jen was at home over Christmas. she made a late birthday cake for Graeme. The cake was 2 months late, so it seems a appropriate that I am 2 months late posting a picture of it on my blog. The theme of the cake was Clank, the robot character from the Ratchet and Clank PlayStation game. As well as a very cute Clank figure included a couple of crates and bolts which are a key feature of game.

Ski Chalet Cake

As it's still January, I think I can get away with sharing this year's ( or should I say last year's) Christmas cake. Jen was super busy at university up until the week before Christmas, so she didn't have a lot of time to plan the Christmas cake. As she's had such good results with the cake designs from Cakes and Sugarcraft magazine, I suggested she had a go at the Ski Season cake by Sherry Hostler in the December 2016 issue. As usual it was a great success. Jen modified the design a bit by putting a snowman next to the chalet rather than a fir tree. Over time he developed a bit of a lean, perhaps due a to a bit of apres ski!

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Cake

Jen had a fair amount of time on her hands while she waiting for her A level results, so she went all out on Christina's birthday cake. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is another popular TV show in our house, so Jen chose this as a theme. The front of the cake shows the S.H.I.E.L.D logo mounted on a brick wall. Jen achieved the brick effect using an embossing tool and then painstakingly brushed black colour dust in the cracks. The back of the cake shows the Hydra logo which has infiltrated  the S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation. I thought the reveal effect worked very well. An added bonus was the shadow created by the torn edges of the icing - to me it looks like limbs of the Hydra logo reaching out of the cake.

Sewing Machine Cake

I challenged my daughter, Jen, to make a sewing machine cake for my friend, Steph's birthday. Steph is my sewing partner in crime. A couple of years ago Steph bought a Singer featherweight, so this was the obvious choice. Jen has never seen a Singer Featherweight so she had to look up some images on the internet to use as a guide. It's interesting to see what details she picked out.

When she made this cake, Jen was in a lull between finishing her graphics A level exam at the end of April and start of her remaining exams in June. So she had some time but not too much. I suspect given the opportunity she would have added a foot but the cocktail stick needle did add some structural support.

I was pleased that used this cake as an opportunity to try out some new techniques, such as the quilting round the side of the base cake. The roses were made a special rose cutter which she had been keen to try. The sewing machine itself was made using rice krispie and marshmallow technique she used the camera cake and the "Owl I want for Christmas" cake. It was so pretty to look at, it was 3 days before we could bring ourselves to start eating it.

Camera Cake

 

Our friend Steve has a big birthday this year and as we were meeting up for a weekend at Center Parcs, we challenged Jen to make him a cake. As Steve is a keen photographer, a camera was the obvious choice. Jen used her own Canon SLR as a model. She included so much detail, on the front and the back. 

 

The camera was made using a mixture of rice krispies and marshmallows, so that it wouldn't be too heavy for the cake. This was the same technique she used on the "Owl I want for Christmas" cake.

 

Here's a photo she took with her own camera. It rather puts my phone camera shots to shame. She has started taking pictures of my beadwork and embroidery as opportunities to practice. So if some of the photos on my blog start to look a bit more professional - now you know why.



 



Purple Granada Pendant

 

It's almost six months since my last post with pictures of our Christmas tree. It seems wrong to post more Christmas pictures in June but I'd like to do one more Christmas related post to clear the buffers. Last year I taught my Mum how to braid with a Kumihimo disk. She got the hang of it and went on to produce a braid long enough for me to make a necklace for her. Then of course the necklace needed a pendant so together we picked out the beads for a Granada pendant. Granada is a Sabine Lippert design from her Beaded Fantasies book. The colours were so dark I found I got the best photographs by hanging it on the Christmas tree.

 

 





Here is this year Christmas cake, which is another masterpiece by our daughter Jen. It's based on a design from the 2015 winter issue of Cakes and Sugarcraft magazine.

 

 

 

This year, Jen got our younger daughter, Christina, involved. I think there maybe another budding sugarcraft artist in the house. At some point on Christmas Eve, Christina created this cute little chap.

 



Once Upon A Time Cake

 

Once upon a time - well last month to be precise - I decided to make a birthday cake for my eldest daughter's 18th birthday. Jen loves the TV series "Once Upon A Time", so I decided to use this as  a theme. The image that stuck in my head was the end of the opening credits with trees silhouetted against a night sky. I thought about stencilling the trees and then I remembered Karen Taylor's "Little Red Riding Cake" in Cakes and Sugarcraft magazine. I knew it would be a challenge but thought I'd give it a go. Like the path of true love in a fairytale, making this cake did not go entirely smoothly!

 

 

It all started well. I made the trees out of floral sugarpaste a couple of weeks ahead of time.

 

 

I was worried there would be some breakages, so I made a lot of trees!

 

 

 

 

I made the letters out of yellow florist paste and dried them around a cake time so they would fit on the finished cake. I smeared white vegetable fat on the tin to make the letters stick.

 

 

Then I painted the letters using a mixture of vodka and powdered gold food colouring. This was as far as I could go ahead of time.

 

 

 

This was where things started to go wrong. I made the cakes the evening before construction day, hoping they would be tall enough. I made a 9 egg Victoria sponge mixture, thinking that was sure to be enough. I was wrong - I was one inch short on the bottom tier. If I was doing this professionally, at this point I would have baked another layer. I'm not professional so I bodged it! After levelling the layers, I used the cake tops to patch together another layer. I knew I would be using dowels to support the forest canopy and as long as the dowels were held firmly, the squishy middle layer would only need to support the top layer.



 

 

A generous covering of buttercream filled in the gap at the outer edge and at this point I called in the cavalry.

 

 

 

My hubbie, Graeme, has a skill at smoothing buttercream which I need to learn when I'm not working to a deadline. 

 

 

 

The sugar paste covering was Cosmic Blue from Squires Kitchen. It reminds me of lace pillow cover cloths. At this point I remembered I had intended to cut my nails before I started. I looked at the thumbnail imprint and hoped I'd be able to cover it with a tree.

 

From this point it started to come together quite quickly. The first layer of trees went on.

With the second layer of trees, the bottom tier was finished. I added the top tier and stuck on the letters. The hug Jen gave me when she saw the cake made it all worthwhile. It was quite an investment in time and sugarpaste. but as Rumpelstiltskin says - "Magic always comes with a price"!

Happy Birthday to me

 

 

It wasn't a big birthday this year - unless you're a geek like me and occasionally quote your age in hexadecimal - in which case I was 0x30! However Jen still made me a lovely cake. This was her first try at proper sugarpaste flowers and I would  say it was a very successful first go.



Fishing Teddy Bear Cake

It was my brother's 50th birthday on Easter Sunday which gave us an excuse to make him a cake. As my parents live near a canal he has been an angler since his early teens and he has soft spot for bears. So it had to be a fishing teddy bear cake. My contribution was baking the cake - the rest was all Jen. She followed an online tutorial to model the bear but the hat and sandwiches were her idea. The bite out of the second sandwich was a particularly cute touch. The lake was flood filled royal icing and the waterfall was piped royal icing. The grass was done with a special purpose grass and fur piping nozzle, which worked really well.

Sweet Cherry Cake

 

 

The February half term holiday was good opportunity for Jen and I to co-operate on a cake. We picked the Sweet Cherry design by Linda Garnham from the Spring 2015 Cakes and Sugarcraft magazine. After the mad frenzy of her Art GCSE last year, Jen was missing painting and she made a fantastic job of the painting cherries. My contribution was baking the cakes and making the cherry decoration for the top. This was a simple design and fun to make.

 

 



Red-nosed Reindeer Christmas Cake

 

 

Jen has produced another masterpiece for our Christmas cake this year. It's another Karen Taylor design from her book - "Quick Cakes for Busy Mums". I think this cake must fit that description because Jen was much less stressed when she finished and it was even ready in time for Christmas!

 

 

 

Owl I want for Christmas

Our Christmas cake arrived a little late this year but it was worth the wait. For this year we did the "Owl I want for Christmas" design by Karen Taylor in the Winter 2013 issue of Cakes and Sugarcraft. Jen made the owls and I was responsible for the cake. Even Graeme got involved this time, "plastering" the butter icing - those DIY skills can come in handy in the kitchen too!

Rudolph's antlers proved to be a bit challenge. If you look carefully you can see he had a bit of an accident, so he had to be the first one for the chop! For the those of the non-squeamish disposition, here's what the owls look like inside.

 

The majority of the owls are Rice Krispies and marshmallow. There was enough of this mixture left to make 4 owls instead of the 3 in the magazine, so Jen improvised Mother Christmas herself - I love her mop cap.

Happy Valentine's Day

 

I've been following the "Modern Piping" course on Craftsy and wanted an opportunity to practice piping royal icing. I needed an intricate line design, so a quilting pattern seemed a good idea and with Valentine's day just around the corner, it had to be a feathered heart. I found the design on the Quilt Rat blog.  The icing mix was  a little thick and like free motion quilting, it's going to take some pratice to improve. The family didn't complain though - I finished icing the cake on Sunday amd the last piece disappeared yesterday!

... and A Happy New Year

 

 

 

 

And now for this year's Christmas cake or more accurately cupcakes. The design is by Jan Clement-May and is in the latest magazine from Squires Kitchen. I have to confess my only contribution to this group was Santa. The rest was all done by Jen and what an amazing job she did!

 



Merry Christmas

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of last year I discovered Squires Kitchen in Farnham. Squires not only sells just about anything you could ever want for cake decorating, it also publishes its' own magazine "Cakes and Sugarcraft" including incredible designs. This family of polar bears sitting on their very own iceberg was our Christmas cake last year and was a joint effort by myself and Jen. It is a design by Carlos Lichetti, who manages to inject so much character into his sugarcraft creations. Jen and I are complete amateurs at sugarcraft, but we love the excuse to play and be able to eat the fruits of our labour later.