Art Deco cake & 90th birthday cake

The inspiration for this cake came from a mug, I don't know who the original artist is as there were no details, but I've recreated it on a cake.  This cake was commissioned by my mum for my aunt who happens to love  art deco and was thrilled with this cake. 

The whole cake was iced in black sugarpaste, then I rolled out a white piece of sugarpaste to the same size as the cake to paint the picture on.  Once painted I then cut round the painting and transferred it onto the cake.

I finished it off with some piped icing beads around the base of the cake in the same colour as her dress.

Here's a nintieth birthday cake we did at the weekend.  The nine is vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream and the zero is chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream.  It's decorated with purple flowers made out of sugarpaste and has piped beads round the base of the numbers and satin ribbon. 

We were asked to add something to stick some candles on the board, so in keeping with the design of the cake, made more flowers with extra sugarpaste underneath so they could stick the candles into those.  Good job they didn't want to put 90 candles on the cake, we would've needed a sllightly bigger board!

Jungle Theme Number One Cake

As far as numbered cakes go, a number 1 is easier to ice than most other numbers, mainly because it hasn't got a hole in the middle or too many angles to worry about.  This one has some cute animals on it too, a couple of cheeky monkeys, a lion and an elephant.  They are all made out of sugarpaste and kept quite simple in design.  The cake is finished off with some tree branches and leaves piped on with royal icing, and of course, the birthday message.

50th Birthday Cake

50th Birthday Cake

A shaped 50th birthday cake in pink and white colours decorated with flowers and piped decoration. 

Numbered cakes can be quite tricky to ice depending on what number you have, 1's are great, as for the number 5, lots of angles to play with here.  It was virtually impossible to ice the cakes using one complete piece of icing, there was just no way the fondant could be tucked into the gaps without it tearing, so I had to use my trusty teaspoon to help blend the icing together and get it as smooth as possible.  I use a teaspoon as a smoother, it's perfect for small areas and corners and works brilliantly. 

Adding the piped detail around the bottom of the cake was a challenge in some areas as I needed to do this with the cakes on the board, which didn't leave much room to get my piping bag into the gaps.  I decided to pipe the icing without using a piping tube, opting for a smooth finish, that way I could use a disposable piping bag and just cut the end to the size I needed.  The disposable piping bags are fairly narrow at the point which meant it fitted in the gaps quite easily, I just needed plenty of icing in the bag in order to squeeze it from higher up.



Gumpaste flowers

The flowers are made out of gum paste, rolled nice and thin for a delicate look, and I've painted the centre of the flowers with pale yellow food colouring mixed with luster dust for a touch of sparkle.