Upsy Daisy Birthday Cake

Upsy Daisy Birthday Cake

Here's a cake we did last week featuring Upsy Daisy from In The Night Garden.  Not being too familiar with the latest kids programmes we had to do a bit of research, and the world of In The Night Garden is a bit of a strange one, still I guess it's a hit with the kids.

Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

Minnie Mouse Cake

We've done two Mickey Mouse cakes before but this time we got to do a Minnie Mouse cake.  Whilst making this cake I was starting to stress that it kept looking like Mickey but as soon as the eye lashes went on, it instantly looked more girl like, and once the bow was in place it completed the look.  The ears are all cake too so it's like getting three cakes in one.

Say It With Cupcakes

Cupcake collection

Here's a collection of cupcakes we've done recently.  At the top we have some cupcakes for a kids birthday party, a nice mixure of colours and sweets, a mixed box of 6 cupcakes for a thank you present, complete with our thank you card with a personal message.  And at the bottom is an assortment of cakes which were a thank you teacher present, with enough cakes for the whole class to enjoy.

Fit For a Princess

This princess castle cake made a little girl very happy and I'm rather pleased with it myself, seeing as it was my first attempt at doing a castle cake. 

The stone pattern has been done by hand, and yes that means every single line and corner has been embossed in separately, I must be mad.  It wasn't as bad as it sounds, I strangely like doing jobs like this, I get a system going and can work through it quite quickly.  I start off with the horizontal lines using a wheel tool, do the vertical lines with a blade tool marking out the bricks, then round off all the corners using a dresden tool, I do all the top left corners first, then the top right...you see where I'm going with this.  There is a reason for this method, and it's not OCD if that's what you're thinking!  By doing all the same corners at once you don't need to keep turning the tool which means you can whizz through it quickly, especially if you have the cake on a turntable.

The turrets on this cake aren't actually edible, as they are cardboard tubes covered in fondant, with ice cream cones covered in fondant for the tops.  We used this method so that we got the best finish as we didn't want the turrets being all wonkey or topple over.  The addition of fondant round the cardboard makes them surprisingly sturdy and they're 'glued' into place using royal icing.

The cake has been sprayed with pearlised lustre spray to give it a shimmery sparkly look and there're tiny flowers and vines piped all around the bottom tier of the cake.  And there you have it, a cake fit for a princess. 

How do you eat yours?

Creme Egg Cake

Here's a fun cake we did at the weekend; a Cadbury Creme Egg.  It's a shame you can't get them this time of year as it would have been good to take a picture of it next to our massive version, it's a bit like Pimp That Snack. 

Sadly this one isn't creme egg flavoured, it's sponge cake with buttercream and jam, covered in sugarpaste icing and hand painted with food colouring, which took about 2 hours.  I even embossed the pattern that appears on the chocolate egg; you can just about see it if you look closely enough.

Cakes, a break, then more cakes

We've just had a lovely break away in Northern Ireland, catching up with friends and getting out and about, and eating lots of food!  We had a great time but we had a massive cake to make just before we left, this speed boat which is 30" long!  The picture doesn't really give you a sense of the scale but take my word for it, it's big, and very heavy.


Speed Boat Cake

The whole thing is cake, including the seat at the rear of the boat, I made that using some of the off cuts of sponge.  The only thing that isn't edible is the railing as it has a wire frame inside.  It was for a company in Brightlingsea called Morgan Marine and they were celebrating 40 years in business, they were having a big party so needed a big cake, and that's what they got.


Triple chocolate cake with strawberries

We also had this triple chocolate cake to deliver on the same day along with 6 cupcakes.  Needless to say we were pretty tired by the end of the day, all that was left to do was pack for our holiday and get some sleep, unfortunately we had to be leaving by 3.30am in order to drive up to Scotland to catch our ferry, so didn't get much sleep at all. 

Whilst it was nice to have a break from baking, we knew it wasn't going to be long before we started up again as we had an order for 40 cupcakes to be delivered the next day we got back.  So on went the oven as soon as we got in at 10.30pm on Saturday.  Nothing like getting right to it. 

The cupcakes were a mixture of some of our flavoured cupcakes and we were asked to decorate one with some wire strands with the number 40 on, as it was for a 40th birthday celebration. 

It was my Dad's birthday on Saturday and he'd asked us to make some cake bites so he could take them into work, so we got busy making those, as well as his belated birthday cake.


Dave the Minion Cake

Yes this is the cake he wanted, Dave the Minion from Despicable Me, which he thought was great.  And we even got to have some of this cake, and it was delicious, Jay certainly bakes a good cake.   
So we're already back in the swing of cake making after our break, feels like we were never away!

A Trio Of Cakes

Mobility Van Birthday Cake

So here's the cake I mentioned from my last post, a van cake with models of a mobility scooter, riser armchair and an adjustabed.  Why the mobility theme?  Because the receiver of this cake works for Willowbrook who sell all these items, and that's the van he drives. 

All the models are made from edible materials but are not edible due to them having wire supports inside them.  This was to ensure they kept their shape and to add extra strength to them, especially the armchair as it needed to be in the riser position, which is tipped forward.  I covered this board with royal icing as I wanted to add some texture, plus it sets hard so would act as a good glue for the models, I didn't want them toppling over in transit.  And inside that van cake is a four layered chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, well most of it is four layers!

Pink Flower Birthday Cake

We also had an order for a couple of big 12" cakes, one with vanilla sponge and icing and a triple chocolate cake.  Here's the sponge cake we did, it's decorated simply with some organza ribbon and some icing flowers. 

These flowers were made using a rose calyx cutter in three different sizes.  I used some pink sugarpaste icing rolled fairly thin, cut out various sizes and placed them onto a folded up clean tea towel.  The tea towel is to help form the shape of the flower when using shaping tools, it's an alternative to a flower pad in case you don't have one.  To add some detail I scored a line down the middle of each petal and made a central dip in the middle of the flower using a ball tool, doing this helps to turn the petals up so they don't rest flat.  I left them to air dry for a while then painted the centre of each petal with a darker pink colour and the outside area with a shimmery white colour.  I used red food colouring mixed with some white lustre dust and rejuvenator spirit to make a paint.  The white paint is just white lustre dust and rejuvenator spirit.  The lustre dust helps to give the flowers a subtle shimmery effect.


Stars Triple Chocolate Cake

And here's the other 12" cake we did, our popular triple chocolate cake, this time decorated with chocoalte stars.  I've used Milky Way Magic Stars around the bottom and top edge of the cake as a border, and simply sprinkled tiny chocolate stars on top of the cake, the message is piped in white chocolate and I also added a white chocolate border to the very bottom of the cake, mainly to break up all that chocolatey brown colour.