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.