Spongebob Squarepants Cake

 

This celebration cake features Spongebob and Squidward Tentacles, they've both been made out of sugarpaste and the cake has been decorated with piped details such as coral, water bubbles and flower shapes.  A shell border pattern has been added to the bottom of the covered board using a modelling tool.

Topsy Turvey Celebration Cake

This is the first Topsy Turvey cake we've attempted and I'm so glad that it turned out so well.  The bottom tier is vanilla and the top tier is chocolate, both tiers have piped swirl detailing on them, these have been piped with royal icing and then painted silver.  A sugarpaste ribbon and bow have been added round the cake and painted with gold luster dust.  I find that when it comes to adding silver and gold details, it is best to use luster powders and mix them with rejuvenator spirit to create a paint, you can buy liquid silver and gold food colouring but I find that they dry out very quickly.

The trouble with these types of cakes is that they are naturally top heavy, what with having a wonky top and the base of each tier being slightly smaller than the top, you need to make sure you have a good structure and support system. 

The numbers and twirly decorations are all made from sugarpaste with a wire structure for extra stability.  These were made well in advance so they had plenty of time to dry out and harden, that way when it comes to painting them and putting them on the cake, you're less likely to squash them out of shape.

I was rather worried about delivering this cake in case any of the decorations fell off and broke but I'm glad to say that it got there in one piece and the birthday girls were delighted with their cake.

Ipswich Town Football Cake

This celebration cake features the logo for Ipswich Town Football Club.  I've used red and blue sugarpaste for the shapes on the logo and piped the white details on using royal icing.  It's finished off with some blue piping and striped blue ribbon. 

Using a sharp craft knife is a great way of getting clean lines when cutting out shapes from sugarpaste, it doesn't pull on the sugarpaste as much as a kitchen knife, which means it keeps it's shape better.  Also using a pizza cutter wheel is good for long strips of sugarpaste as the motion cuts down rather than drags ensuring a nice clean cut without pulling the sugarpaste out of shape.

Sport Themed Birthday Cake

This celebration cake had to feature some sporting equipment and a fire engine.  All the models are made from gum paste, as it sets firmer than sugar paste, and means that handling them is much easier as you don't tend to squish anything out of shape.  I made them a couple of days in advance so they had plenty of time to harden, then all I had to do was attach them to the cake and add some decoration.

Rock Guitar Cake (with a few sweets!)

Inside this cake is an extremely yummy chocolate cake, we couldn't resist a try of it when we had some off cuts, you know, for quality control purposes of course!  We were asked to do a rock guitar cake with lots of sweets on it and that's exactly what they got.  The whole of the sides of this cake are covered with jelly babies, malteasers, smarties, liquorice allsorts, randoms and tooty frooties.  There may be a few rather energetic kids on the loose after eating through this cake!!

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.

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.

Little Miss Sunshine Birthday Cake

Little Miss Sunshine Cake

Here's a sweet little cake we've just done for a little girls birthday party.  I love these sort of cakes, they're quite simple really but look so good. 

I wanted to decorate the board to fit in with the style of the Mr Men and Little Miss books, after a little research I came up with this rolling hills and blue sky background.  The drawing style is very bold with simple shapes and blocks of colour, and nice and easy to do too.  The board is covered in fondant icing and painted with food colouring.  See, nice and simple.

Ford Puma Car Cake

Ford Puma Cake

This is the third vehicle cake we've made and the first time we've made a car and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.  We thought this may have been a bit of a challenge but ironically it was one of the easiest cakes we've made, there were no dramas and everything went smoothly.  And the difference......planning and doing things in stages.

As we don't use shaped cake pans this car needed to be sculpted out of a stack of sponges, it's three layers of sponge with jam and buttercream filling between each layer.  As I was sculpting away I thought it may be best to sculpt most of the features, such as the windows, lights and indents to the body of the car, and I was right.  When it came to covering the cake with the icing it was simply a matter of smoothing out all the details and all that was left to do was mark out some extra detailing and adding lights and other small details.



Various stages of cake making and final views

The wheels took quite a long time to make as the alloys were piped with royal icing.  Once the icing was set they needed to be painted with edible silver paint with a ridiculously tiny paint brush! 

Alloy wheel

I just hope Steve is happy with his cake.

Triple Chocolate Birthday Cake

Triple chocolate birthday cake

Keeping things simple with this cake.  It's a moist chocolatey sponge with chocolate buttercream filling and topped with a generous helping of chocolate ganache.  It's decorated simply with white chocolate. 

The message has been piped on and the blue chocolate buttons are just melted white chocolate with some food colouring mixed in, piped into button shapes on parchment paper, left to set and then added to the cake.

BAKING TIPS

• When colouring chocolate always use food colouring paste or dusting powders, as liquid colourings will not mix well with the chocolate.  Adding liquid to chocolate will cause the chocolate to seize. 
• Be careful with how much food colouring you use too, the more you put in, the stronger the concentration, which may result in a nice bold shade but your tongue will show the evidence of what you've been eating!!
• Add the colouring a little at a time using a cocktail stick, food colouring pastes are quite strong so a little goes a long way.
• When piping with chocolate, allow the melted chocolate to cool first, that way it won't be quite as runny, you won't burn yourself and it won't melt your cake topping.  Don't worry about it setting before it's cool enough to pipe with, it will take rather a long time to set completely at room temperature. 

Horse & Jockey Birthday Cake

Giddyup!

I don't think this horse would be very good at running due to his short stumpy legs, but he's cute enough for a cake topper.  He sits on top of a 6 inch fruit cake covered in marzipan and green fondant icing. 



Horse construction