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Tuesday 21 July 2009

Tardis Cake


This is James' first attempt at decorating a cake. I thought that this would be a fairly easy one for him to do but it wasn't. It was a bit too fiddly for him and I had to help him quite a lot - but he was determined to finish it himself at at 10pm he has just gone to bed but only after I promised that I would put it on the computer to show people. I think we will pick a different thing to so for the exhibition in September.

Monday 20 July 2009

Spong Bob


This is Charlies first attempt at decorating a cake, pretty good effort for a 6 yr old. Although I helped him a little bit, he remembered everything that I said and stayed focused for the whole of the cake. Great first effort, He wants to do another one tomorrow but it is James' turn.

Scooby Doo



Here is my first attempt at a run out. My boys swimming teacher, who is a real star, took the boys to see Scooby Doo live in Oxford on Saturday which meant that I could go to Swindon to finish my royal icing course. As a thank you I thought that I would make her a cake. As it was Sunday when I decided to do it I couldn't get a wilton 2D pan so I had to thing of something else. I found a kids colouring page of Scooby doo and thought I would have a go at a run out. Using my new skills from the royal icing course, I made my first royal icing and then preceded to colour it and do the run out. I also ran out the lettering. The template for the letters was from the Mary Ford writing in Icing book.

The cake was almost totally successful but unfortunately I broke Scoobys pendant off as I removed the run out from the backing sheet. I quickly ran out another one and put it in the oven to dry off. An hour later it was dry, on the cake and the cake was delivered.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Teachers cake


This is the cake that I have made for my boys teacher. It is quite a large cake and I really didn't mean to make it that large, but I just got carried away, so Mrs Johnson has a 10" square chocolate HD sponge. I took the off cuts into work for the lads to eat and they said it was lovely so hopefully Mrs Johnson will like it too. She is retiring tomorrow, so I will probably never see her again for any feedback anyway.

As a filling, I have used mactop which is a filling and crumb coat that I was introduced to by carol from sugar celebrations in Swindon. It is a liquid that whips up to about 4 times the volume and tastes really nice. Not as buttery as butter cream but a lot smoother. I had some left over so I placed it in the freezer and my boys ate it like ice cream. I think it is a bit like Mr Whippy ice-cream.

It was quite a quick cake to decorate. I marked the wood grain using a Dresden tool and the screws were marked with an icing nozzle and then painted with silver lustre mixed with rejuvenating fluid. The lettering was my first successful attempt with patchwork cutters. Not sure what I did differently this time but I did not have any problems.

Sunday 5 July 2009

Mickey Mouse Cake


This my first attempt at using a wilton 3d cake tin. I went on a one day course at Sugar celebration in Swindon to learn the technique. The sponge is a chocolate HD cake ( recipe from the BSGUK forum). It is the first time that I have made this sponge and despite me leaving out the water in the recipe by mistake, it was very moist. Not sure what the water does, maybe it dilutes the chocolate flavour a bit.

Overall I am very happy with the cake. The red, black & yellow sugar paste is layered onto the cake. Mickeys face is dust mixed with rejuvenating fluid painted on. Mickeys hands have been dusted with pearl white to finish it off.

I feel happy to tackle any of these tins now and even more happy that they are only £2 to hire from local shops. Think I will be hiring rather than buying the tins.