Swimming pool cake

Here is my last cake of 2011.  A pool cake for Jo, who taught my boys to swim.  It is a 9" x 7" sponge cake filled with jam and buttercream.

Jo's 50th Birthday cupcake tower

Here I made the top tier for a cupcake tower.

The cake is a 6" square deep chocolate cake filled with chocolate fudge filling. Jo's duaghter made and decorated all of the cupcakes and what a fab job she made of them.  The cupcake tower looked fabulous

Boeing 747

How stressful.!!!

It turned out ok in the end though.

Supermarket cakes

Do you think a bake from scratch cake maker is too expensive for your Wedding day, so you would rather get a supermarket cake to decorate your self.  Look at the pictures below and you might change your mind.  These were taken by a very skillful cake decorator who was asked to make a topper and stack the bought cake.  When she saw the state of it, she had to add additional decoration to try and inprove the cake.  Without mentioning any names, this cake came from a shop that you wouldn't really call a supermarket as it sells mainly clothes.  Lets hope you do not win a prize of a wedding cake in the facebook pass the parcel game.

Here are the 4 cakes that measured 4", 5.5" 9" and 10.75" that I can only assume were meant to be 4", 6" 8" and 10".   It is not immediately obvious how poor the covering is on the cakes although you can see how shallow the largest tier is.

And closer detail of the cakes - the shape of the cake in the image below is not camera distortion - it actually sloped that badly!

What the cake decorator managed to make these into - a major improvement on what it started as: 

(the ribbon around the cake isn't normal width cake ribbon, it is 15mm ribbon that you normally use around the cake board. Just shows how shallow the cake really is. She also left the piped swirls and wonky blobs on the cake so it is still identifiable as the supermarket cake as she does not want any link to such a shoddy finish)

If you as the untrained eye think that is not that bad,  take a look below at a comparison of another 4 tier cake from the same decorator.  One is a 5 tier cake but the top tier has been chopped off to make it comparable. Also an extra board has been placed under the 5 tier cake to take into account that the shop one was also double boarded (needed to to add height).

This picture is a slice of fruitcake from the same shop.  Clearly the sugar paste and marzipan wish to disassociate themselves with the cake.

Here is another comparison which clearly shows the differnece in depth of cake. 

 

At the end of the day, you will get what you have paid for and I appreciate that not every ones budget stretches to a bespoke cake, but if you have to pay a cake decorator to rescue your cake after you have already paid the supermarket for the cake - you might as well have paid the cake decorator to do you a bespoke cake in the first place.

xxx 

Blackpool FC Shirt

Carved from an 11" square chocolate cake

Iron Man

My last cake before hols.   A 9" x 6" sponge filled with jam & whipped buttercream.  I used a kids colouring page to cut out each piece of Iron Man to build up the image.  It didnt take quite as long as I thought it would

Finleys George pig cake

I forgot to take a picture so unfortunately it is still in its box.  Taken from a George colouring page which I enlarged on the photocopier until it was the right size then cut out each piece and used the pieces as a template to cut out the cake.  I didnt have the right colour blue so I was brave and got my airbrush out - and am really pleased with the even colouring.

Woodpecker bird box

This is my first attempt at airbrushing a cake. 

The cake was an 8" fruit cake that I cut into 4 then stacked 3 on top of each other to form the shape before marzipanning and covering with sugarpaste.

 The roof was white icing that I airbrushed grey then added the tile effect - although you cannot see it on the picture, I then airbrushed the sides of the birdbox.

The woodpeckers were made following the instruction in Frances McNaughtons new book - 20 to make Sugar Birds.  Loads of quick and easy birds to make in there - well 20 in fact.





Gemma's Birthday cake

This is for Gemma's 8th birthday sleepover. Gemma did a drawing of how she wanted her cake, hope it lives up to her expectations. Half is sponge with jam & buttercream and the other half is chocolate cake.

1st Birthday

This is a 9" HD Sponge made for Allie. The blocks are made from sugarpste/flowerpaste using a tutorial by Elaine Thomas.

http://www.creativecelebrationcakes.co.uk/page18.htm

Jessica's 1st Birthday

A version of a cake that one of the BSG forum members made. SO much easier than a No 1 cake and you get more cake for your money. 8" sponge on a 12" board.

Footballers and Wags

12, 9 & 6" sponges topped off with a 3" dummy top tier for LIs & Simons Footballers & Wags themed birthday party.

Harry Potter Hogwarts Express

Here is the Hogwarts Express cake for Charlie & James' 8th Birthday party today. Inspiration is from Ace of Cakes where they made one like this for the film premier in the USA.

I am not overly happy with this as I felt pretty groggy whilst making it. I would say that if I did it again, I would do it differently but I wont do it again.

Hopefully later at the party, the funnel will have steam coming puffing out of it in the form if dry ice.

Just got to try and get it to the party in one piece now.

Harry Potter Deathly Hallows

Here is the cake that I did very quickly for CHarlie & James 8th Birthday. I havent been very well so this was the quickest cake I have ever done - decorated in 1/2 hour - thank god for edible image printers