Shoe box cake

This is a cake for Megan's 17th Birthday. It is a 9 x 6 inch HD sponge cake, torted twice with jam and cream. It is my first time making shoes and it did take me 5 attempts to get a passable pair - these should have straps on to male them sandals but the straps ended up in the bin. There was also a matching handbag that I tried to make but that also went into the bin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nappy Cake

Here is my first attempt at a Nappy cake, I made it for a friend who recently had a little boy. It even survived the royal mail. The bottom 2 tiers are disposable nappies and the top tier, little trousers, t-shirts and vests. The centre of the stack has toiletries stacked to help keep it together. Around the outside were home made cookies and finished off with a few pairs of socks.

Here are the cookies that were stuck around the outside of the nappy cake. I made the cookie cutters myself from strips of aluminium bent by hand. It is the same method that i used for the ballet shoe cookie cutters. It is so easy to do and you can have instant cookies rather than wait for the postie to deliver one.

For all of the cookie cutters that I have made, I simply find a picture of the cutter that I want, size the picture and then print it out. You just follow the outline of the picture with the metal strip and fix it at the end. I have rivetted mine but other people use strong double sided tape.