The last few weeks have been really quite exciting in terms of cake for me – I’ve had 2 comissions and won a cake decorating competition!
Comission number 1 has been in the pipeline for a while, as a wedding cake for my research project supervisor. This was my first attempt at a wedding cake, so was a little daunting! The colour scheme of the wedding was blue, white and silver, so this fitted nicely with a white cake with blue ribbon. This was also my first attempt at three tiers, to make it big enough to feed all 150 guests (1 tier of fruit cake and 2 of chocolate)! The fondant models are all replicas of the couples pets, so it is personalised to them, with silver pawprints painted on in lustre.
The couple were really pleased with the finished result, and apparently the cake got lots of attention from the guests!
Commission number 2 was a birthday cake – a rosette in the girls pony club colours. This was a steep learning curve in moulding fondant icing, but overall I think the end result was a success!
And finally, for a competition…This weekend was our young farmers rally and I had entered the cake decorating competition. The pressure was on, as our treasurer may have had small words to get the competition changed to a senior event so I could take part! The theme was musicals, so I went for a Sound of Music theme, with the cake moulded into a hill shape and covered in green icing, with a nun and 2 goats on top. I then decorated it with daisies and ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music.’ Luckily, I did win the competition with 95/100, which I was very, very impressed with!
…Are possibly my favourite kind of cake. I love being able to make somthing totally personal to whoevers birthday it is, and hopefully they enjoy eating it as well! I have attached some photos of my favourite ones from the last few months. I love the Harry Potter themed broomstick cake, despite my arm nearly falling off from repetitive piping injury after handpiping all the individual strands on the broom with a number 2 piping nozzle! It was made to take to a Quidditch party, so I decided to stick to the theme, especially as the recipient was a HUGE Harry Potter fan. The snitch was made from 2 cupcakes covered in yellow icing, with the wings made from cardboard covered in white icing (many thanks go to my arty housemate for wing design!)
I did my nieces 21st cake in a similar style to my sisters, with all her favourite things on. I am particularly proud of making her spaniel Meg in fondant – I think she looks very cute perched on top, and was very popular with everyone at the party.
For my next door neighbour, I created a fish cake (men are REALLY hard to buy/make anything for!) as he really enjoys fishing. I like to think there are less ethical dilemmas regarding my version! This was a feat of engineering to try and cut a fish shape out of cake, get it to stay together and cover it in icing without it completely cracking or disintegrating, so I was very pleased with the way it turned out, especially as I did the whole thing in an hour before returning to uni! I used wave shaped piping to seal the cake to add to the underwater theme, which I usually find too cumbersome for other designs, but fitted perfectly for this one.
Another of my favourites (that isn’t actually a birthday cake, but shhhh) was one I made to thank my research project supervisors for their help once my project was finished. Given that it was written on cats, my supervisors job is cats, and I am now known as ‘the crazy cat lady,’ that had to be the theme of the cake. I find animals relatively easy to mould, and have had plenty of practice as they are a bit of a reoccurring theme with my cakes! I especially enjoyed being able to create all the different ‘personalities’ on this cake.
A final mention under birthday cakes has to go to the savoury versions created for two friends who are more partial to savoury than sweet. As a real sweet tooth person, this came as a very different challenge, one I took up with relish (pun not intended…) So, attempt number one came up as a sausage roll cake. I made one very long sausage roll, which I formed into a circle, then made a batch of shortcrust pastry which I coloured using pastes and cut out into letters. Being a natural sugar lover though, I couldn’t leave it at that, and had to make a batch of cupcakes to finish it off, iced with models of her spaniel, ballet pumps and her favourite mug and finished with edible glitter. Attempt number two resulted in the creation of the gigantic ham and mushroom muffin cake (she was particularly partial to a savoury muffin). As a finishing touch, and paying homage to my sweet cake roots, I ‘iced’ it with a middle layer of philadelphia. I am usually a rather ‘safe’ person with my cooking, and loved the challenge of branching out into a new realm of savoury baking – I can highly recommend giving it a go! For those of you interested, for the muffin cake, I doubled a 12 muffin recipe and used an 8″ tin, which overflowed it just enough to give a traditional ‘muffin top’ appearance.
Last summer, my lovely friend Julia asked if I could make her wedding cake. This gave me a year to prepare, and fitted in nicely with a Guides project to spend a year developing a new skill. The wedding cake gave me a goal to work towards and I got started straight away! A friend of the family (from here on in known as the Cake Guru) gave me a few lessons in piping and cake covering, and together we created my sisters 18th birthday cake, a 2 tiered pink and blue extravaganza, covered in fondant models of all her favourite things (her cat and rabbit, toy monkey, make-up, Jack Wills hoody, her hockey stick…) From then on I was hooked!
Those of you who know me know that baking is a (worryingly…) huge part of my life! I have always enjoyed cooking, ever since helping Mum to bake fairy cakes when I was little (being allowed to lick to bowl really swung it for me), and over the years this has progressed more into an obsession than just a hobby! Over the last year, I have taken up cake decorating more seriously, starting as a project for my Queens Guide award to make my friends wedding cake but rapidly becoming far more than the little project I initially imagined. I started posting photos on Facebook, and got such lovely feedback that I thought I’d branch out into blogging, so those of you who are interested can keep an eye on my progress. It also gives you a means to contact me if you would like to commission a cake specially, and gives me a chance to share favourite recipes and hints and tips with any other cake-lovers out there.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this, and happy baking!
Lara x
daydreamsofcake 