Baby Building Block Cake

I looooooooooove this cake! I made this Baby Building Block for my good friend Cassandra who had a surprise baby shower yesterday. It was a 7 inch cube shaped cake made of 2 sponge layers, one vanilla, one lemon with a vanilla cream filling. I then iced it (with great difficulty and help from Paul) with white fondant, which made have been a little on the thick side but I was so worried it would split! Better to be safe than sorry.
I took inspiration from the invitation for the colours to decorate the cake and used chocolate brown, peach and pale green. The combination was perfect as I wanted to keep it neutral and felt that lemon was a bit predictable. I hand cut the letters to spell BABY around the cake and a C on the top as it is Cassies initial. Then strips of colour were added to transform the cake into a building block.
I made 6 sugar animals for the cake, I thought little jungle animals would be cute, and having already practiced some already, I was sure I'd be able to make them look really good. This was so time consuming but I absolutely love making them! I decided to do a panda, tiger and monkey which I have made before, along with a giraffe, elephant and a lion. The lion design was taken from my sugar animals book but I wasn't keen on the elephant and giraffe in there so I just made them up and they matched perfectly. Everyone at the party loved them, I think everyone had their favourite, and although they were all edible Cass decided to keep them and put them on display which was so lovely (thanks!) You can see more pictures and close ups of the animals on my flickr page, just click the link to the left!

Nappy Cake

Here is something a little bit different... This is a nappy cake. As the name suggests, it is a cake made of nappies! I got the idea from the internet, they have become popular gifts for baby showers and as I was to attend one for my very good friend Cassandra I thought I'd have a crack at making one for her. So armed with a pack of nappies I began making the 'cake'. It is simply rolled up nappies covered with baby clothes 'icing', and for the top tier I used a little blanket with a cute monkey on the top. You can buy nappy cakes online and some can be 6 tiers and full of baby goodies, they are such a great gift idea... and very useful!

Worlds Largest Wedding Cake

Today I thought I would randomly comment on the Worlds Largest Wedding Cake. It is insanely huge! I have done some research on the internet and this seems to be the biggest so far. It is 17 feet tall and weighs 15,032 pounds, that's more than 5 Volkswagen Beetles! It is made from vanilla cake and frosting & they needed 2 fork-lifts to assemble it. Wow...

The Batcake

This bank holiday weekend I was set a challenge by my other half to make him a Batman themed cake to give me a some practice. So I made a 2 layer lemon cake filled with lemon curd and got creative. I wanted to make the top of the cake black with the logo but thought black all the way round would be a bit boring, so I marbled some red, yellow, orange and a touch of black to make a sunset effect. This was a gamble as I've never tried it before but it turned out really good. Then with the remaining black fondant I created a Gotham city skyline and piped on the lights in the windows. It does look awesome, if I can say so myself, and Pauls friend Sajid, connoisseur of all things Batman agreed claiming 'No Batcave is complete without it' :-) I hope you agree.

Spring Blossom Cake

April brought a 40th birthday and a friend in need of a cake. I made a light fruit cake covered with golden marzipan and white fondant. Inspired by the beautiful sunny day and the blossom on the trees I decided to decorate the cake with tiny pastel flowers and piped the lettering with lemon icing. This is when I realised that I really need a letter press stencil as I really struggled to keep the lettering straight and in uniform size! I must invest in one of these, it will make all the difference and hopefully make my cakes look a little more professional. But overall this was a really pretty cake.

England Rugby Ball

In February I made a cake for a friend at work, her partner loves rugby so I created a Red Velvet England Rugby Ball cake for him. There were tears and drama with this one, the cake was pretty huge and I struggled to get the shape right. I wanted it to look like it was sat in the grass, rather than do a complete rugby ball shape, I think that would have been too tricky for me, I'm still new at this! But I carved it well and put the frosting and icing on, left it overnight to harden before decorating it. But when I looked at it the next day the fondant wasn't smooth, it looked pretty rubbish, more like a cornish pasty than a rugby ball! I think I was a little hard on myself, I'd never covered anything this big before so it was to be expected it might not be perfect first time. So I peeled off the fondant and started again, luckily my second attempt was much better and I got the finish I wanted. Using coloured fondant I started to put on the detail, the rose took a couple of attempts and I ended up cutting it out as a whole and piping on the detail which I think worked well. Then came the lettering... As I am starting out and still fairly poor I haven't got any lettering stencils or cutters so each letter had to be cut out by hand. I had a little help from my boyfriend to get the sizing right and we got there in the end. Sticking them on was tough as the black icing seems to be a lot softer than the other colours, it has a habit of stretching. Then at around midnight I was making tufts of grass to finish it off! I was very happy with the end result, and so was the birthday boy.

Modelling

As well as making cakes I wanted to try modelling with fondant. I bought a book (20 to make: Sugar Animals) and some modelling tools and here are my attempts so far. Now I need to make a jungle cake! Monkey was my first attempt earlier in the year, his arm looked a bit wonky but not bad. Then today I made Panda and Tiger, really pleased with how they turned out. I do need to invest in some gum tragacanth though, this is a powder that you knead into the fondant so it sets harder than usual.

Cake Catch-up

Ok, so to catch up on the cakes I have made so far...

Next came Pauls XBox cake, made as a surprise for his birthday. I forget what the actual cake was now but the controller topper was made from cake too and covered in fondant. Sooo tricky to make as I'd never carved cake before but I managed to get it right, it was lifesize so it looked like the real thing. The cake was finished with Happy Birthday Paul but the pictures of the completed cake have gone astray.

I was then asked to make a chocolate cake for a friend at work. It was her daughters birthday & she is a chocoholic so I made a deep chocolate sensation cake with chocolate frosting. For a true girly girl I made princess crowns from pink fondant to go around the cake and decorated these with sprinkles and pink smarties, then topped it off with tons of edible glitter and cute butterflies. She loved it and is now asking for another!!!

This is Nigellas Christmas cake, its the best fruit cake ever. You have to love Nigella, the way she describes adding a knob of butter and proceeds to add the whole block! I decorated it with gold smarties, some chocolate stars and gold edible glitter. Nothing too spectacular to look at but tasted amazing!

I then made a lemon cake for a family birthday. Filled with lemon curd and covered with fondant and pastel fondant hearts, this was a simple cake but looked really pretty.