Chocolate Log Cabin

90th Birthday cake

Petes allsorts bday cake

Aston Martin Cake

Grandmas Cake

I wanted to do something a bit more traditional for my Grans birthday. As a present my friend brought me a decorating kit with different cake tools in it, including a piping bag with lots of attachments.

I had done a bit of practicing with different attachments to see what effect i like, and for this cake i chose to do a weaved effect around the edge of the cake. I wanted at first to do the basket weaved effect in a brown coloured butter icing, but decided on pink in the end because it makes it look different and more appealing.

So once i decided what design i was going to do on the cake i started making it. I used a yoghurt cake recipe and used mango flavoured yoghurt's to get a fruity flavour cake. I made 2 cakes with the intention of sandwiching them together. I wanted to keep the mango flavour for the middle of the cake. So i mashed a fresh mango - once it was fully mashed it had produced a lot of liquid as well so i decided to wring it out in a tea towel to try and lose some of the moisture.
Once I had wrung it out enough i mixed it in a bowl with some icing sugar, then used this to sandwich the 2 cakes together.
I covered the entire cake in vanilla butter cream and then covered it in white fondant. I mixed up my pink butter icing and used the weaved tip to make a basket effect around the entire cake.

As soon as this was done i had to put it in the fridge as the butter icing was warming up. Whilst it was in the fridge I made a selection of flowers from fondant icing. and then arranged them on a section of the cake.

I finished the cake off with icing writing on the top and i dusted a few of the flowers with edible glitter.

A simple and effective cake! Lets hope she likes it!!

Winner!!

Yay I won the competition! was very pleased with myself!

and the cake was auctioned for £30. Not to bad!!

Competition!!

There is a food and wine festival up in Hull this weekend... and there just so happens to be a cake decorating competition.

So of course I want to enter!

not that I think i've got much chance! but you never know...

the cake competition is running for a charity called 'Love you 2' and the only rules are it has to have a theme of love you 2...

So after having a brain storming session I come up with an idea....

I decided to do a 2 tier circular cake.

On the lower level I covered it with white icing, and using red and purple food colouring I dyed some more icing which I used to cut out different sized and shaped hearts. I placed these hearts around the lower level as a boarder.

For the top tier I covered it in icing to seal the cake, then covered it in vanilla butter icing and put love heart sweets all ove

r.

I was really pleased with the final result! so fingers crossed!!

Launch Party Cup Cakes :)

I have just got back from my holiday to Morzine (France), where I was visiting my bosses from my ski season - Karen and Richard (the mountain lodge company).

I had a fantastic time, loved the sun and the Tour de France, and more so meeting Karen a

nd Richards baby girl Norah.

while I was out there Karen asked if I would make some cakes for a launch party, to open her's and friend Jackies new shop/ studio. so after deciding to make cup

cakes I got to work.

I used a yoghurt cake recipe, and used summer fruit flavoured yoghurts because I wanted a fresh taste. I also decided to put mixed berries in the

cake which added extra flavour and texture. after making 24 cup cakes I decided to put pink food colouring in the remaining mixture to add colour.

Once the cakes were baked, I wanted to make sure they looked the part. so using more mixed berries, white chocolate buttons, icing and sprinkles I decorated

all of the cup cakes to ensure there was a wide variety of colour.

The final result was great, the colours looked fantastic and they tasted very summery, which is what I wanted. I hope they go down well at the launch p

arty! maybe some future bookings :)

Rainbow Cake

Newest Cake :)

My next challenge was something I hadn't done before, and I wanted something with a wow factor.. so I chose to make a rainbow cake.

I looked up some ideas, and couldn't find a good method of how to do it. But really in the end it was very simple.

Make the cake mixture, just a basic Victoria Sponge however its best to add a bit of milk to the mixture to ensure the is a bit runnier then usual.

Once you have the cake mixture split it into separate pots - I used 5 different bowls to separate the mixture. For each pot allocate a different colour and mix it in. I used red, yellow, blue, green and purple.

Once you have your colours take the cake tin and add each of the mixtures one at a time, in what ever order you like. As you add the next colour the previous one will spread out, so you get perfect rings of colour.

once I took the cake out of the oven it didn't look brilliant as it had cooked well on top. but the inside was brilliant!

I wanted to ice the cake so the inside remained a secret ... so to speak. I tried to keep it simple yet sophisticated. and it worked.

Great cake great taste :)

Wonky Cake

For pete's mums birthday I wanted to attempt a 2 tier wonky cake - inspired by Lindy Smith.

I made 2 deep circular cakes to allow me to cut and shape the cakes into a wonky style. however the cakes didn't rise as much as I had hoped and I needed to use both the cakes for the lower tear. I cut the cake, shaped it and stuck it together, it always looks incredibly messy. however once i had covered the cake in butter icing and filled in any gaps that were left it looked good.

for the top tier as my 2 cakes didn't work out I cheated a little bit and bought a small pre made victoria sponge. which I then did the same as the bottom tier cut a good wonky shape and carved it out to make it smooth. and covered it with butter icing.

for the bottom tier I used white roll out icing to cover it and then using more roll out icing I had coloured pink and violet i decorated the cake with flowers.

Once I was happy with the bottom tier I moved on to the top tier. I covered the top with the same coloured pink icing i had used for flowers. and using the purple I put strips onto the cake and highlighted it with white icing. then finished off with a purple icing ribbon on top. to make it look like a present on top of the cake.

I used cocktail sticks through the bottom tier to secure the top tier to the cake and ensure it didn't slip off.

to tidy up the bottom of the cake I put an icing ribbon round the base.

I was very happy with how it turned out and it tasted gorgeous!

The Naked Lady

So following of tradition another birthday came around in 2009, but this time it was a joint birthday for 3 of my friends. This meant the cake had to be impressive ... and big.

a cake for 3 blokes .... what to do, of course a naked lady.

But it had to be life size :)

For this cake I hired the help of my friend kate, and we worked for about 3 hours to craft the perfect cake.

I had baked the cake in the morning, by baking about 4 huge tins of cake, so I could cut the right shapes out.

The first part to do to get correct were the boobs. I didn't have any other shaped cake tins so I had to improvise.

As soon as the cakes were out of the oven, I took 1 tin and broke up the cake while it was still warm. I took 2 deep round cereal bowls and lined them with cling film. then put the broken up cake into the bowls. covered the top with cling film, and then I placed a small plate on top to put weight on the cake to compress it down. I then placed them in the fridge to leave till a bit later.

with the other cake tins I cut out the torso and the thighs of the woman. life size.

ensuring it all fitted together I stuck it all together with butter icing.

Kate then covered the whole body with butter icing for the roll out icing to stick to. While i attended to the boobs...

using white roll out icing i tipped out the moulds and took of the cling film. the trick had worked and they were perfect boob shapes so i covered them in roll out icing. we then covered the whole body in more white roll out icing.

we then had to colour it skin colour. we chose not to colour the icing before as we didn't want the pink to come out to bright. Once we stuck the breasts on we used kitchen towel to dab pink food colour all over the body really lightly to get a pink skin coloured tint to the cake.

which did end up looking a bit patchy but the effect worked. we decided to give her underwear just by using a black icing pen.

and to finish off we used pink mini marshmallows for the nipples :)

it turned out perfectly and was a big hit with the boys.

I must admit both me and Kate were sad to see it get cut up later on that night!

a cider lovers cake

For my friends birthday in 2008 I chose to do him a cake that reminded me of him... and the only way to think of Charlie is a cider drinker! and a Strongbow one at that.

Sadly I don't have a picture of my final cake. but it was perfect! :) It was by far one of my favourite cakes.

I chose to do a life like can of bow just a few times bigger.

I baked a large rectangular tin of victoria sponge and cut it to make the right shape. then by covering it in black icing, I used a white icing pen to write on STRONGBOW and to draw the Strongbow man.

and then by cutting out the correct shapes in yellow and white I recreated the design found at the bottom of the can.

All in all it was a great cake and tasted gorgeous!

My first proper stab at a cake

I did this one in 2007 for a friends birthday who had always wanted a red tractor cake... so i thought id try it!

I browsed for different ideas of how to do the tractor, but in the end I just copied a picture of a tractor.

I made about 3 different tins of cake so I could cut out the right shapes and put it together to make the structure.

the wheels

the main body of the tractor was made up of 3 bits cut and stuck together.

then I individually cut out the right colour icing to cover each side - red for the main body, white for the cab's windscreen, black for the tyres.

and to cover the joins of the icing I used an icing pen to give the effect of the body being welded.

I then decorated the cake board with grass and pre bought icing farm animals.

I was very pleased with the overall cake as was my friend.

a chocolate addicts dream!

So while in France for my season it was my friends Nikki's birthday, I couldn't get hold of any roll out icing or food colouring so I decided what better then chocolate to decorate a cake.

I used the best recipe in the world to make the cake - a yoghurt cake, you end up with a lovely moist cake which if flavoured with chocolate turns out with a nice gooey centre.

I then melted milk chocolate to cover the top of the cake and decorated it with more melted white chocolate.

all in all it was a pretty messy cake .... but it tasted gorgeous. and the good thing about yoghurt cakes are they last aaages! unless your quick eaters :)

Muttis cake...

So for my mums birthday I wanted to do something simple but effective... also as my mums not a huge cake eater I didn't want to have lots of cake left over, so I decided to use cupcakes.

By making a batch of 20 cupcakes I had enough for 3 flowers using cupcakes for the petals. Like I wanted, it was simple and effective.

I chose to colour roll out icing red and blue for the petals and use green icing to make the stems of the flowers and for the leaves.

With the remaining few cupcakes I decided to make insects out of them - I chose a ladybird, bee and a butterfly.

I was so pleased with the final cake and my mum really loved it. But I know I could improve it if I were to do it again.

Getting going....

I've been making and decorating birthday cakes for my friends and family for the past few years. They have always been custom made for the person, something that reminds me of them or just how their known.

But in the last few months after having been on a ski season and baking cakes everyday for afternoon tea I realised how much I enjoy baking. More so for the creative and design side.

So I have decided to take it all a bit more seriously and blog each cake I do and show some of the ones I have done.

I admit there not all brilliant but I've always been pretty pleased with them one way or another.

lets see how it goes! :)