Optimus Prime

I created the cake below for a four year old boy who had his birthday party last Saturday:

I created the main cake topper with royal icing. I started off with an image of Optimus Prime that I'd found on the internet that I thought would translate best into Royal Icing. I had already cut a 6"x6" square piece of fondant that had been drying for two days. 

At first I thought I should create a royal icing transfer, which is when you pipe royal icing on a suitable surface, then, once it has dried, transfer the image onto wherever you want it- cake, cupcake, cookie. I had placed the printed image inside a plastic jacket that I use for transfers. However, after piping a few lines, I thought the image might be too difficult to transfer all in one piece. I then decided to pipe directly onto the square piece of fondant. The only problem with this is that there is little room for error so I had to be quite precise. 

To do this, I placed the printed image on top of the fondant square, and used a clean and sterile pin to create pin pricks of the outline of the image. Took a while! When that was done, I was ready to create the outline in black by piping over all the pin prick outlines. I didn't think to take pictures of all this (I always forget!) but here is a photo of the outline of Optimus Prime in Royal Icing, next to the print out image. I think you can just about make out the pin pricks I'd made on the print out!

My decorating foam pad (only used for cakes) looks rather grubby in the photo due to cornstarch (just to be doubly sure the fondant doesn't stick to the foam) and spilt red royal icing!

Thanks for reading and happy caking, folks!

Cakes cakes cakes

I've haven't written anything on the blog since June! I haven't stopped making cakes and in fact have started supplying a lovely local cafe near where I live called Earlam's in Styal. It's a great community shop that is a convenience store, cafe and art gallery in one! I'll try and remember to take photos of the cakes and post it here on the blog the next time I have an order.

The last cakes I made were Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs and a Batman and Robin Cake.

Both cakes were a pleasure to make. Batman and Robin represented two little brothers, who turned 5 and 1. Someone did say, though, that a quick glance at the cake might make you think that it was for someone who turned 51!

Other cakes that have been keeping me busy are cakes that are popular in the Philippines, where I used to live. I was looking through my Filipino cookbooks and had the urge to make some. I have since made Sans Rival, Ube Cake and Chocolate Mousse Cake. Ok, so Chocolate Mousse isn't exactly Filipino but it's my favourite cake from the Red Ribbon Bakery that's quite big in the Philippines. My knock-off wasn't too bad - the family raved about it and even my 5 year old, who normally only likes to eat the sugarpaste on cakes, loved it.

Next in line is Mango Chiffon cake. A bit of a challenge as there aren't any 'Carabao' mango variety sold in the supermarkets here. Not even in the Asian stores. Mango, however, is my favourite fruit, so I'll find a way to make that cake!

I will talk more about those cakes when I've made some more. They get eaten rather quickly...

The Golden Snitch

I've finally made my first sphere cake- and what a joy to make! I purchased the hemisphere pans from Lakeland (they had a sale after all) because it's way simpler than carving, which makes a huge mess and is time consuming. Did I mention it makes a lot of mess? The cake was made with chocolate cake and dark chocolate ganache. The wings were made of rice/wafer paper, also my first time to use rice/wafer paper, and everything was sprayed with edible bronze lustre. I thought about perhaps spraying with gold lustre, but decided that the snitch was more of a bronze than gold colour. Fortunately the lustre adhered to the ganache. If it hadn't it would have meant I had to cover the cake in fondant and then spray and covering a sphere cake in fondant isn't the easiest. 

Hope you like the cake!

Little Red Roses

This lovely cake was made for a lovely girl who turned 21 recently. Her name is Bethany Rose so the flowers on the cake were made to reflect the name. The lovely lemon yellow colour of the cake really shows off the beautiful little rolled roses to maximum effect. Simple but so beautiful and adorable! 

Monster Book of Monsters (Harry Potter)

I made this cake for my girl, Nicola, who turned 16 last week. She is a Harry Potter fan and I managed to make this cake during half term without her knowing it was her cake. She thought I was making a cake for a customer. I did have to ask her not to enter the kitchen when I got round to decorating the cake. 

I was determined to make a special cake for Nicola. She missed out last year when we had to be away on her birthday to attend a wedding. The look on her face when she saw the cake was priceless! I had literally just finished the cake when she came into the kitchen, and as she approached it dawned on her that this was her cake! It was a fantastic surprise for my girl! She didn't want to cut it! I love ya, Nicola :)

Pink and Black Cake

This was a very last minute order I got. The cake is very simple with swiss dots and black and pink flowers, and a black ribbon around the cake to finish off the look. It is chocolate cake with swiss vanilla buttercream. I hope my customer's girlfriend likes it!

Peppa Pig Cake

I've disappeared for a rather long time! I made this Peppa Pig cake about two weeks ago. It's a lovely little cake- just 6" in diameter and just over 4" deep. I love the how the colours work together. It's so bright and cheerful!