Jazzy Piano Cake

This was a tricky cake to do.  The pianist is meant to be Bill Evans for any jazz enthusiasts.  The piano is the actual cake and there is also some cake in the piano stool. I baked an 8" square sponge cake, slicing it into three layers and cutting it into the piano shape.  I used cake pillars fro the piano legs but cut them down to the size I needed. Making sharp corners was extremely difficult when covering it with icing. To make it shiny I brushed it with confectioner's glaze.  The piano lid, keyboard lid and music stand are all made from Pastillage icing so it would set hard enough to keep it's shape. I finished it off with a black and white piano keys ribbon around the drum board. 

18th Bed Cake

This is a sponge cake I was asked to make for a lady, whose son was turning 18. I made a 12" square cake then halved it, sandwiched it together with butter cream then cut 2" off one end.  All the pieces for the bed frame are made from pastillage icing which sets hard, then brushed with an edible wash of colour. I patterned the frame pieces with a wood grain effect first. The frame is attached with royal icing. Obviously I was copying the style of the bed from a photograph I was sent, so the colours were the same as his bedroom decor. I modelled the extra items around to make it more like a typical teenagers bedroom.

80th Birthday Cake

This is a 10" sponge cake with raspberry jam and Swiss meringue butter cream.  I was asked for a white cake with yellow piping and yellow roses.  I chose to also use gold in the colour scheme, using ivory ribbon with gold edging for the posy pick, a gold 80 sign ,gold wired pearls and gold dusted hearts around the sides where the swags joined.  There are quite a few shades of yellow, but I tried to restrict myself to two shades only.  I attached a thin yellow ribbon around the cake just above the piped trail and then matched it with a wider ribbon to edge the drum board. I piped the sign onto an icing plaque which I had embossed using a daisy rolling pin, then used the same Royal yellow icing for the piped trail and the three dots dropping down from each gold heart.  I supplied two sparklers in the numbers 8 and 0 which they lit as everyone sang Happy Birthday and the cake was brought in.  I have been told it went very well and the sparklers were a great success.

18th Birthday Cake

This is an 8" square sponge cake filled with raspberry jam and Swiss meringue butter cream.  The cake was to be pink and white and quite girly so I chose to use pink organza ribbon to form a bow at the front. I iced the cake and board in white and crimped around the edge of the drum board while it was still soft. Then I mixed raspberry shimmer edible powder with Royal Icing to pipe around the base of the cake with a shell pattern. I added some tylose powder to sugar paste and cut out a plaque shape onto which I piped the birthday message using the same Royal icing colour from  earlier. I dusted the plaque with snowflake and the edges with the same raspberry shimmer so it would stand out. The roses,white flowers, ribbon loops and pink hearts are all made by hand and pushed into a posy pick. The same colour Mexican paste was used for her name and the small hearts around the drum board and cake to link the top and bottom together. I did buy the silver number 18 and attached it to a pink wire pushed into the centre of the posy pick.

Golfer's cupcakes

I was asked to make cupcakes for a man's 70th birthday and to present it on a stand.  The only guidelines  were that the cupcakes were to be chocolate flavoured and that the gentleman played golf in his spare time. The cupcake cases were brown with polka dots which would link in with the white golf balls. I used play sand, real golf balls and a green hanging basket liner to fill the stand. The flag is a clear cake support decorated to look like a golf pole.  The chocolate cupcakes are covered with swirled chocolate butter cream, uncannily the same colour as the sand in the bunker! To link in with the red of the flag I modeled red Tees from sugar paste as well as white golf balls,using a ball tool to indent the pattern on them. Each alternate cupcake has a gold 70 on it made from Mexican paste dusted with bright gold edible powder. I hope the party went well and they got cupcakes and a new set of golf balls to replace those that inevitably get lost!

Lattice Pie Cake

This may seem strange, but my son has a particular talent for maths and there are also other funny reasons ( known within the family) why a pie cake was made for his 12th Birthday.  I shaped the cake to more of a pie ,offset it on the cake drum and iced it all over in brown. The lighter colour was cut into wavy strips using a ribbon cutter and arranged across the top, then finished with a long sausage of icing to cover the edges. The pie sign is held on wires pushed into a flower pick. The tablecloth is just lots of red and white squares joined together then smoothed over.  The actual cake is an 8" madeira sponge with two layers of jam and butter cream. I used a red Happy Birthday ribbon around the cake drum. This is a quick and easy cake which could be adapted to other types of pie, but our Joseph is rather partial to mince pies and treacle tarts.

Glee Cake

My daughter is absolutely mad about Glee and asked me to make her a Glee birthday cake. She actually helped to design her cake but left me to work out how to do it. To create the stage at the back I sliced the cake into three layers, then halved the top layer and put the halves on top of each other to make the back section of cake x4 layers tall, the front section just two layers. As in the series, we added gold stars as the character Rachel always puts a gold star after her name. The five main girls in the show are dressed like the WMHS cheerios, each holding a letter to spell my daughter's name. She even stressed which order to seat them and how they should have their hair done. Emily helped to brush colour over the floorboards of the stage and add the red curtain around the back. There was a lot of modelling on the characters but it was fun to see it all come together.