Chintzy Cakes: 2015

Saturday 19 December 2015

New Shop

Super sorry its been awhile since my last post, since the last post I've been extremely busy. On the 22nd October I signed the papers for my first shop. Then on the 11th November we opened the doors to the public.
The shop was a blank canvas with no kitchen, grubby walls and floors that looked like their best days were back in the '90s. But with a lot of elbow grease, lick of pink paint, cute butterfly wallpaper, new kitchen and vintage furniture and crockery we have managed to turn it around.
I knew from the start it would have a vintage vibe, I've been buying pieces of furniture over the past year and so many cups, saucers, plates and milk jugs from a lovely stall called Rosie Sloan.
Some new additions to Chintzy Cakes we have a mini tea room which at present seats 4 but I'm on the hunt for more chairs. We also do Afternoon Tea on a pre-order service to reduce waste, it means a more efficient service.
Over the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to get the blog and website up to date which will be a Christmas miracle :-)
Hope you all have a great Christmas and Happy New Year !!!

Sunday 3 May 2015

Builder Birthday Cake

For the builders cake I wanted to design a fun representation of a builder on his lunch break having a cup of tea. The figure is one of my favourites as I'd never attempted making a figure with posed arms they are usually down by their sides. To be able to position the arm with the cup I threaded through a 22 gauge wire that could hold the arm without making it too heavy. The figure is the only part on the cake that isn't edible.

To finish the cake I added a partial brick wall around the cake and dusted some brown powder on the top to give a building site feel. I'm pretty sure I'll be head hunted for my brick laying skills :-)

Zingzillas Birthday Cake

Never heard of the Zingzillas before I'd made this cake it was one of those emails: 'could you make Jo a birthday cake based on the Zingzillas' and my response was to look on the Internet and find out what it is. My reply to the request was 'sure of course I can'. Phew. Kids TV goes straight over my head, boy do I feel old.

Buzz Lightyear Birthday Cake

This was a bit of a rush job. I got to the shop on the Wednesday afternoon and was asked to make a Buzz cake and that it had to be ready for the next day thankfully I had till 5pm the next day. I don't think I would have attempted it if I didn't know the customer as its a huge responsibility and if it had have gone pear shaped I'm not sure a stranger would be so forgiving. Thankfully it didn't go wrong and the little lad loved it :-)
The cake is Buzz and his ship with a patchwork of Woody on the board. To get the shape of the ship and Buzz I enlarge a picture of both images and pieced them together in a way that it would keep most of the cake and only lose a few corners. To define Buzz from the ship I placed the picture of Buzz on top of the cake and sliced a thin layer off the ship so Buzz stood out more.
I covered the cake in white fondant and used a patchwork method to add the colours to Buzz and his ship.

Blue Bow Christening Cake

To start of with I made the huge bow which took a couple of days to put together, lots of drying. To make the bow first start with a disc of fondant for the bow to be built on, then to make the loops I used a roller with multiple cutting rings that could be set to an inch width, the loops are 7" long on the bottom row and there's 6 all together. The top row I made the loops slightly smaller at 5.5" and there's 6 including the top loop. To ensure the loops didn't drop during drying I scrunched up cling film and placed in the middle to hold them in place. It took a day to dry for best results. Once the loops are fully dry take a lump of the sugar paste and place in some water to make it slightly gummy stick this to the dry disc and then its ready to poke the bottom loops in first along with some glue. For the second row I put the loops in at random angles to give it a more realistic look. Again allow this to dry fully before picking it up (best to give it another day to dry). To finish it off I placed a sugar pearl on each loop.

The bottom tier was a fruit cake provided by the customer which wasn't decorated and the top tier was a Victoria sponge. The fruit tier was covered in marzipan before I placed the white fondant on both tiers. The quilting effect was done straight away along with the sugar pearl as it would cause cracking if done after the fondant had dried.

The name cubes are small cubes of fondant with the letters drawn on with edible pens.

USA Landmarks Cake

This cake is based on some of America's more well known landmarks, there are loads more but it was an 8" cake and the USA is huge but I did manage to hand paint the flag and a map of America on top. On the front of the cake are The Painted Ladies, then Las Vegas, Big Apple, Route 66, Empire State Building and finally Lady Liberty.

This was my first attempt at painting a cake and now I'm hooked, it's amazing how versatile cake decorating is. I love my job :-)

To make Lady Liberty stand out from the map I built her up with a grey coloured fondant and washed it over with a dark green to give it a look of the original.