Princess Castle Cake

The Princess Castle was for 1 year old Lola who was born during the snowy weather last year, hence the white castle instead of pink.

The entire castle is made with vanilla cake and vanilla butter cream, including the turrets. I found the castle design in an 80s birthday cakes book that my mum had bought for mine and Becks early birthdays and thought it was perfect for what I had been asked to create.

Each turret was baked in a can that had been washed and lined with baking paper. This was a first for me using cans to bake in so I wasn't to sure on timings and how much mixer to put in so luckily I had put the baking paper higher than the can top as a couple of them tried to escape.
The other two tiers are using 12'' and 5'' round cake tins.

Once cooled each piece had vanilla butter cream in the middle and then dirty iced in the remaining icing. After dirty icing, each piece was covered in white regal ice that had been scored to look like brick work effect, it didn't look to pristine like in the book but I thought it added to the character of the cake, plus a couple of the turrets had that old twisted ruin look going on which was totally meant to happen.
After a couple of hours drying I started putting it together, finding out where each turret should sit and then adding the fort edging around the two round cakes gave a clean finish to the brick work. The turret roofs are white chocolate drops instead of fondant like it suggested in the book but I sometimes think less is better with fondant plus most people love chocolate especially kids. The last couple of stages were the windows and doors which I made mine with pink hearts, small for the windows and large for the three doors, and the trees climbing up the castle were piped on with royal icing in brown and green. The final stage was sprinkling the cake with lots of glitter.

I loved making this cake it was so much fun and the only bit that I struggled with was writing Lola on the cake board free hand, that bit was not fun.

Euphoria Perfume Bottle Cake

The perfume bottle cake was a replica of Calvin Klein's Euphoria.
For the base cake I made it with the very popular chocolate Madeira cake and chocolate butter cream and covered it in purple fondant and piped with royal icing Calvin Klein Euphoria which made it look like the perfume box.
Sat on top of the box was the perfume bottle that was made with the same cake mixture and then covered in baby pink fondant and dusted with a cerise powder colour that was later steamed to make it glossy. The lid was a small piece of cake covered in fondant and then sprayed with silver shimmer and left to dry. The lid was then placed on the bottle with some edible glue and left to dry over night.
After finishing the box and perfume I thought it was missing something so I had a look online to see what scents make up Euphoria and found out that one of the flowers used are Lotus Blossom so I printed a picture of lotus blossom placed some baking paper over the top and piped around the picture with various colours that matched the photo and left that to dry over night. In the morning I lifted the flowers off the paper and placed them round the cake board, I had done a couple Champaca flowers but the flowers were so small it broke. With the addition on the Lotus Blossom and the added black ribbon bow (I thought black would look sophisticated) the cake was finished.

Heart Cake

One of the books I've bought recently was the 'Pretty Party Cakes' by Peggy Porschen and the heart shaped valentine cake was one of the cakes featured.
When I was asked to do a wedding anniversary cake I knew straight away that that was the cake I wanted to attempt to recreate. Its slightly different in looks and flowers as my flowers are slightly larger and not as beautifully crafted I also added a poppy on mine as the couple whose cake it was for were married on the 11th November and have a military background so I thought it would make it more personal to them.
The cake is chocolate Madeira cake with chocolate butter cream and covered in a baby pink fondant. The flowers were piped with thick royal icing and left to dry over night and the stripes were piped with a thinner consistency of royal icing in three different shades of pink cerise, pink and pale pink. Once the stripes dried I added the flowers round the edge of the cake applying them with a spot of royal icing.

Hagrid and Buckbeak Cake

The Hagrid and Buckbeak cake was inspired by a scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. The characters were the only part of the cake that were not edible but should last, as like a reminder of the cake. The characters were made out of fondant and sugar paste to help keep the bodies shapes.

The main cake was a chocolate Madeira cake with chocolate butter cream center, the hut was made out of rice crispies and chocolate so I could carve and mould to the right shape and then covered in brown and blue fondant. The chimney was made out of cake pop mixture and chilled in the fridge for an hour and a bit and then covered in grey fondant so it would keep its shape. The last components were the pumpkin cake pops, and the marzipan and chocolate matchsticks which made up the fire.

I really enjoyed putting this cake together, I have to admit that on the day it had to be ready for I was worried it wouldn't get finished. Thankfully I had one of those get your butt into action moments and worked solid for a number of hours and had fun in the end placing the components on the cake and adding those final touches like the rice crispies that had been carved off the hut were crushed down and sprinkled under where Buckbeak sat and made a little path outside of the hut.

Train Cake

The train cake was the first child's cake I've made and I really enjoyed making it. The train was created using a patchwork cutter and with it being for a little one I thought primary colours were the best colours to use.
The background fondant colours were blue for the sky and green for the grass with little white flowers dotted around. And I thought to finish it off I added a track for the train to run on and clouds in the sky with the little boys name and age in.

Yellow Rose Cake

I had the chance to make some sugar paste flowers for this cake which I always enjoy making. When given the order I wasn't given any colours to pick from so my mum said most women in their 70s and up love yellow so I went with a yellow theme. Thankfully mum was right and the cake was a hit.
Had a few small changes I would have like to have made but I only noticed them half hour before it was picked up so to late to changes anything. My main bug bear was the cake had a slight incline which meant the piping around the edge of the cake was off and the other thing was the number 88, I'm wishing I'd used an italic style of numbering.

Happy Halloween

I've never been one for celebrating Halloween not that I'm against it as I'm not just that we never really did the whole trick or treat thing when I was a kid so dressing up and staying in never really appealed. However this year I've been wanting to make some cake pops as I had left over cake sponge so I decided to do a Halloween theme.
The shapes are free style molding as it was kind of last minute thing so they are a little different in size but I think it adds to the homemade character.
These cake pops are chocolate sponge with vanilla cream icing and coated in white chocolate for the ghosts and orange chocolate for the pumpkins with a tiny bit of green fondant on top.
The only thing I would do differently is pipe the eyes and mouth on instead of paint as the food colouring never dried.

Chintzy Cakes Star Rating

The other day I finally received the letter I have been waiting for, confirmation on the kitchen hygiene standards and I couldn't believe it when I got 5 stars. I had been told that its rare for anyone to get 5 stars on there first inspection so I should be happy to get 3-4 stars. So you can imagine my surprise when I found out it was 5.
Now all I need is to start getting the orders in.

Chintzy Cake Business

Yesterday I had a visit from the local environmental health to check that the kitchen was up to scratch for selling homemade cakes, brownies, cupcakes, Christmas cakes and cake pops from home. Thankfully the lady that visited said the kitchen was very clean and my knowledge on food hygiene was up to date so I think that means I have the green light. She said the letter from the Stockton Council to confirm her visit was on its way along with my star rating, sadly she never said how many stars I've got so I will have to wait for that. The suspense is killing me. I will post it on the blog once I know.

Toy Story Cake

The Toy Story cake was for Robbie who just turned 2 and absolutely loves Woody. When I was asked to do a Toy Story cake the first thing I thought of was toy blocks with Robbie printed on the sides and the characters had to be Woody and Bullseye along with one of those cute aliens.

To start off with I printed off pictures of each of the characters so I could try and get all the detail in to them. As I knew he loved Woody I had to make sure it was spot on - he may only be 2 but I'm sure he noticed. With having a bit of experience making models I knew it would take a bit of time getting it all right so I made them a week in advance. In the end they were not easy but not quite as challenging as I first thought. They were made out of a fondant and sugar paste mix so it would keep the shape but also be edible.

The sponge was chocolate Madeira cake with a chocolate butter cream and the fondant was baby blue with a royal blue edging. I got to use one of my new cake tools to create a perfect cut.
The cake board was covered in teddy bear brown fondant and made to look like wooden flooring.

Butterfly Birthday Cake

The Butterfly Birthday cake was for a friend at work. Her birthday is a week after mine and I had just got all these new cake tools for my birthday and was dying to use them so I made her a cake.

It was a vanilla sponge with three different buttercreams so it looked like neapolitan ice cream when you cut into it. I then covered the cake in white fondant and was planning on using a sheet that rolls pictures on to fondant but I did it back to front by trying to roll the picture of butterflies on to the cake. It didn't work so in the end I rolled out a disc of fondant then rolled the butterfly print on to that and then lifted the printed fondant on to the cake, which is the right way to do it, then dusted with pink shimmer dust.

After that I had a look through the '1000 ideas to decorate a cupcake' book for some inspiration and found a cute picture of fondant flowers working their way around the cake and thought that would work with the butterfly print. To give the top of the cake a bit more depth I added a couple of individual butterflies with the wings slightly lifted so they looked real.

Royal Icing Course

At the beginning of the year I went to another cake decorating course. However, the teacher had changed since the last course and her style of decorating is quite old school but I still found it interesting to learn another form of cake decoration which is Royal Icing.

I didn't know much about royal icing as I'd never used it before so finding out you can pipe with it, make flowers with it and cover an entire cake with it was all new to me.

At first I couldn't get to grips with piping a rose until I realised it was because the icing was too runny, even though it looked thick enough it would still smoosh together. After adding some more icing powder to the pot it finally came together and looked like a rose. I found the leaves very easy to do but then again leaves are easy to do in fondant and sugar paste so that was no surprise.

The next part of the class was to cover a cake with royal icing. It gives a good finish to a cake but is a bit of a faff on as you have to cover the cake at least 2 to 3 times to get a good smooth finish where as with fondant you roll out a big enough piece to cover the cake, smooth it in to place and it's ready to work on.

After covering the cake three times I was then ready to learn the piping techniques. On the cake below I used extension work and lace work around the sides and placed the piped roses on top. I really enjoyed the piping work around the sides of the cake, it was relaxing and enjoyable especially once you've finished all the piping and your hands are killing but you look at the finished cake and it's a wow moment. I know its nowhere near as perfect as the ones in the books but I was pleased with it.

The entire cake took most of the course to make so the last two weeks we played around with royal icing. I practiced piping letters and numbers with it and also traced around a teddy bear picture to create a motif of sorts that once dried can be lifted on to a cake. For some strange reason the icing used for the bear went a bit funky, looks a bit bubbly.

Birthday Tea Party

A week or so before my birthday, I treated myself to three new cook books: Macaroons, Whoopie Pies and Brownies. I couldn't decide out of the three which to do along side the cake for my birthday tea party so I ditched the birthday cake and went for all three plus cupcakes and I made it all the day before my birthday - it was a marathon bake day. I think looking back I should have cut it down a bit more as half of it went to friends and neighbours!

For the Macaroons I did pink hearts and coffee macaroons with caramel cream center. They were yummy except after a whoopie pie - for some reason macaroons and whoopie pies don't mix, it's like a sugar overload. The whoopie pie flavours were vanilla & choc chip and caramel fudge.

The brownies were a mix of milk and white chocolate, no nuts as I hate them and very gooey. Maybe a little to gooey but they still got eaten.

Lastly the cupcakes. For my birthday I asked for the '1000 ways to decorate a cupcake' book and luckily it arrived on my birthday, so the cupcakes are inspired by a couple of pictures I'd spotted in there. If you're interested in ditsy cake decoration I would totally recommend this book.