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.