Owls Tree House Cake

To make the tree trunk I baked two deep 6" round chocolate cakes so that they would stack on top of each other without needing any support rods. To create the roots I cut out certain parts of the base cake and stuck them on another part of the cake to make it look like roots, the carved out sections made it look more gnarly and tree like. The filling was chocolate butter cream and instead of using fondant to cover the cake I melted milk chocolate and brushed it on to the cake with a silicon brush, this also produced a bark like effect which works perfectly for this cake. To finish the trunk of I used green fondant which I pushed through a garlic press (please note it has never been used for garlic) and loosely placed it around the bottom to make it look like grass. 

To make the two owls all I did was use two contrasting colours blue and light blue, the blue was for the body, head, wings and ears and the light blue was for the circle on its face and the patch on its body I used a leaf cutter. 

Christmas Cakes for 2012

This Christmas has been quite a busy time with Christmas cakes, cake-pops and my very first Gingerbread House. 

I'll start with the cake-pop cake with the gingerbread men around the outside. This was for a young family so I knew it had to be bright, festive and fun. I also had to cover the fruit cake with a thick layer of marzipan as that was a requirement. The two candy canes on top of the cake are real and the ones around the cake are fondant. They're really easy to make, take two thin long sausages one red and one white, place them together and nip one end then twirl them round so that they spiral, snip the ends and curl the top and that's it, simple.

The Christmas tree is made of fondant and royal icing which has to dry after every row so it doesn't merge into one and then decorate with little bits of fondant in bright colours.

The snowman and reindeer are cake-pops the only thing I did different this year was I used chocolate covered pretzels to make the antlers, this can get rather annoying as they wouldn't brake where I wanted them to so a big bag of pretzels wasn't quite big enough and I only made 6 reindeer's, oh well.

 I made this cake for my dad, every year as part of his Christmas box I make him a fruit cake and go nuts with decorating. Last couple of years I've decorated a round fruit cake with festive patchwork, which I think are adorable but I wanted to try something new and Igloo's popped into my head so it had to be.
The cake was an 8" fruit cake that I cut in half and laid on it's side, the two doorways are fruit cupcakes with a bit sliced of one side and then stuck onto the main cake with some royal icing. I then covered them both with marzipan and white fondant then with royal icing I piped some lines to make it look like bricks of snow, then dusted with icing sugar and a bit of lustre.
The two reindeer's are again cake-pops and the tree and snowman (hiding in the corner) are made of fondant. The reindeer's were meant to be fishing hence the two fish heads but I ran out of time plus they don't have any arms so it would have been near impossible for them to fish.

This small fruit cake was the one I used the patchwork cutters on, it wouldn't be Christmas without them. Its a simple design with stars and candy decorating the outside of the cake and Santa and his two helpers placing a star on an invisible tree :-) on top of the cake.
The cake board was covered in red fondant and then with a holly plunger I replaced some of the red fondant with green holly leaves which makes rather a nice effect and finishes of the cake.

This cake isn't a fruit cake as they don't like them so every year I make them a sponge cake and decorate it with festive paraphernalia, this year it was the turn of the snowman. The cake is covered in jade fondant and white fondant around the bottom to give it a snow look. To finish of the edging I alternated between jade and white fondant balls and the same with the snowflakes jade on white and white on jade.
The snowman and snowwoman are made with cake pop mixture but covered in white fondant not chocolate. Thankfully the bag of broken pretzels came in handy for the arms as they looked like twigs and the hats and scarf's are made of fondant.

The cake-pops are similar to the ones I made last year except they are on sticks and like I said early the antlers are made of pretzels, good idea but you need patience and a steady hand.

Finally we come to my very first Gingerbread House I'll keep saying first because it wasn't as easy to put together as they made out on TV. First a quick note to all novice gingerbread house makers - use caramel to stick the house together not royal icing, it dries in a flash and doesn't take to long to make. It is a bit messy but its not to hard to get the hang of using it. Use the royal icing to decorate with, but do the decorating once the house is glued together or leave it to dry over night if you want to decorate it first. 

OK rant over. Once I got over the collapsing roof and sides I really enjoyed decorating and making the house its lots of fun and I'm sure it must get easier with time and practice. I went for kids sweets and hearts for the decorations, I did make some little gingerbread people and trees but they were eaten so I went for chocolate mice much more unique.

That's it, all my festive baking and making in a nut shell all that's left to be said is Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope next year will be as fun as 2012 has been.

Batman Cake

As soon as I'd been asked to create a cake based on either Batman or Spider Man for a young lad I knew exactly what I was going to do. 

I went with Batman so I could create a mini silhouette of Gotham City around the edge of the cake and have the Batman Logo on top so it looks like its beaming out from the city below. 

The cake was vanilla with vanilla butter cream and then covered in midnight blue. To create the city I wrapped a piece of grease-proof paper around the cake so it was the exact size and then drew the outline of the buildings on to the paper. Once the drawing was finished I cut it out and laid it on top of black fondant that I had rolled out ready, then it was a case of cutting around the template. After removing the template I made tiny holes in the fondant so they looked like windows and then lifted the black fondant on to ready rolled yellow fondant which was meant to be able to be seen through the holes but didn't quite work so at the very end after placing the city around the cake I piped yellow royal icing into the holes. 

To make the symbol I printed out a picture, cut around it, traced over it with grease-proof and then placed the template on to black fondant cut it out and stuck it on to a yellow fondant disc with a bit of water and positioned on the top of the cake finishing it of with the Happy Birthday message. 

Blackboard Cake

I had been asked to make a birthday cake for a teacher who was going to be celebrating her 50th birthday and they thought it would be funny to include spelling mistakes and bad mathematics. The first thing I thought of was a blackboard cake with Happy Birthday spelt with letters and numbers and to create a sum that equalled 50 but actual equals 15.

The cake is a vanilla sponge with vanilla butter cream and covered in dark brown fondant for the border and black on top. I used red to cover the board and red royal icing to pipe the message onto the blackboard as red is her favourite colour. The chalk and board eraser are made out of fondant.

Butterfly Cake

For the Butterfly Cake I made the butterflies a day before the cake so they had time to harden and keep their shape with the wings stood up. The butterfly colour schemes are from photos of butterflies that I found on the trusty Internet. The main colours I had to work with were any shade of pink. Pink goes well with so many other colours so I knew introducing black, blue and purple would still work well with the main cake colour, cerise. 

For the cake I made two 8" round vanilla sponges, took the tops of both cakes and covered in vanilla butter cream. After rolling out the cerise fondant I marked out an 8" circle in the centre which I then rolled a butterfly print onto. Once on the cake the print sat on top and created a guide as to where to position the pre-made butterflies.

The board was covered in the same cerise fondant and then sprinkled with pink sugar to give it a glittery finish. Once the cake was placed on the board I then positioned the butterflies onto the cake glueing them on with royal icing. 

Roundhead Cake

The Roundhead cake was for a friends dad who loves history and his favourite times are The Tudors, Roundheads and I think The English Civil War. I went with Roundheads as I thought a helmet cake is more manly than a Tudor Rose and I couldn't put together an idea for Civil War. 

To make the helmet I made two 8" round vanilla sponges and cut the top off of the bottom sponge and neatened the top sponge as it had created a curved top when in the oven, which was handy.

The colour is dark grey for the helmet and instead of making a face for it to sit on (which would have been slightly creepy) I went with black so it looked like a mannequin head in a museum. 

For the detailing I printed a picture of the Internet so I could get all the markings in the right place. Once the modelling was finished I dusted some black powder colour around the helmet to age it and then finished with a shimmer powder to give it a metal sheen finish.

The board was covered in Teddy Bear Brown fondant. To create the ripples I rolled the fondant bigger than the board so that it creates natural creases making it look like fabric.      

Wedding Fair Cakes

At Preston Hall last Sunday Chintzy Cakes had the biggest day in the business's history as we had a stall at the Tees Valley Wedding Fair.

This was my first wedding fair and I had no idea when booking the stall just how much work goes into being part of a fair. I've spent many hours working on and designing a table that would be eye catching, pretty and above all very chintzy.

The following photos are fake wedding cakes I've been lovingly slaving over for the past couple of months but after seeing them set out on the table it was totally worth the many sleepless nights and long working days.

Barbie Cake

My next door neighbours little girl turned 6 this year and I was asked to make a cake based on Barbie, it had to be glittery and it had to be pink. 

My first idea was to make a ball gown cake with a doll stood in the middle, I knew there would be enough cake in the dress to feed her friends. What I didn't realise was just how long Barbies legs are. I had originally made two sponges that sat on top of each other with a hole in the middle where she would fit in however Barbie had other ideas as the said cake only went up to her knees. This meant another two cakes were put in the oven pronto. Once they had cooled I carved out a hole in the middle of each and started putting the layers together with butter cream, dirty icing and then came the many shades of pink fondants. To get the butterfly effect on the front panel I rolled over it with a embossing mat which imprints the picture on to the fondant. I then finished of the decorations with sugar pearls, hearts and shimmer spray to get the glittery look. 

For the cake board I covered it in cerise coloured fondant and sprinkled over sugar crystals before the fondant had a chance to dry and then piped on the Happy Birthday message.