Cakes Sold in Local Shop

Last week I sent a dozen cake pops to the local Premier Shop to be sold. It's Chintzy Cakes first shop commission and it's really exciting as they sold 8 of the 12 which I'm really pleased with, also got feed back and some tips on things that sell best. On Friday I sent 8 vanilla and choc chip cupcakes over so I'll see how well they've done later on today, next up are carrot cupcakes.

Handbag, Shoe and Gift Box Cake

For this cake I was given plenty of information and pictures of what they wanted which made it easier for me. Originally it was going to be a gift box with a shoe on top but after showing them a picture of the Mulberry Birthday Cake I made last year they wanted one of them too.

Both the shoe and bag were made a head of the cake as they wanted them to be keep sakes. 

To construct the bag I made a card insert to lay the fondant on, it took a couple of goes and it had to be done in 5 pieces instead of one (I knew that method would be to easy). The side sections sunk in a bit which made it look more like a bag. All the bag, bar the Mulberry motif, were made with amethyst purple fondant with sugar paste mixed in to help it set. The motif was made with yellowy gold fondant and had the mulberry tree etched in. Underneath the bag are four yellowy gold feet. I made the bag in an hour or so which surprised me, I thought it would have taken longer.

The shoe was the most difficult part to the cake it took a number of attempts. The first thing I did was watched a video on youtube showing how to make a sugar paste shoe, although it only made a sandal type shoe without the back so I had to improvise with that. It takes quite a bit of patience with it taking a day and a half to dry and then I had to add another layer to hide any cracks that occurred during drying but once it had the two layers, the insole and the heel put on it looked like a half decent shoe.

The gift box is the cake covered in the amethyst fondant. To make it look like a box I added a strip of fondant about half an inch thick around the top to make it look like a lid. The ribbon is make with white chocolate flavoured fondant, the edge of the ribbon has a stitch line going down each side.

The board fondant is ivory and made to look like cloth with the Happy Birthday message piped on with purple royal icing.  

Picnic With A Pony Cake

The Picnic Cake was for Zara who turned 2 the other day. The cake was inspired by her pet pony, Billy who is black and white. For the pony figure I wanted to make it cartooney looking so I scoured the Internet to find a way to make a cute horse topper and found a video on YouTube which showed you step by step how to make a pony. The only difference between them is the colouring and the bit of straw sticking out of his mouth.

I had fun making the picnic scene especially the mini Victoria sponge to go on the picnic blanket, all I did to make the cake was cut two disks of light brown fondant one for the base and one for the lid then placed a thin layer of white and red fondant on to the base and topped it of with the lid. It was surreal cutting a slice out of a miniature cake. The straw mound was made with yellow fondant that I passed through a garlic press (the garlic press has never been near garlic, so no nasty garlic flavoured fondant).  

The blanket was made with rolled out white fondant were I added thin strips of red horizontally and vertically and then rolled over it again to merge the two colours together. It took two goes to get it right but all I did was turned the first try over and then tried again, thankfully it worked the second time. After that I cut around the edge to finish the gingham blanket of.   

The main cake was made with the chocolate brownie cake and covered in light green fondant, to hide the join between the cake and the board I piped some green butter cream round to look like grass and then added some sugar flowers to finish it all of.

T-Rex Birthday Cake

The T-Rex cake was for a 5 year old lad who loves dinosaurs and his favourite is the T-Rex. This cake was inspired by the T-Rex in the Toy Story movies, Rex. 

The cake is made with Madeira sponge as I knew I needed a solid cake to hold the weight of the head as 

T-Rex's have huge heads and tiny arms. I made the mistake of slicing the head tier through the middle to add a layer of chocolate butter cream but all that did was make the cake start to drop at the front, thankfully I had a spare cake in the freezer so I could replace it with a new head minus the butter cream this time. 

Everything on the board was edible including the boulders which are made with cake pop mixture and cover in grey fondant. And I added some shadowing around the body and face with a moss green powder.