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.

R2D2 Cake

R2D2 was the most fun I've had making a cake. The Mulberry bag cake and this cake were for the same person and out of the two I would have said R2 would be the most difficult to make because of all the patterns and everything. It just looked like a nightmare waiting to happen but it wasn't. Thankfully :-)

The first thing I did was work out how many layers to do and which tins to use and then it pretty much took shape because R2 looks like a walking pedal bin.



After the cakes cooled I dirty iced them with chocolate butter cream and covered it in white fondant (no colouring, yeah). The legs were made out of rice crispies and chocolate so I could mould them and then covered them in white fondant too. The only problem I had was the legs were taller than the body which is annoying because I measured it beforehand so R2 shrunk. To fix it, I used one of the discarded tops off one of the cakes, covered it in grey fondant so I could make it look like a rock later on and sat the body on top. However I realised later on that R2's face is grey and not white so it kind of looks like he's sat on his head.


Once I had all the fondant smoothed I started adding the blue squares and grey wires and black outlines and in a couple of hours he took shape and this is R2D2 for little Davy.

Mulberry Handbag

The Mulberry Bag cake was probably the hardest cake but also the most satisfying cake I've had to make purely because of the hours and work I put into it.
I made the biggest mistake by not getting enough brown fondant the first time round. When I went back to the store they were sold out of teddy bear brown which is just typical. I think there must have been a rush on teddy cakes that week.
After trawling around all the cake decoration stores I know of, nobody had teddy bear brown so my next step was to take the fondant I did have on the cake off and try to make the colour with colouring gels but because I had to work the fondant so much it just kept splitting every time I put it over the cake.
Then the cake was so soft and moist it started falling at the side. Thankfully I had made a backup cake which had been in the freezer for a couple of days so I ended up using that. Once I carved the defrosted cake it started taking shape.
The next stage was making the fondant look like leopard print which was quite easy and fun. I found the best way to make the effect was to throw some darker brown fondant spots on to partly rolled light brown fondant and then once the fondants covered enough you roll it into the main colour and it sticks and looks like leopard print.




The next difficult step was the handles. I initially wanted them stood up so I mixed some fondant with sugar paste so that it would harden enough to stand up but they just cracked and looked rubbish. Then I tried thick wires covered in fondant but they just flopped so I looked on the Internet for help and another person had had the same problem and ended up placing them down the side of the cake which looked really good. I made two handles with the leopard print fondant and instead of putting them down the side I folded them on top of the bag and it finished the cake off perfect.

The compact mirror was made with white and pink fondant, the rose was made with the rose petal cutters and built up and the lipstick was black, pink and gold fondant.

Wallace And Gromit Cake

I had loads of fun making my Dad's birthday cake. He's a huge fan of Wallace and Gromit, especially Shaun the Sheep (although he is missing from the cake, oops).
The cake is from The Wallace and Gromit Celebration Cakes book, which has some gorgeous cake designs in. It was difficult to pick just one but, with some help from my Dad, we ended up with the Pest Control van.
The van wasn't too bad to create - it's a straight forward shape and I used the cake recipe the book provides which is a madeira cake with melted white chocolate swirled through the mixture.
The cake was covered with blue fondant and I added the markings with the cutting wheel and black edible ink pen (they are so useful).
The figures were so much fun to make, especially the bunnies. I have a soft spot for all things bunny. The white bunny is a cartoon version of Mr Minnie Tinkles, the brown bunny is a cross between a rabbit and a donkey, and the head popping out of the ground is so cute.
Making Wallace was a bit of a hassle - he is meant to be kneeling but I was making the characters out of fondant and not sugarpaste so his legs just squished down everytime I tried to put him together so he is stood up now. I had no problems with Gromit, he was a good boy.
The grass effect was made with a hard bristle brush and looks quite effective.

My dad loved his birthday cake and he can't bring himself to eat any of the figures so they are stood on his computer desk.