Silhouette Cake

The silhouette cake has been a very popular cake this year. Its been a birthday cake and an engagement cake. Its one of those designs that everyone comments on, a lot of them say it reminds them of the film Up.

Elsa Frozen Castle Cakes

This year I've been asked a couple of times to make Elsa's castle from the Frozen movie. I've only seen the movie once so I had to go to the trusty Internet to get a couple of images of Elsa's castle to make sure its right.
The images below are from the first time I made the castle cake and the image above is the second version.
The first time I made the cake it was larger with 10" and an 8" cake that I covered in white fondant and decorated in light blue fondant shards and snowflakes.
The second version was with a 6" and a 4" cake that I covered in jade coloured fondant and then decorated it with light blue and jade fondant shards followed by snowflakes.
My personal favourite is the second version I think the colour changes work best and the jade colour is gorgeous.

Westwood Handbag Cake

For the Vivienne Westwood handbag cake I started of by making the handles, the customer specifically asked for the handles to stand up so in order for that to happen they needed plenty of time to dry. I made the handles by rolling out quite wide worms with white sugar paste and bent them round a bowl and then set them aside for a good number of days.
The cake was a madeira sponge, I always use this type of cake when carving is involved, I find Victoria sponge and chocolate cake to soft to be able to carve easily. Once I'd got the basic shape I dirty iced it and then covered it in white fondant. I also used white fondant for the piping work.
After inserting the handles I sprayed all of the bag in a hot pink. The air spray worked brilliantly as it created shadowing and made it look more life like.
While the bag dried I concentrated on the Westwood logo. I used a yellow fondant colour and then once on the bag I went over it with a gold dust.

Louis Vuitton Birthday Cake

For the Louis Vuitton cake I had been given a picture of what the customer was wanting and in this case it was a cake inspired by Louis Vuitton’s classic handbag design - the checker board and logo print.

Some of the components for this cake were new to me which I love. As a cake decorator you only improve if you keep on learning, which is why I very rarely turn down a cake order unless I have time constraints.

The first part I started with was making the bow. With it being made out of sugar paste and to hold its shape I needed plenty of time for it to dry thoroughly before constructing. I used Beau sugar paste (which is one of my favourites) in black and created the 2 loops separately, placing scrunched up kitchen paper in the middle of each loop to give it support during the drying process. I gave it a couple of days to dry, just to be on the safe side. Once it had dried I rolled out three 1” wide strips, two that were about 5-6” long for the bow tails and the other strip to wrap around the middle of the flat parts of the loops.

When it came to covering the cakes the bottom tier got 2 layers of fondant around the side. The first layer in the camel colour and the second layer in the checker board squares. To finish the tier of I put dark brown fondant piping around the edges, this makes it look more like a bag. The top tier I covered in the camel coloured fondant again and then hand painted the Louis Vuitton logo around it. I was going to make a stencil but after a bit of practise I felt comfortable enough to be able to free hand.

For the finishing touches the customer wanted the scissors adding to the side of the cake. To make them I printed out a picture of scissors and used it as a template for the sugar paste.

New Shop

Super sorry its been awhile since my last post, since the last post I've been extremely busy. On the 22nd October I signed the papers for my first shop. Then on the 11th November we opened the doors to the public.
The shop was a blank canvas with no kitchen, grubby walls and floors that looked like their best days were back in the '90s. But with a lot of elbow grease, lick of pink paint, cute butterfly wallpaper, new kitchen and vintage furniture and crockery we have managed to turn it around.
I knew from the start it would have a vintage vibe, I've been buying pieces of furniture over the past year and so many cups, saucers, plates and milk jugs from a lovely stall called Rosie Sloan.
Some new additions to Chintzy Cakes we have a mini tea room which at present seats 4 but I'm on the hunt for more chairs. We also do Afternoon Tea on a pre-order service to reduce waste, it means a more efficient service.
Over the next couple of weeks I'm hoping to get the blog and website up to date which will be a Christmas miracle :-)
Hope you all have a great Christmas and Happy New Year !!!