This is just a quick post to include photographs of my exploits in this medium so far. It's the sheer indulgence and fantasy of it that appeals to me. Although obviously I do it for work aswell, it's very much a labour of love. It allows me to indulge my inner child, much like playing with play dough. It all started when I fell in love with the work of cake designer Peggy Porschen, whose delightful, beautiful and decadent creations opened me up to the possibilities of cake making. I get a wonderful high from seeing peoples faces light up when they recieve their custom designed pieces and a buzz from seeing the finished article after hours of hands on labour. I hope my work maybe ignites a desire to have a go at a very rewarding craft.
Children's Cakes
The first childrens cake I ever made, trying out sugarpaste modelling for the teddy bear and flowers and my first roses.
My next cake was for my little nephew. I was feeling spurred on by the reactions my other cakes had had, and I was getting a taste for the satisfaction I got from seeing peoples faces light up, I wanted more! So I decided to make for my nephew Lucas, a teddy bears picnic. I was going to experiment with modelling miniature everything for the picnic feast, little cakes, little sandwiches, little plates, little cups. I felt like I'd stepped back into some magical childhood moment, like playing with a dollhouse and all it's tiny little treasures!
My niece was my next target for experimentation! She had seen a cake design that she liked but I wasn't going to have the time to make the same cake, so I played around with what I already had. I wanted soemthing really girl, what she ended up with was more like a wedding cake. However, I did get a great deal pleasure creating the little bird and flowers, sprinkled with edible glitter and beautiful dust colours! It's a girls world alright!
By now I was feeling pretty ambitious! I had another nephews birthday coming up. He was going to be 11 and he loved Pokemon! Well that was it, the next challenge. I spent quite some time looking up Pokemon cakes on the internet. I'm not going to lie, the design was a mix of other designs I'd seen but with a touch of my own. I had seen somewhere that you could buy spherical cake tins, I knew that would be perfect. Thankfully for me there is a cake decorating shop in Grimsby (about 15 miles away) that hired out cake tins and they had one of these sphere tins available. So that was what I used for the Poke ball. I cut the baked cake in half and covered the two halves separately with sugarpaste.
Once the base cake was made and covered I then carfully placed the ball, held together with jam and buttercream together on a small cakeboard on the base cake. This was after I had modelled Pikachu and had attatched the sugar paste lightning bolts to wires and left to dry. The Poke ball looks shiny because it has been painted with what is called confectioners glaze, which is what it says, edible glaze, I use this alot. The writing I made by drawing out letter templates based on the style of the Pokemon comics I had seen, and then cutting around those with a sharp craft knife on sugar paste.
This cake was closely followed by the next one for another nephew of mine, Ethan, who was turning 6. I was making the cake for his birthday party, to which my sister had invited the whole year from his school, so it had to be pretty big. The theme was dinosaurs, it was another new challenge. I spent some time working out the design, looking at dinosaur birthday cakes already out there and coming up with a hibred of my own. The T-rex on top is two pieces of madeira cake which I cut into shapes, one for the head and one for the body. I then used a plastic cake dowel to hold the two together and then cover them in buttercream, which I left to set.
Once the buttercream was set I then covered the T-rex shape with coloured sugarpaste (I mixed the colour myself) and then added the scales and details. The teeth are made from zig-zag strips of flower paste, which is a particularly fine kind of sugarpaste that dries harder than normal roll-out fondant. I then painted him and dusted him with edible colour dust.
The rest of the cake was three chocolate cakes, covered separately, left to dry, then stacked. I then cut out the leaves individually from sugarpaste and hand rolled the squiggles, name and age. It worked out better than expected and the children were delighted with my T-rex.
My next job was to make a cake for a delightful little girl called Ingrid whom I watched one morning a week. She was turning one and her mum wanted something girly and modern. She had seen some ideas that she really like on the internet and I created a design around those. I knew I wanted something sweet and delighful, just like little Ingrid! It was relatively straightforward, just needed alot of hand modelling and cutting.
My most recent childrens cake was a present I made for the christening of a little girl called Ivy, whose mum I happen to be friends with. The idea for the Noahs ark was mine, since I'd seen some delightful Noah's ark cakes and really wanted to try one, but taylor it especially for a little girl. I've included photos of the work in progress, but only a few I'm afraid since time was of the essence.
I baked a large block of madeira caked which I then cut down to the separate parts, then layered with jam and buttercream. They were then covered in buttercream and left to set in the refrigerator, and later covered roll out sugarpaste.
I then made the individual parts for the animals which eventually put together and placed carefully on the ark once it was placed on the base cake.
I was happy with the way it all came together. It satisfied a deep need for something pretty and cute!
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