Cakes are Made of Little Boys Dreams

Something I Just Threw Together!

It was my sons birthday last week, and what a week it was! His birthday was last Tuesday and then his party on Saturday. I made the mistake of asking him what kind of cake he would like and he decided he wanted a pirate ship! Not much then! I tried my hardest to persuade him into wanting something a bit simpler but he had his heart set on the ship and how could I refuse my little boy on his birthday?

So I set about trying to work out how I could do it by googling pirate ship cakes but I didn't find any that particularly impressed me. So instead I looked up general images of pirate ships and found one of a model radio controlled ship that I quite liked the look of, so that was what I based my design on.

 I carved the basic shape from a huge block of madeira cake I baked. I spent some time getting the shape about right and then coated it in buttercream which I left to crust over. Once set I carefully covered it in rolled out sugar paste that I had coloured brown. I spent a good amount of time smoothing the sugar paste over the cake to make sure it fitted the shape as smoothly as I could.

I then started adding the details and the masts. The masts were black sugar paste rolled over BBQ skewers, and then with details added. This is the ship in part progress:

The next job was making the sails. I cut the basic shapes out of flower paste, a very fine kind of sugar paste that is much stronger than ordinary sugar paste. It's my favourite material to work with, it's really versatile and dries really quickly. My top tip is to not use cornflour to stop it from sticking but a little white vegetable fat, which doesn't dry it out so quickly. I then put them over glass jars to dry in the right shape and put holes through the top and bottom edges so I would have something to put the rope through and tie them to the masts.

After that it was a case of cutting out the details and sticking them on in the right place. It was really mostly cut and paste and then painting things afterwards with dust colours and food colouring paste. I actually would have like the gold to have been brighter but the shop had run out of rejuvenator spirit which is what you need to paint on gold dust colour, a kind of edible food colouring in dust form which you can either paint or brush on.

In the end, because I had such a busy week by the time it came round to Friday evening I still had so much to do. I didn't think it would take me quite as long as it did though. I was pretty exhausted by 2 am but then when 3 am came around I had my second wind and I was loving working on it. I got completely into the model making aspect of it and felt like I was in my element. As it turned out it took me literally all night, but I really wanted to get it just right, and I felt it was worth it in the end. My little boy was very happy and that was the point.

I know it might seem strange to some people to go to go to all that effort for something that's just going to get cut up and eaten but that doesn't bother me in the least. It's all about the moment when someone feels special because somebody went to so much trouble to create something uniquely for them. After that they can do what they like with the thing, it's job has been done. It's actually a relief, I strangely enjoy the fact that it gets destroyed and eaten, it's all about a moment, a memory.

My son Joseph eats the canon.

My nephew leigh eats one of the sails

Behold the shipwreck!

Wedding Cake Headache!

Summer Blossoms

Well I've finally had a chance to do some blogging after a very intense couple of weeks. The main reason being I had a large wedding cake commission for the 4th of June which turned out to be more of a headache than expected. I think I'm learning that 'collaborating' nearly always turns out to be problematic! The brides future mother-in-law baked the beautiful fruit cakes for me to decorate, as a gift, but because I didn't bake the cakes myself, I made a mistake in the size of the cakes I asked her to bake. It was such a silly but fundamental mistake to make, and one I was blissfully unaware of until it was too late to correct. Well, needless to say, after much blood, sweat and tears I had to surrender to my mistake and make the most of it.

  The final cake was a perfectly acceptable wedding cake, but just not what the poor bride had exactly asked for. I realise in hindsight that part of the problem was that my nerves got the better of me, as I was too eager to impress the lady in question, who I consider to have particularly good taste. But you live and you learn, and I now know exactly what dimensions I need for a particular style of cake. I'll just notch it all up to experience, and also make sure that I have absolutely everything worked out ahead of schedule, although to be fair this is my first 'hiccup'. It's just that as an artist I am a bit of a perfectionist and always want to do my absolute best for every piece of work. But it's bound to happen that there are occasions when things don't work out exactly the way you'd like them to. It wasn't a disaster, just not the triumph I always hope for!

The cake in situ waiting for more table dressings.

Handmade sugar paste blossoms.

The bride had bought these beautiful little blank wooden bride and groom figures and hand painted them herself  to be used on the cake. I thought they were so fresh and delightful.