New Cakes

Food for Fun.

I've not done a post for a while because I've been so busy the last few weeks with cake jobs. Don't get me wrong, I've been rushed off my feet but in the best possible way! It does mean though that other art stuff has gone by the wayside, including writing on my beloved blog. However, I now have some new photos of these recent commissions. The jobs were very varied, between a children's Nintendo Ds cake, a carpet cake and a modern art cake. They were all birthday cakes, all very different and all enjoyable to do in their own  way.

Modern Art Cake.

A very good friend of mine asked me to do a cake for her 40th birthday party. I had an idea for a design, based on her abstract paintings. So I took photos of her work and sketched out a design. I was very rushed that week, I had two cakes to do for the same day! But I'm really glad to say that they seemed to have worked out and the people who received them were very happy with the end result, which is the point after all.

The sugar paste paint tube.

 The Carpet Cake!

 This was a cake I was asked to do for a 60th birthday, it had to be something very personal and special. The gentleman it was for works for a flooring company and his daughter asked me to do a cake which was a model of him climbing out of a big pile of carpet rolls. So that's what I did! It took a lot of sugar paste to make all the carpets, but it was worth it to get the right effect. I stacked them around a prism shaped cake, it's not actually just rolls of sugarpaste, there is a cake inside! I also spent some time taking photographs of some of his work 'tools', his folder price, list, calculator etc, and his lovely wife showed me one of his favourite ties and shirts. A cake like this is all about the detail, that's what makes it special, you really need to think about it, 

This was the cake as I was building it.

 Club Penguin Ds Cake

This was a completely different job again. A lady asked me to do a cake for her sons birthday party. She wanted something that involved a model Nintendo Ds and the childrens game, Club Penguin. I did some visual research, since I'd never heard of Club Penguin before! Luckily, I did have a Nintendo ds at home, so I tried to copy it as best I could, out of sugarpaste, of course. In the end I settled on a design based around penguins sitting on icebergs. Getting the Ds to stand up was the big problem in the end. I had to prop it up with BBQ skewers and hope it survived until cutting time. It seemed to be OK, and the little boy was very, very happy. If loads of kids say to you, "that is the best birthday cake I have ever seen", you know you've done something right!

Special Occasion Cakes

I love a Party!

These are a couple of commissions I did for big occassions. They were designed according to specific requirements. I was asked by a very good friend of mine to make a special cake for her inlaws fortieth wedding anniversary. She had a definite idea in mind, which was to have a model of them both sitting on top of a globe, with flags from all the countries they had travelled to over their years together.

 So that's what I did. The globe was made from a cake baked in a spherical tin and then covered in blue sugarpaste. I worked out all the major continents according to a map and cut them out of rolled out green sugarpaste, and then carefully arranged them around the sphere in the right places, and then, when dry, painted it with confectioners glaze. This went on top of the base cake, which was covered in navy blue and stars, to represent space. Each of the flags was by hand with sugarpaste of varying colours. Each one carefully researched and worked out precisely, then cut out and attatched to a cocktail stick so they could be inserted into the globe. The figures were half made and left to dry and then placed and finished on the top of the globe. The only thing not edible were the glasses on the female figure, and the cocktail sticks for the flags. The writing was also all sugarpaste and flower paste.

The flags are sugarpaste, and written on with edible pen

This cake is one I was asked to do for a South African couple who were coming to visit their relatives they hadn't seen for a few years, a kind of welcome cake. The person commissioning it was very clear about what he wanted, a model of the couple, waving flags, with something to hint at their love of rugby. So that was what I modelled. I used photos to get an idea of clothes, hair etc. I used skewers cut down to size for the rugby goal in the background.