Sugarpaste Baby Bootees

This is my first ever attempt at baby bootees. I made some sugarpaste using ready to roll fondant and added some gum traganth to it. I found a template on the web, and cut them out using a little water to glue the pieces together. I added two little pink buttons, and glitter washed them, and then  tried out some cornelli work on them. I have never tried cornelli work either, so this is a complete first for me. The cornelli is very far from perfect, but I am quite happy with the result.

Green Dragon Birthday Cake

Green Dragon Cake

My son has just turned six, and decided that he wanted a dragon cake. I have made him one before, which had quite a few mishaps before if finally made it to the party, but I thought, hey, I'll give it another go.
 The cake was a lovely moist chocolate fudge cake, sliced and filled with chocolate buttercream, carved into shape, and then crumb coated with the buttercream before adding the fondant icing.

This is the cake after carving and, I am just moulding the fondant on. I found moulding the fondant around the shape of the cake a little challenging, but after smoothing it with my hand for a while, which warms the fondant for easier covering I was happy with the result.

 I coloured white fondant with dark green and yellow paste colourings to get the acid colour green I was after. Paste colourings are much easier to work with than liquid and as they are very concentrated you only require a small amount to get a good solid colour. Liquid colouring tends to make fondant very soft, so if you need a strong colour for your project, I would always recommend gel paste food colourings.

After I was happy with the shape, and had cut the excess fondant off, I started to add the details. I never really had a clear picture in my head of how I wanted the dragon to look, so it was very much a trial and error process until I decided what I liked.

Finished! After all the moulding had been done, I very liberally dusted pearlescent lustre dust all over him to give him a glow. I popped a small indoor sparkler into his mouth which looked  very effective when lit. And most importantly my son loved it.

My Christmas Cake

Now normally for my Christmas Cake I normally like the the old fashioned snow effect cake with lots of little decoration such as snowballs, and trees with presents under, and a little twist of  maybe the odd penguin surfing around it, but this year I thought  I would try something a little different. I had bought during the summer in a sale a flower cutter which also could double up as a poinsettia flower, so I thought I would try it out, and was quite pleased with the result, although I did stray from the normal red that everyone associates with the poinsettia, and decided to go with the blue one that not so many people know instead.

 I still kept the snow effect, but liberally dusted it with sparkle, and popped a few blue sugar dragees into the middle of the flowers. I also added a few light blue rice paper snowflakes I had picked up on my travels, and added a few of those too.
I never know whether to wrap a ribbon around a cake or not, but I thought I would this year, I had some silver sparkle wired ribbon in my ribbon box, so I added that as a final flourish.

Mother In Law's Boot- Birthday Cake

 My Mother-In-Law had a fantastic cowboy/cowgirl themed party and she had bought some gorgeous cowgirl boots to wear and she sent me a photo of them, as we live about 200 miles away.  I wanted to make her a surprise cake, and thought I would copy her boots. I did want to make them standing up in 3D, but realised the getting them there with the family, and a rather loopy dog, might make this a bit more of a challenge than what I was up for . So I made a white chocolate sponge with white chocolate ganache, only to find at the party she didn't like white chocolate! Oh my gosh, why didn't I ask somebody first? Still although she never ate it, the guests seemed to love it.

 I tried to copy the detailing faithfully, and think I managed it quite well. I am still very much a novice at this, so was quite proud of myself.

I dusted the cake all over with some luster dust, just for a little sparkle.

Pirate Ship

This cake was for my son's 5th birthday. He wanted a pirate ship, but I left myself very little time to make it, and so from the fondant covered all singing, all dancing confection I had originally planned I ended up making the abridged version.

The cake itself was a chocolate mud cake recipe from my copy of Planet Cake. The cake is very moist, very chocolatey, and very very moreish.  I covered the cake in milk chocolate ganache, and used ice-cream wafers for the windows and door. The crows nest was an ice-cream cornet chopped up, filled with cake offcuts, and  wooden kebab skewers used to make the masts.

I printed out the skull and crossbones on paper for the sails, as my idea of edible ink on rice paper sails soon evaporated when I realised I had about a day to make and decorate the cake.

It's not the tidiest cake I have made, but it was fun to do, and disappeared as quickly as it was made.

Hello Kitty Cake

This cake was great fun to make!. It was a strawberry sponge cake, covered in rolled fondant icing, and sprinkled with lots of lovely pink glitter.

I printed off a picture of what I wanted the cake to look like, and followed the design by placing the template over the cake and cutting the outline first, then once that was how I wanted it, I then covered the cake with the fondant and traced the outlines of Kitty onto the cake, using a wooden skewer.

I was very pleased with how the cake turned out, and the birthday girl loved it, which is all you can ask for really.

Football Shirt Cake

 This cake was for a friends 40th. He is a football fanatic, and so a personalised team shirt it had to be. I was a little short on time, so the cake was not quite as sharp as I would have liked it to be, but on the whole for the first shirt cake I have made I was quite pleased. The cake was a Madeira filled with jam and buttercream. I tinted the fondant red myself using a Christmas Red paste colour, and used my fondant extruder to make the piping rolls and the sleeve edges. 

Fairy Tale Princess Castle Cake

Apologies again. I did not take any photos of the making of this cake, only this one after it was made. But, I will explain how I made it.

The turrets were made with Gumpaste, rolled around tins, and left to set. I then dusted them with pink and snowflake sparkle dust, and using ice cream cones covered in royal icing, and sprinkled with edible glitter and coloured sugar and coloured sugar balls to make the roofs.

The cake itself was a vanilla madeira covered in piped buttercream, with the letters made using the curly letters shapes.

Peppa Pig Cake

This cake I made for my friends daughters 2nd birthday. She is a huge Peppa Pig fan, and loved her cake.

The cake is made with a vanilla madeira cake with fondant icing and decoration, and although it doesn't show up very well on the photographs I dusted the whole thing with edible glitter.

Fifi Flowertot Cake

This cake was for my friends daughter who adores Fifi. I made a few glaring mistakes such as not cutting out under her dungarees, so she looks a little odd along the chest area, but hey, first time making her so I will know if I ever make her again.

I love doing all of the cutouts and learning new techniques it all adds to the fun ands sometimes stress of it all.

Again, I never snapped any photos of the cake in progress, just the finished article. Sorry, but I get so carried away, and completely forget the camera. I need to have it out on the worktop before I start, so that it is staring at me all the time. Then I might manage to show you a few more interesting items.