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.

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. 

Gumpaste Shoe & Shoebox Cake

My friends 40th (shush) birthday is coming up soon, and I am going to make her a shoebox cake, with a bright pink shoe. I made the shoe yesterday following a template I got from here. The tutorial was very easy to follow, and I just decided what how I wanted to decorate it when it was done. This is the first shoe I have ever made, so very pleased with it, and I know it won't be the last. This cake is going to be a little cake, the shoe is only about 7" long, although I know you can make the templates bigger if you want a bigger shoe, but love making small cakes, so I will update this posting as I continue with this project.

Well, the above is the finished article. I have to admit totally rushed the cake and it shows badly. I made, iced and decorated the cake all in about 3.5 hours. In my defence, my husband has taken all week to tile my kitchen, (after work), and I only just managed to clear down the worktops whilst the tiles were setting to be able to do this.

This is my first shoebox cake, and I have learnt many valuable lessons for the future. I plan to make another one of these in a few weeks time, and will be a lot more organised.

First Fondant Cake

This cake was my first attempt at fondant icing, toppers and cutouts. I know that fondant is supposed to be called sugarpaste, but most people I talk to (apart from professional cake makers) call it fondant, so I will go with that.

I made this cake for my friends daughters 18th birthday. I tinted the batter pink, white, and violet, and when it was cut, it was incredibly pretty. She didn't know I had done it for her, so she was so excited to see it when I turned with it, as she thought she wasn't getting one, and I have to say, I got such a thrill from her being so pleased about it.

Making the toppers was quite easy, I used gum paste for these, and using my set of cutters, cut out the shapes I wanted, then put them onto the wires and left them, and they dried incredibly hard, so they can be kept as a souveneir.