Cake Love!!

I have been making use of Google and have been searching for all different types of cakes. Looking at different styles of cakes, different flavours, different decorating techniques etc. During this research i have found lots of beautiful and amazing cakes. Lots of which i have fallen in love with.
But i have also found a few which i LOVE and WANT for myself!
Friends - i don't know who made this cake but will happily add details if someone knows.

Then the wonderful Harry Potter (books, films, theme park.....i love them all)
Made by the wonderful Carisa's Cakes
Wicked the musical

Eeyore!!

And then finally, cakes themed around my favourite place in the world....orlando!!

Florida Cake by Finesse
Theme park cake from Chocolate Swirl
LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!
I think a florida theme cake would be my ULTIMATE birthday cake, as you could combine Dinsey Magic, sunshine, food (olive garden breadsticks anyone?) and Harry Potter. Perfect!

Cupcake Decorating Class

As you may have guessed i recently discovered an enjoyment for making and decorating cakes. I'd never taken any courses or been taught by anybody, i just picked a cake design and did my best to match it.

One thing i had never tried was using buttercream or icing with a piping bag and nozzle. So when i saw a cupcake decorating course available in my area i decided to go for it. And i'm so glad i did.
The course was 4 hours long and had just 4 attendees, to start with we coloured some white fondant with our choice of gel colouring, i chose pink and purple because when presented with lots of options i get very confused!! Anyway once we had coloured the fondant we made lots of decorations to go on the cupcakes using cutters and moulds. It was great to see the different things you can create.
Then it was time to pipe the buttercream....yay....we were shown three techniques, the trandtional swirl, the rose and also the grass effect. All were surprisingly straightforward, even the two tone roses. I used the grass effect on my daughters birthday cake a few weeks later (see picture above)
Once they were all piped with buttercream it was time to decorate. Now i went a lot heavier on decorations than i would normally as i had made so many during the class and it seemed a shame to waste them. But i would normally go for the 'less is more' approach and let the buttercream do the talking. As a side note i must say i LOVE buttercream!!!
So these are the finished articles which i got to take home. Not bad for a first try i think. What do you think?


The cupcake class was held in Bristol at Hey Cupcakes and i would highly recommend it as it was both fun and informative.

Challenge extended.....challenge accepted....make a Stormtrooper cake

My husbands birthday was approaching and my belly was growing (i was 8 months pregnant....and eating for 2 of course!) and my maternity leave had started.......so it was cake challenge time!
My husband is a bit of a geek, he would admit this, so i knew it had to be something either superhero or star wars related. I spent a lot of time on google looking at images, trying to decide what i could have a go at making. In the end i chose the Stormtrooper.....my husband always roots for the bad guys....no hans solo or luke skywalker for him......Darth Vader and Stormtroopers all the way........don't even mention the Ewoks!!! :-)
So subject picked, supplies purchased from Hobbycraft at the last minute!
**note** i try not to buy supplies from hobbycraft as they are soooo expensive, but when its last minute i do head there. But i prefer to purchase online, normally through ebay.
So as i said my maternity leave had started and so i had a whole day to make the cake whilst my husband was at work. Which meant i could make as much mess as i liked.....whoop! And a mess i did make! Baking with a pregnant belly is really not that easy and i didn't think about the logistics beforehand, but i got there in the end.
It took me all day carving and shaping the cake, making the buttercream and then putting it all together. I loosely followed the guide on the following blog, which was really helpful as a starting point.
http://www.workmanrumpus.com/blog/35-making-a-stormtrooper-cake
Then onto the decoration which was super fun and it was when the cake really started to take shape and i started to feel like i was getting somewhere. After almost a whole day on my feet, carving, chaping, mixing, sticking, decorating etc i was really pleased with the end result.
Considering this is only the 2nd novelty cake i had ever made i thought it was great, at the end of the day it looked like a stormtrooper and that was all i asked for!
What do you guys think? Success?


next challenge........having a baby and becoming a Mum!! Yikes!! Cakes took a backseat for quite some time.

My Cake Challenge, should i accept it.....Thomas The Tank

As previously mentioned i enjoy baking, now i note here that i am not particularly good at baking, each cake comes out with its own set of individual flaws no matter how much i concentrate!!
So why do i enjoy it?
I blame the power that my childhood memories have over me! Some of my happiest memories from childhood involved helping my Nan bake cakes in her kitchen, helping her stir the mixture or fill the tins.......or getting to lick the uncooked cake batter out of the bowl when she was finished!!
As she isn't here anymore and my heart still aches for her everyday, baking makes me feel like i am a little bit closer to her and provides me with a touch of the contentment i imagine i would feel if she was here with me. I imagine she is watching me and laughing kindly whilst i blunder my way through various recipies.........i didn't ever see her use a recipie book, she could just make anything from scratch, she had a natural gift in the kitchen.
I however do not have that natural gift and follow recipie after recipie and still make mistakes. But it is all in good fun.
In 2011 i wanted to start trying to decorate cakes and so i took on the task of making a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for my godson who was turning 3 years old. I didn't realise at the time what a monumental task the Thomas cake was and how even professional bakers see it as a challenge. So i went into the task with enthusiastic naivety (in hindsight that was a good thing). At the time i was 12 weeks pregnant and i spent about 6 hours carving and decorating the cake without sitting down, by the end my ankles were 3 times their normal size.......i spent the rest of the night terrified they would be like that forever......by the next morning normal size had been resumed.
My godson obviously didn't understand the time the cake took, the effort or the physical stress for my poor ankles, but he did enthusiastically recognise the cake as Thomas. I would have cried if he hadn't at least recognised my effort as the right train!!
What do you think? I was pleased with my first foray into cake decorating.


Not bad for my first go, a litte wobbly and i missed some of the details as i was exhausted, but still a good go.
Next cake challenge......Stormtrooper cake for my husbands 35th birthday

Rainbow Layer Cake.....lets give it a shot

So i love baking cakes and decorating them, i am not particularly skilled in this area, but i think i could get an A for effort at least.
The last cake i made was for my husbands birthday in September 2011, one month before our daughter Miley was born. That was a stormtrooper cake which i will post a picture of another time.
So as my husbands next birthday approached i decided now was the time to dust of my cake tins and get to work again.
I found a picture online a while back of an amazing Rainbow Layer Cake! It was a stunner! And i was so eager to try it out myself. The first time i tried a few years back it didn't work as i used liquid colouring......big mistake!
So i thought Simons birthday was the time to give it another go. So i bought the good quality gel colours and set to work. I only made 5 layers as i mistakingly bought 2 orange food colours.......doh!
Here is my cake mixture, coloured and all set to go.....

So into the oven they went in two batches. I was very excited and couldn't wait to finish the cake. I followed the original design which i saw online and covered the cake in plain buttercream icing so that from the outside it looks unassuming. Then when you cut into it.......bam.........colour explosion!
Now i must note that it didn't turn out as well as i had hoped but that was down to me purchasing the wrong shade of red and blue food colouring. But i live and learn and will know for next time. But despite that i still think it looks awesome.
For anyone who is interested the colours i used were:
Claret
Blue
Party Green
Primrose
Tangerine
Here is the cake, the outside and then the inside.


Doesn't it look cool! I think i will have to restrain myself from colouring every cake i ever make now!
I think this would be so cool inside a kids birthday cake if it was a surprise for them.
Anyway, it was really easy to make and i think it has a huge impact. The buttercream was quite thick so it held it all together really well so i didn't need any supports for it despite it being 5 layers.
Now when can i make my next cake...........