Stuff yer bake

I was asked to do a cake for someone in work whose aunt had been living with her for some time, due to illness I think, and was now going back to her own home. It took me a good few days to decide what to do but I noticed a magical house cake in one of my cake books and thought I could base it on that. I think it worked out quite well and the recipient actually cried when she saw it, so I’m taking that as a compliment (or a huge insult!). The next one I’m doing is for a friends’ little boy’s second birthday and I’m going to attempt to do a cake themed on Pingu, wish me luck! 

I have been a bit overrun in the cake department recently and it doesn’t seem like it is letting up anytime soon. This is the most recent one which was just a simple cake for a party to welcome a new baby boy into the world. I sometimes like simple, although it does draw attention to any ’slight’ mistakes you may have made. Having said that the building blocks were a bit fiddly, my hand was fixed in a claw shape after the piping and I went through about 5 metres of baking paper, making piping bags as I couldn’t quite get the consistency of the icing right. I’ll put it all down to experience and carry on with the next one.

I have been a bit busy of late and haven’t had a much of a chance to post anything on the blog so I have a bit of a backlog. I will eventually get to it but in the meantime I’ll post a picture of the birthday cake I made for the other half for his birthday.

He is a keen cyclist and has been glued to the Tour De France over the last few weeks, so I thought a stage of the tour would be a good idea for a cake. Carving an unusual shape for the mountain and icing it was most fun but making the bicycle was a bit of a chore and I eventually thought that it would be easier to make a broken bike and a rather battered, bruised and disheveled looking cyclist. Throughout the tour you notice a lot of graffiti on the road, mainly for a local terrorist separatist group and large scale male and female genitalia, but I thought it might be a tad more tasteful just to put some of the competitors names on the road instead. He was really impressed with it so I will now use this as leverage for almost any household task for the next thirty plus years. 

This is another cake that I made for someone in work. It was for their Grandmother’s 90th birthday and she apparently was very keen on knitting, sewing and cross stitch so I decided on a sewing box cake. The name is done in brush embroidery, which is a really nice effect where you pipe the required design and then take a very slightly damp paintbrush and drag the icing in. I am definitely getting better at the icing and having less mishaps which is good really as I’m doing my Cousin’s wedding cake in October!

These are another two cakes that I have made over the last couple of weeks for people at work. Both of them took quite a few hours of work but I’m quite pleased with how they have turned out. I generally make a madeira cake, which is tasty but also quite robust and withstands carving into various shapes. I froze the lorry cake as it makes carving in to shapes much easier so hopefully it will still taste nice. I am dropping the lorry cake off tomorrow and await the verdict.

I wanted to make a cake for my friend who was going off on maternity leave last week so I thought I would try and make a baby out of sugar paste and put various baby paraphernalia around it to jazz it up a bit. When I made the baby I somehow managed to make it look like it had mild learning difficulties and having run out of time, couldn’t really remedy the situation. I tried to think of various things to put with the baby and considering it’s unfortunate appearance a pair of calipers and a wheelchair seemed most appropriate. I thought that the baby looked a little naughty as well as slightly retarded so making a big mess on the top of the cake was probably best and also didn’t require too much technical skill or worry of messing it up. I was actually reasonably happy with the result and everyone really liked it. Another happy customer, just two more to cater for in the next week.

P.S. I apologise for the rubbish picture, I was rushing before I took it to work.

I was asked to do a birthday cake for someone in work, so I set about trying to find a book that I could get some inspiration from and also some hints and tips after my disaster with the castle cake. I have a habit of looking at instructions for things then ditching them and having a go at it myself, normally because I can’t be bothered to read them. This time, though, I read through a new book and followed the advice given. The recipient likes gardening and I had seen an idea of doing an upturned flowerpot and thought I could give that a go. The book recommended baking the cake in a terra cotta pot to get the shape and then I split it, filled it with buttercream and iced it. I then had a go at making the little man following rough guides from the book and I added the other little embellishments to finish it off. I’m really pleased with the result and I got a few more requests for cakes to keep me out of trouble for a while. 

I have finally finished the Christmas cake that I have toiled over in class for the last few months. We had yet another buffet lunch at work last week, so I thought I would bring my cake in, partly because I can’t be bothered making anything else and also it means that I won’t eat the entire thing by myself.

It was a little heartbreaking to eat it after spending all that time on it, but the waft of Whiskey from the cake when it sliced into it reminded me why I wanted to try it. It was really moist and went down very well, but I think the department became 10% less productive after lunch as a result of the alcoholic content (certainly not one to hand round at the AA Christmas party).