Monday 24 September 2012

Biology cell cake

This was a cake for my biology class to celebrate the end of the school year :) It was made to look like a cell with specific organelle.  All of the decoration was made of buttercream which is why it doesnt have as smooth a finish as it might have with fondant.  It was really nice to be able to share something with my class and they all said it tasted good which is the most important thing :D

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Little duck cupcakes

These were cakes I made for one of my school teachers for her birthday.  She had heard about my love of baking and the date of her birthday was the first thing she told my mum when they had a meeting!  I was having a really hard time on the day I made these as my grandad was very ill and due to go for emergency heart surgery the next day.  Having the distraction was really good :) I tried something else first but it was a massive fail so I had to do this instead.
 
I was pleased with how these turned out in the end but there are certainly things I would change if I did them again.  The ducks were made out of fondant icing but I don't think anybody would actually want to just eat that much icing so I am sure there is a better way of doing it :/ I would also like to try and improve the faces.  I think the beaks need to stick out further and the eyes should be bigger.
 
My teacher was really happy and shared with the class which was good because it meant we all got to have cake in lesson :D  I think they could be cute for a party for a young child or something but they aren't a cake I would just make any time because of the ridiculous amount of fondant needed.


Sunday 9 September 2012

11 little monsters :)

I feel I ought to warn you now that this is a very picture heavy post :/ Only because I made 11 unique cupcakes and couldn't choose which ones deserved to get put on here ;)
 
 
This was one of my favourite cupcake projects so far.  I normally try to do something fancy with cupcakes and then end up just icing them anyway :( These cakes are made up of a mini cupcake taken out of it's wrapper and stuck onto a large cupcake upside down to give the extra height.  The whole thing is trimmed to give it the rounded shape and then completely covered in buttercream.  This can be used whenever you want a cupcake that needs some extra height.  The eyes were made of a brown chocolate chip which I melted slightly and then stuck to a large white chocolate button.
The actual making of these cakes was really easy and fun and I really like how they turned out.  I think it would look really cool if you made a whole army of them in all different colours :)











Saturday 8 September 2012

Redbull F1 car

This was one of the hardest cakes I have made so far.  It was for a lady at work for her partner's birthday.  He had worked at Redbull before and was looking to go back to working there.  That put a bit of pressure on me to get it right :/ I made the track a bit in advance and it is made of fondant while the grass is buttercream.  I think putting the car on a track rather than just a board made it look more real and I think it really adds to the design.  The whole cake is edible and this was a real challenge.  Another really hard thing was getting all of the detail on the car.  It was obvious that this man really knew his F1 cars so I didn't want to do anything wrong. 
 
I was really pleased with how it turned out in the end and I think they were too :D

 

Olympic cake

My family were having an Olympic party and as usual I was put in charge of the cake :) I wanted something that was simple as I didn't have a lot of time but I wanted it to be effective and obviously Olympic themed.
 
I used the Union Jack because that is our flag and although we try to support everyone our loyalty still lies with our own ;) The Olympic torches are cake cooked in ice cream cones and then decorated with red and yellow buttercream to look like flames.  I think it is really effective and they looked amazing when the sun shone on them.  It is only the second time I have made cake in cones like this and I really like it.  You make the cake mix as usual and actually cook it in the cones.  The biggest challenge is trying to keep the cones standing when they are in the oven :/ I haven't really worked this out yet so lost a couple where they fell over and the cake mix came out :(
 
This was a pretty easy cake to make and was all edible which is always my aim.  It would be easy to make with any flag really and the torches could easily be swapped with something else to match the theme :)

Thursday 6 September 2012

A little hippo cake

This was one of the smallest and most simple cakes I have ever made.  It was for my little sister, who was turning 7 in case you didn't work that out from the candle ;) She was only have having a small party with 3 friends and her birthday is just after christmas everybody was on a bit of a diet and didn't want to be eating too much cake.  It also explains the destroyed remains of a gingerbread house in the background :)
 
I knew that she would be devestated if she didn't get a cake (the other one had a 3D sitting up dinosaur for her party a couple of weeks before :/ ) but didn't want anything big or too difficult.  She is very girly so pink was a BIG YES! I happened to have some purple fondant left over and had a rough idea of how to shape a hippo which is where the rest of the design came from.  It ended up being a sweet little cake and she was super pleased which is by far the most important thing :D

A horse


This was a cake I made for my friend's mum for her birthday.  The whole family are horse mad so I felt a bit of pressure :/ However, it was really fun to make and I had some freedom as the only rule was that it had to look like a horse ;) If you were trying to make it look like a specific horse then it could be much more difficult.
If I was to do it again I would make sure I covered the whole board in green as I think the silver showing through doesn't look ver good.  I think the nose and the teeth probably need some tweeking but it was meant to look a bit cartoony so they probably did the job :)

Tuesday 4 September 2012

My Marvellous Monster


This was a cake I made for a friend who was leaving work.  It was a really fun cake to make because I had so much freedom with the design.  The eyes were cake pops (my first attempt), the orange on the cake itself was buttercream while the mouth and nose were fondant.  It was quite a big cake so would probably feed about 10-15 people, although he said he was going to eat it all himself which I think would make any normal person very sick :/  Overall one of the most fun cakes I have made and probably one of the most fun to look at as well :D