I was hoping to blog about my Halloween creations at the weekend but I was crazy busy with cakes and Halloween gatherings.

This year I was invited to my friend Jens Halloween birthday party which was a fantastic evening and everyone came dressed in some fantastic outfits.  The theme was famous dead people and I opted to be Marie Antoinette who famously said ‘Let them eat cake’.  I thought it was very appropriate..  I wanted to bring along a glamorous Halloween cake so I went with my favourite ruffle design with some sugarpaste creations including a pumpkin, bats and black roses.

Here is my cake.

The inside consisted of alternate layers of rich chocolate sponge and vanilla sponge cake with alternate layers of vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache.  YUM!  I have blogged about my preferred chocolate cake recipe before in my Easter Cake blog post.  The recipe quite comfortably make 3 x 8” layers.  I will give details of my vanilla sponge recipe in a blog post soon.  Also, I keep meaning to do some tutorials but I either don’t get the time or I forget.. The best tutorial for the ruffle design I used for my first ruffle cake is detailed in my buttercream ruffles and roses cake blog post .  Once you get the hang of the ruffle technique it is such a simple but very effective technique to turn a buttercream cake into a vision of beauty.

On the roses I sprayed some black lustre to give them a sheen.  I should have done this before I attached them to the cake as I got some of the black lustre on my ruffles but it wasn’t too noticeable.  Something to remember for next time.

Here is a picture of a few of us at the party.

Jen made her fantastic gingerbread biscuits in the shape of coffins and skeletons which as always tasted and looked amazing.  Jen has a biscuit business called B is for Biscuit and you can see more of her work by visiting her website, www.bisforbiscuit.com.

My second Halloween project this year was some decorated pumpkin cookies requested by my boyfriends niece for a Halloween party they are having today.  Cookie projects are fun!

We dropped these cookies off on Sunday and while we were there we did lots of pumpkin carving which is something we do every year and it turns into a bit of a competition between my boyfriend, his brother and I.  This year their oldest son Jamie joined in and he did a fantastic job carving a dragon.  I hate to say it but I definitely didn’t win this year.  My boyfriend produced an unbelievable ET and Jamie helped him add an LED light to ET’s finger to give it a glow.. genius.  Here are some pictures:

My attempts were the spiders web and Phineas and Ferb.  I got a bit carried away and even signed one of them..

Happy Baking Everyone!

My first football cake I have been tasked with... the team was Newcastle United which for those you you (like me) who know nothing about football the team colours are black and white.  I went for simple and stylish and cheated slightly by buying the top logo which was an edible print.  I thought it would finish off the cake nicely and also I have never used an edible picture...  I also made 48 cupcakes with mini logos and some 30 toppers.  I really struggled with the edible pictures especially the little ones.  You put them in the freezer for a few minutes and then they should peel off.  Unfortunately I lost a few as I struggled to get them off the paper and I definitely needed to put them in the freezer for longer than the recommended 3 minutes which.  Not such a problem with the large picture but beware as the pictures are very fragile and it is easy to rough up the edges.

The finished cake:

Another thing I discovered while making this cake was that black is a very difficult colour to work with if you are using a lot.  I found bits got everywhere and I had to make sure I was very careful to clean up all the bits of black icing before I used any other colours.

The top cake was a 7” 3 layer vanilla sponge filled with vanilla buttercream and jam and the cupcakes were also vanilla sponge filled with jam and topped with vanilla buttercream.  I used a bit of white food colouring to make the buttercream colour less ‘cream’ which worked pretty well.

Pretty happy with this one and it looked great when set up at the party venue.

Happy baking everyone

I love buttercream!! I say this a lot.  I am always trying to find new piping techniques using buttercream such as the ruffles and roses techniques which seem to be very popular right now.  I was on a mission to use a buttercream technique I haven't yet tried out and I succeeded in my mission! 

I made this cake for my boyfriends neices and nephews who are amazing kids.  There is 5 of them, Jamie, Jack, Jessica, Alex and little Isabelle. 

Here is my cake:

I remember seeing this icing technique on a cake recently but I have no idea where and I didn't save the picture so I had to go by memory which in my case isn't always a good thing...  on this occasion my memory seemed to work okay and although I am sure there is another way of doing this technique, using a palette knife seemed to work for me :-)  I piped 4 oval balls of buttercream with a large writing nozzle (from my pastry piping set) in a line one on top of the other.  Using a palette knife and a sweeping motion I managed to create the effect above. I did one line at a time to get the over lap look.

The cake was 4 layers which included 2 chocolate layers and 2 vanilla layers covered in chocolate and vanilla buttercream with a few chocolate chips added for a bit of crunch. I did alternate layers of pink vanilla and chocolate buttercream which looked pretty when cut.

Happy Baking!

This weekend I have been working on a baby shower cake and some other goodies including baby grow cookies and fondant fancies.  The baby shower was a surprise for my boyfriends sister Kate.  I was given creative freedom for the cake and goodies which I love as it gives me a chance to try out one of the million ideas I have floating around in my head!  Kate hasn't found out if she was having a girl or a boy so the cake had to be suitable for both.

One of Zoe Clarks cakes was my inspiration.  Zoe Clark is an extremely talented cake decorator who makes stunning cakes.  The cake that inspired me had lots of stitching detail on it making it look like a patch work quilt and I thought it would be perfect for a baby shower.  I did think it could do with a cake top feature so I decided to make use of the baby themed cookie cutters I had bought recently.  The pram cutter won!

My finished cake and goodies which I was very pleased with:

The next picture is of the cookies I made which I put in pretty individual cookie bags and placed them in the box with her present.  Gave me a good chance to practice my royal icing techniques which I am on a mission to improve at the moment! getting there and finding it easier to keep my hand steady.

In the next picture you will see my fondant fancies.  This is the first time I have tried making these and I thought they were delicious but I think I can definitely improve on my dipping technique to make them a bit neater.. more practice required but happy with the first attempt.

The beautiful Kate with her cake!

Happy baking everyone!