Le Tour de France

Helen (who ordered the Lego cakes last Jan), ordered 24 Tour de France cakes for her husband's 40th birthday.

I made 12 vanilla and 12 chocolate cakes and iced them with a mix of vanilla and chocolate buttercream - some coloured grass green.

We agreed that I'd make a mix of Tricolore flags with the number 40 on them, some green, polka dot and yellow jerseys, and some roads.

I wasn't quite sure how to make the bikes, and in the end found photos online of some famous cyclists. Though I initially felt that making paper toppers was a bit of a 'cheat', in the end I think they look really effective, riding on their fondant icing roads. I only wish I had better sunflowers for them to cycle past!

Thanks again for the order, Helen, and a Joyeux anniversaire to Dominic! Hope he liked the cakes.

Andy Schleck, Miguel Indurain, Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani, Bradley Wiggins and Alberto Contador... Can you spot them all?

Allez!

My wedding - 10 years on.

Thought I should post some photos from my and Sam's wedding - 10 years ago this August! Apologies for the photo quality, I had to scan them from the wedding album. The reason I wanted to post these is that we too had cupcakes for our wedding cake... before I think I even knew what cupcakes were - these are more like fairy buns!

Sam had baked the cakes in advance, and the night before the wedding, all early-arriving guests got to help out with decorating them. It means our cakes were not exactly coordinated in their design, but certainly gave the wedding a community feel, which is exactly how we wanted it.

...not sure this storage would pass any food hygiene requirements!

10 years on, we celebrated our 10th anniversary with another sweet treat: a trip to an ice cream parlour (we were on our summer holidays in Germany).

Ruby and Danny couldn't really believe their luck.

The cake stand from our wedding was made of perspex discs cut by my father-in-law and seperated by some wedding cake pillars that we borrowed from a local cake decorator.
10 years on, my mother-in-law, who is a talented printmaker, turned one of the perspex discs into a print as a present for our anniversary!

Wedding Rehearsal

Some test cakes for Claire, who might want to have some Hello There Cupcakes at her wedding, in September.
She sent me some images that she liked, but they are quite different to the cakes I normally make, hence these test ones.

I don't normally post photos until the cakes are delivered to the customer, but I imagine that if these get made, they will have evolved by the time they're delivered, so I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's surprise.

Claire said that her bridesmaids would be wearing blue, and the photo she sent me had blue and white cakes. So the colour scheme I went for is dark/light blue, white and silver.

The buttercream is quite yellow in these photos, this is because I used real butter. If I was making them for real and the colour theme remained, then I would use vegetable fat to make the icing pure white.

I hope she likes them! Looking forward to hearing her feedback...


These were a copy of the cakes Claire had liked. But I don't have the nice flowers that were on the original (and don't have the skills for sugarcraft flowers), so the small shop-made ones are standing in for now.


My least favourite ones. Maybe because the colours aren't so punchy?


Blue fondant icing flowers with silver ball.


The bride and groom's initials are stamped into fondant icing.


Butterflies.


Plain roses and ones decorated with silver balls.

Social Eatia

Simon from PushON ordered 48 social media-themed cakes for their networking event on Monday.
I made 24 chocolate and 24 vanilla cakes and then decorated them in 5 different designs, with 5 different buttercream flavours.

PushON's own logo was kind of fiddly to cut out, but nothing matched the adventures I had with the printed cupcake toppers- from having them printed as a last-minute rush job, to drying them very gently in the oven so that they would deem to be removed from their backing paper!
However, the QR code did work when scanned, so I guess all the fiddly work was worth it.

Hope everyone enjoyed their party and the cakes on Monday night.


48 cakes: 2 cake flavours, 5 icing flavours and 5 designs, ready to be boxed up and transported to the party!


PushON's logo.


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with vanilla choc-chip buttercream.


Twitter logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with vanilla seed buttercream.


Feed logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with chocolate buttercream.


Facebook logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with coloured vanilla buttercream.


QR code printed onto edible cupcake toppers - it works, if you feel like scanning it...


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with strawberry buttercream.


Cakes in situ. (Thanks for the photo, Simon)

Life in Black and White

A really interesting commission from Cath, who is studying Surface Pattern Design and wanted 12 black and white cakes topped with her own designs to complement her degree show stand.

I researched where Cath could have her toppers printed, and then made 12 dark, dark chocolate Guinness cakes and topped them with buttercream, but this time using vegetable fat instead of butter, so that the icing would be pure white.

The toppers were a new experience for me. They were fine to use if you got them right the first time, but once placed on the icing, they tore if I tried to move them. Luckily Cath had printed a few spares...

If you like Cath's work, you can see more of it here.


12 Black and White cakes with 12 toppers.




Cath's work in situ.

Cupcakeasaurus

48 Dinosaur cakes were ordered for Maya's 5th birthday by her gran. I made 24 chocolate and 24 vanilla cakes, and decorated them in a variety of styles.

My favourite ones are the fondant icing dinosaur bones, and the rubble/stones that were made from crushed Oreo and chocolate chip cookies - it was a super-messy job, but a really effective look, I think.

The volcanoes took a lot of debate and experimentation, but apparently they were the most popular design: I should have made more!

Chocolate and vanilla cakes with chocolate and vanilla buttercream, cookie crumbs, fondant icing decorations and shop-bought sugar flowers.


Dem bones


One diplodocus...


...and a whole herd of them.


A sort of Triceratops, complete with Oreo and chocolate chip cookie 'rubble'.


That Oreo rubble got everywhere!


Volcano!



Dino bones, chocolate chip cookie 'boulders' and a wonky palm tree.


I love the bones, they were a last minute design addition, but my favourites, I think. The extra-nice thing about them was that the more broken apart the bones are, the better they look!



Palm trees shedding leaves, before I've even left the house.


The cakes on the stand, ready to party!
I, personally, would have mixed the cakes up on the layers of the stand, and put more than 1 cake on top, but the birthday girl's big brother was art directing this!
I hope they shuffled them round a bit before serving them.