Cute Kung Fu Cakes

Using the ice cube tray for the chocolate Lego men.
I chose milk chocolate because I thought the black belt would show better on the lighter colour chocolate.


The finished men, and their piped coloured belts.


Lined up, according to rank!


They look a bit like that Chinese Terracotta Army when they're all lined up, I think.

All the coloured belts.

Cakes for the Kung Fu Christmas party called for something special, especially as most people knew I'm a cake-maker but hadn't had the chance to taste any yet.

I made chocolate cakes with a pinch or two of Chinese Five Spice (it's a Chinese martial art, you see), and little chocolate Lego men using my Lego ice cube tray, with the different colour belts piped on with royal icing.

For once I was making cakes for personal consumption, so I could use fresh cream instead of buttercream to top them. Yum.

Happy 32nd Birthday James


James


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What kind of cakes to make for a guy who posts about anything and everything, all day long?

Sometimes the most difficult briefs yield the best results: it felt so hard to choose just one theme for James' birthday cakes, that in the end we decided to just write out a message for him, but then I realised that the way the message was written could be the theme. Hence the Twitter, Facebook, calendar app and generic computer icons.

I worry when I say that I'm a cake decorator that I could be seen as doing a very boring and staid craft. So I always get a thrill out of subverting that. This time I especially liked using the 'baby blue' icing (which I'm sure is used on christening cakes every week of the year), to recreate Facebook logos.

These cakes took forever (both in planning and execution), but I think the results were worth it: Happy birthday James!

Chocolate and vanilla cakes with vanilla buttercream and fondant decorations.

Zoe's Little Mermaid Cakes

Swirled plain and blue buttercream, in a wiggly sea pattern.


Zoe's name is spelled out on clam shells.


Flounder. I spent more time on Ariel, and Flounder came second place - the cake recipient (aged 5) knew who he was and was happy with him though.


With gold dragee air bubbles.


Ariel herself.


layered up icing.


The finished cakes, ready for delivery.


Six cakes based on Disney's The Little Mermaid for Zoe.

Chocolate cakes with vanilla buttercream and fondant icing.

Snowmen and Snowflakes and Fairs, oh my!

The mini cakes packaged and ready to go to school:
Hmmm, not too happy with how they look, I wish I'd just done plain white buttercream in the end, as the pink looks odd and a bit clown-like.
I was trying to be too clever and Christmassy: it's cranberry flavour.


All the biscuits baked and iced/decorated for the fair.


Some are decorated with lebkuchen-style almonds. The sugar 'glaze' is mixed with edible gold lustre: you can see it in real life, but I couldn't make it show on the photos.


Lebkuchen-esque angel


Baubles.


My favourite one.


All boxed up and ready to be transported (by sledge: how authentic!) to the school.


It's snowing outside, so I'm indoors making tiny cake toppers for this Saturday's school fair.
50 snowmen are smiling up at me and I'm thinking about some sort of cranberry buttercream to make them extra Christmassy.
Tomorrow's job is to ice the gingerbread tree decorations that I baked yesterday.

Freya's 'Under The Sea' Cakes

Vanilla cakes with vanilla buttercream: I thought any other flavour dyed blue would be odd.


I put mid-blue, light blue/green and plain white buttercreams together in the same piping bag, and piped them out to give a multi-coloured effect.

The problem I have is that often I'm using new (to me) techniques as I'm fulfilling an order, it's always a bit nail biting* to be doing some new style of icing on the cakes that are actually going out to the customer. I was really happy with the colours and effect here though.

*Not literally- that would contravene my food hygiene training!


Freya's name and age spelled out on seashells, each with an edible 'pearl' sugar dragee.


Goldfish with gold dragee bubbles.


Blub.


Crazy-eyed starfish. The buttercream is also decorated with clear and blue edible glitter.




Pretty sure this is a scallop shell shape, which I think means it wouldn't make a pearl, but sometimes artistic licence wins over zoological accuracy!





Olga ordered 12 sea life cakes for her daughter Freya's 2nd birthday.

I really enjoyed making these cakes, especially as I finally got to use the dolphin cutter that I bought a while ago. The shell and starfish cutters are new additions bought for this commission, but I'm always happy to feed my cookie cutter habit!

Olga had also very sweetly said that she liked my photography, so I supplied her with a CD of these photos, as well as the cakes.

Cocktail Hour

Caramelising lime slices in a sugar syrup.



The cakes were brushed with some of the lime-flavoured syrup (from making the caramelised limes)


Vanilla cakes, brushed with lime syrup and topped with 'Margarita' buttercream: flavoured with lime juice and a pinch of salt.
Edged with crunchy, coloured sugar and topped with a twist of caramelised lime.



Vanilla cakes with a Strawberry 'Daiquiri' topping: brushed with lime syrup and iced with strawberry buttercream.
Decorated with a fondant cocktail glass, silver balls and a maraschino cherry.



The ubiquitous cocktail umbrella


Chin chin!

Kristina (who was the recipient of the fashion-themed cakes last month), must have been happy with her cakes, as she ordered 6 cocktail cakes for her friend's birthday.
I made 3 'margarita' and 3 'strawberry daiquiri' cakes. However, no alcohol was involved in the making of these cakes (sorry)