Haylee's 30th Birthday - owl cake

JANUARY 2012

To get enough height for the owl I made four cakes. I started with lemon cream cheese cakes but they didn't rise much at all so I needed to make two chocolate and coconut cakes in a smaller size to gain extra height.



I started by doming one of the chocolate cakes for the base and then added the extra layers with a chocolate and almond buttercream filling.




To create feathers I cut out chocolate and pink circles and overlapped them around the owl using the pink for the owl's breast.

These were attached to the cake using royal icing. The pink ones were slipping - obviously too much icing - so I used toothpicks to keep them in place.






For the other owl features I used the chocolate fondant, some orange fondant and the pink fondant. I used two toothpicks each for the ears and the beak.

The eyes were created using white fondant, smaller black fondant circles and some chocolate fondant cut to create eyelashes.

Orange fondant stars trimmed slightly were used for the feet.

With the toothpicks removed from the owl breast I needed to cover the holes and so I used a small flower punch and finished them with green royal icing dots.





With the owl nearly complete, I set about finishing the cake board with a birthday message "Turning 30 is a hoot". I used chocolate fondant circles with smaller pink circles and pressed the Clikstix into the fondant.

The owl was placed on the board and leaves added to create some extra interest. These were coloured with green and brown petal dust and put in place with royal icing. A few of the extra pink flowers were scattered around the base.

Just before leaving for the party I used oil to gloss up the feathers and black eyes.

Thomas' Christening Cake - jungle animal

JANUARY 2012

A friend of mine requested a cake similar to the one she had made for her other son's christening, so I took the jungle theme of that cake and created my own version.

The design was to be simple.

To prepare for the event I'd already made the jungle animals (see earlier posts). I also created some fondant letters using Clikstix and some leaves. I used two different colours of green petal dust to create texture on the leaves and bring out the vein imprint from the cutter.



I started with a round butter cake and made white chocolate ganache to cover.



With the cake covered I positioned the elephant and lion first, leaving enough space for the letters. I don't have Clikstix numbers yet so I had to pipe the date on using green buttercream - need some practice to get this looking better.

I also used the green buttercream to position the leaves and create a swirl around the edge to hide the smaller cake board.

2011 - Lion figure

In addition to the elephant figure required for Thomas' Christening cake I needed to do another animal, so I chose a lion.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos first and then set about creating my own.

I again made gum paste using fondant and CMC powder and left it to harden before colouring it yellow and tan.

Once I'd made the body, head and legs I made the mane. To do this I cut out two flower shapes and put them in a small dish to harden with a curve.

To complete the face I made small holes and pushed in tiny amounts of black for eyes and some tan for the nose.

I used small pieces of wire to position the ears.



For the tail I created a skinny snake and cut the ends with scissors.