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.

2011 - Zhu Zhu pet figure

A girl at work was talking about her daughters birthday cake and how she loves her Zhu Zhu pet so I offered to make a figure of her particular one - Peachy - to go on top of a cake.

I had to do some research to find out what a zhu zhu pet was and in particular what Peachy looked like.

I again made the fondant into gumpaste using CMC powder and then tinted it to an orange/peach colour. I used white fondant to add the legs and snout area and added a small nose which can be oiled up prior to serving to make it look like plastic.

I stuck the ears onto some wire so they inserted into the figure and cut out the peach shape to go on the animal's back.

2011 - Elephant Figure

In preparation from Thomas' Christening cake I made an elephant topper.

I first did a practice run with basic white gumpaste to make sure I could make something that actually looked like an elephant and when that was a success I moved on to the real deal.

The elephant is white fondant turned into gumpaste using some CMC powder and then tinted grey.

I used an edible marker to add the black details and some black fondant for the eyes. I added a hint of pink to the ears using some petal dust.

All in all I'm pretty happy with the result - now for the giraffe and a lion!

Hudson's 2nd Birthday - Lightning McQueen

OCTOBER 2011

The invitations for Hudson's birthday were Disney "Cars" theme so the plan was to do a Lightning McQueen cake.

I had a few pictures and videos on the net as guidance and set about creating something that resembled the car character.

I make 3 slab cakes as the car needed to be quite long. I made 2 x butter cakes (pound cake) and another red velvet which I haven't tried before.

The slabs worked really well and provided a great starting point. I froze them for about a week, defrosting them the night before I needed to start decorating.



I layered the cakes (with red velvet in the middle) with red/pink buttercream flavoured with raspberry essence. I think I might have used a little too much as on its own it tasted a bit strong, but then with all the cake together and fondant it was okay.

The first steps were to carve out the cake and then apply buttercream all over it to keep it together. The carving wasn't too bad but the buttercream (crumb coat) was painful at the front where I had to build up the bonnet sides with extra cake. The buttercake kept coming off with the buttercream and in addition it kept mixing with the pink buttercream filling - not a great look.





The cake went into the fridge and I worked on colouring all the fondant and preparing as many other elements as possible.

I used pre-coloured red fondant to cover the whole cake. There was a rip at the front so I ended up adding some teeth and mouth area which in the end looked great. I added some intent details and then added the side window panels, the eyes and windscreen and the back window.



I was tossing up between two wheel sizes and probably went with the wrong one. The wheels were made using pre-coloured black fondant which I made into gum paste adding some CMC powder. This would ensure they were harder than normal fondant if left overnight. I scraped out some cake using the same circle cutter as I used for the wheels and folded the red fondant under.


I cut out some yellow 'flames' and painted orange gel paste onto the ends.


White and yellow fondant squares made the front and tail lights.


The bonnet disc was tan fondant with orange buttercream piped on with Hudson instead of Rusteze like the movie.


I made numbers using yellow fondant and then traced around them to create slightly bigger black numbers. These were stuck on each side and the roof. A spoiler was added using red fondant.



When all the details, minus wheels, were added to the cake I transferred it to the display cake board. At this time I ended up with some cracking on each side of the windscreen.

I decorated the display board with a black & white grid pattern and some brown sugar to look like dirt. The black and white fondant was rolled then and then cut in even squares before being attached to the board with some decorating jelly. I didn't measure out the squares against the board, just got lucky that it matched pretty much exactly.



The final steps of the cake was to add the wheels. I started by using a skewer through the cake but realised it wasn't necessary as the wheels were a tight fit.



Just prior to taking the cake to the birthday boy I brushed some olive oil onto the cake to create shine. This really make it's character come to life.

Amanda's 30th birthday - giant cupcake

MAY 2011

This cake was designed to be the centre piece of a cake display where Amanda had a number of cupcakes in the purple/black/silver colour scheme.

Making a giant cupcake sounded easy and when I found a mould at Kmart I jumped on it and thought it'd be smooth sailing.

My first attempt was a dud. So, so hard to get the cakes baking at the same time considering one was a cone shape and the other was much deeper and wider.

My second attempt where I baked the cone first and then the base also failed. I think the pan was the problem - always blame the tools used :-)

My back up plan worked a treat. I used a pudding dish and a small round pan. I carved the cone from the pudding pan and used the round one as the base. It didn't look much un-iced but I knew I could add detail afterwards.

I would like to try baking one of these using a giant cupcake pan from a cake decorating shop. I believe they are made from much thicker metals and probably compensate for the different shapes a bit better.

So, with cake made I went onto decorating.

I used black fondant for the base and then used a skewer to make it look like a patty pan.

I used butter cream for the top. It didn't have to be perfectly smooth because I was covering a lot of it with stars.

I had pre-made all the stars in 3 shades of purple (some medium, some small) with about half on sticks.

I sprinkled non toxic silver glitter all over the top of the cake to fit in with the 'sparkle' theme.

When I'd decorate the cake with enough stars I used the leftovers around the base and wrote on them with an edible marker "Happy Birthday Amanda" and "30".