Birthday Butterflies

A lovely butterfly cake for my friends mum who likes butterflies!  The butterflies were actually a lot paler in 'real-life' so the whole effect was quite delicate.

Pearl lustre spray is my new favourite thing at the moment (the stuff smells like the drink american cream soda!) so everything is getting sprayed with it!!

40th Twin Birthday

Two good friends of mine turned 40...both are big Liverpool supporters.  I had trouble in my household doing this cake as my OH is an avid Everton supporter!  Sabotage could have happened very easily!!

Gorgeous Godson

My godson is 16! Eek! where did all that time fly by?!!

He was most impressed that I used 'real' popcorn!! Lol!

Gruff the Gruffalo

Well you met Gruff a few weeks ago and he was finished last week in time for Tom's birthday.  I feel I have to point out, Tom is 25!!! (he loves the Gruffalo.....ahhh!)

Place Your Bets....

It was my OH's Grandad's birthday yesterday so we are visiting at the weekend to drop his birthday cake off.  He likes to place a bet does Grandad, so this is my homage to him!  I got the idea from a cake that www.jennyhuntcakes.co.uk had done and I thought it looked really good so decided to give it a go!

 Everything on the cake is edible including the coins....good old chocolate coins!!

Millie's 1st Birthday

Another 1st Birthday cake this weekend was dropped off on Saturday   A beautifully simple cake which looked lovely when finished with a cute bear peeping round a number one with daisies and a heart with Millie's name on it.  Millie's mum said the cake didn't last longer than half an hour......a good sign?!! Lol!!

Peppa Pig

A little girl whose 1st birthday cake I did last year (a number one shape) has just turned 2 - how time flies by so quick!  Her mum said she was mad on Peppa Pig and so she wanted of course a Peppa Pig cake!  We decided on a flat cake as opposed to a 3-d model and I did cupcakes in the same theme to match.

Neon Icing Toy Story Cupcakes

Just a few vanilla cupcakes for a little boy who is mad on Toy Story.  I decided to do neon coloured buttercream and the colours came out very well.  Using gel paste's are far better than liquid food colouring as they are a more concentrated colour.  Even though they are more expensive, you use less of it which makes them more cost effective!  The toppers are little rice paper discs with Toy Story characters on them.

Harry & His Bucketful of Dinosaurs - For Ethan

Ethan is 3.  Ethan is slightly interested in dinosaurs.  They are his most favourite things.....IN THE WORLD!!  For his second birthday last year I did him a baby dinosaur and for his third birthday at the weekend I think we've taken it up a notch!.......

This is my take on Harry & His Bucketful of Dinosaurs (Google is a marvellous thing seeing as I had no idea who Harry was, let alone his dinosaurs!!).  Cake inspiration came from The Whole Cake & Caboodle who made a beautiful cake from which I tried to re-create.

Number One Niece's Birthday

Number One Niece turned 9 this weekend! Time has literally flown by so quickly and she is now getting so grown up.....and tall!!

She said she wanted her cake to be a surprise and I was keen to try my giant cupcake mould again so I settled on that idea for her and to make it 'girly'.

I made flowers, glittery hearts, rosebuds, butterflies to decorate with and did her name spelt out on glittery hearts.

I also decided to cover the base using fondant icing (You-Tubing again) and it was ok to do actually, I thought I might run into problems but it was relatively simple.  It took a bit of time smoothing the grooves into the icing but once done it looked very effective.  I iced the top in a pale pink buttercream and decorated it up.

All the colours were actually a lot paler in 'real-life', they seem to have come out quite vivid on the pictures.  I used a mixture of white, pale pink, hot pink & lilac / purple.

She loved it which was all that mattered to me!

The Beautiful Birthday Girl!!

May The Force Be With You...Star Wars Cake

Well not really may the force be with you....it was a Darth Vader cake and he didn't say that line!  This was for Harry's 5th birthday and I'm sure the Star Wars theme was more for his Dad than him!!!!! But nonetheless, Darth Vader was immortalised on cake.....well on an icing sheet that gave me no end of trouble to be honest.

In fact, I would be very reluctant to use the transfer icing sheet way again, I couldn't get it off the backing sheet (despite You-Tubing how to do it!), it cracked; it was just generally very fiddly and considering I was doing 3 cakes this weekend, it was time consuming.  But I eventually got the sheet on top of the cake.

The figures were kindly donated by my OH who happens to be a Star Wars fan and these were put round the edge of the cake.

I think he liked it; couldn't hang around for this party, it was  literally a fly-by, drop cake off & go kind of affair as it was Number One Niece's birthday that day as well and her cake needed taking to her party.

Mary's Violet Birthday Cupcakes

These were a last minute change of design for my friend's mum.  I had seen a picture of some cupcakes in a beautiful lilac / violet colour and I thought I would give them a go.....these are my homage to the lovely colour that is violet!

(They were lemon cupcakes with a lemon buttercream underneath the flat disc of fondant - a different way of topping your cupcake)

(apologies for the 'arty shots'....I do love instagram!!)

 Embossing mats were used to give different textures on the flat discs

 A mixture of different flowers, some dusted with a little dusky pink lustre dust

 Arty shots!!!!

Ernie's Narrow Boat Birthday Cake

I had doubts about this one I must say as I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do!  But I was quite pleased with the end result.  The boat itself (Little Treasure) was quite heavy as it is all sugarpaste and had to be supported on straws and it was quite difficult to model whilst the weather was warm (that brief spell that was summer!!).  What usually takes a day or so to dry out took 3 or 4 days.

The family were all very pleased with the cake and I hope it finished off the celebrations for Ernie's 70th nicely

Roary the Racing Car

Initially this cake was meant to be Thomas The Tank Engine but after a quick change of mind, Roary was the result!  I had doubts about be able to do it at first but it turned out better than I thought.

After my cake decorating supplies lady didn't have any green icing I spent most of Friday night hand colouring the green for the cake! = aching thumbs!!

Still, I think Jack was pleased with his cake and that's all that matters!

50th Gym Cake

This was a cake for Chief Taster's step-dad whose 50th Birthday is this week.  Her mum was a little vague on what she wanted but it had to include the Apple symbol (he likes his Apple gadgets) and gym stuff but she pretty much gave me free license to be 'creative'!!!

So this is what I did!  I incorporated the Apple symbol on the gym mat and put a towel at the bottom of it along with a little water bottle, some skipping ropes and some weights and a sweatband with the number 50 on it.  Everything is edible being made out of sugarpaste; I was quite pleased with the weights (a candy cane painted with edible silver paint & grey sugarpaste discs dusted with silver lustre dust).

Hope he likes it!!

Movie Theme 16th Birthday Cake & Cupcakes

What a busy baking weekend!!!  My dining room turned into a production line and I barely saw OH (don't know whether he was secretly quite pleased with that as it meant uninterrupted football / sports viewing on the TV!!)

A bit of a last minute cake & cupcake request came in on Monday night for a movie themed cake needed for the weekend.  I decided on a clapperboard with film reels.  They looked quite effective and I was really pleased with the outcome.  24 vanilla cupcakes with the number 16 on them were also done to go with the cake.  A very early Saturday morning drop off was made as OH was dashing off to the football but everyone was very pleased with the result!  An Oscar winning cake maybe?!?!?!?!!?  ha ha!!