Lamb cake in six easy steps!

Sometimes having the perfect cake tin for baking your vision is not possible. And most of the time the best thing to do is bake two or more round cakes and carve them out by hand. That's also how we made the chainsaw, landrover and artic generic red Christmas truck (which can be seen on our Facebook page) and actually everything shaped was carved by hand and using no moulds.

So we started this cake with 4 x 8" round cakes. And took a knife to them.

The body is starting to take shape, we kept on building with strawberry preserve and buttercream adding legs and then more body and head.

The whole cake was then covered with buttercream.

Next was the task of icing the cake. We decided to cover the legs separately which we've actually never done before but since the back of the cake was going to be covered completely with white fluffy royal icing and the legs needed to be less so, it didn't matter that the whole cake wasn't covered first.

The ears were made a few days before with SFP so that they could set hard and stick up at the sides of the lambs head. We think it looks quite cute sitting in it's grass full of daisies and holding the girls age and name in it's mouth. 

 

 

Thank you for our thank yous!

We really do appreciate every single thank you card and email that we have ever received. I felt like I had to share a small sample of some of them and if you look closely, you can even see some cakes. I love the way the rose cake had photographs of family weddings surrounding it. Absolutely perfect touch.

Step by step Pansy making

 This last month all we have been thinking about is pansies. And pansy making and a pansy cake. So while making the pansies I took pictures at different stages to show the path from a rolled out piece of icing to a full wedding cake. So I looked through many of the books that we have here in the showroom to find a good pansy instruction and failed to find what I needed. Most called for wiring the icing which I didn't want.  I wanted these flowers to be stuck on the cake with no protruding pansies or petals. A lot of the instructions also called for a cutter which I didn't have. So, instead of looking at icing pansies, I searched pinterest and found some beautiful images of pansies and realised that the shape is a rather easy one to mimic. So using a petal cutter I got to work.

Icing is a very forgiving medium to work with and stretches a treat when worked properly. Believe it or not the five petals on the pansies are made using the exact same cutter.
We left the pansies to dry overnight and then got to work on painting them.

 

The last job was to add the black lines and the tiny dots in the centres of each pansy. The result is this pretty four tier cake. The vibrancy of the colours means that there doesn't need to be pansies on every inch of the cake. 

Pansy cake. Perfect for a Summer garden wedding.

 

 

 

 



Second Anemone

This is the second time I have written a blog about this cake. The first post was:

This was a different way of working for me. Holly and Martin spent most of their time abroad and our only contact was email. They had seen images of things they liked and we decided to design something based upon that. Their colour scheme was deep purple and their flowers were anemones. So a cute little anemone with a purple centre was the centrepiece of this pretty cake.

 I recently came across a Facebook status from Thornton Manor with a link to this photographer's site and after emailing them, they kindly sent me some images of  Holly and Martin's cake! Was lovely to see the whole day and the very beautiful anemones that were present throughout their day and were the inspiration for this cake. Was also very lovely to receive a couple of very lovely pictures of the cake; which shows it off so much better than the first post and my camera phone...

Gorgeous pictures by Murray photography who can be found here:

www.murrayphotography.com

A marriage of cake and stationery with flowers

Each tier of this lovely lace cake for Sheila and Tom's wedding at Hillbark Hotel was fruit. Our gorgeous very mature fruit cake which was doused with brandy, covered with apricot preserve, marzipan, icing so that finally the gorgeous lace panels could decorate two tiers of the cake. The lace panels are painstakingly cut from their press and tiny details are then cut out from the centre of the panels by hand.

To pick out even more detail, we then pipe over with royal icing to achieve this look. Sheila wanted some sparkle on the cake to compliment her dress so we added a few tiny diamante every now and again as flower centres. Lastly the bow was placed just above the bottom tier at a slightly quirky and off centre angle which I think finished off this cake.

These images were taken by http://www.cgweddings.co.uk/ whose diary of pictures of the whole day is stunning.

The amazing flowers on the cake table are by Earth flowers: http://www.earthflowers.co.uk/  Earth also dressed the beautiful table plan made by Ling at Dragonfly Couture Stationery: http://dragonflycouturestationery.com/

This wedding was such a perfect example of every element completing the next. I really like the way the flowers linked the table plan to the cake and everything in between and that I was able to see the day from beginning to end through the pictures; and that I saw Sheila's exquisite dress!

A cake for a birthday

We make a lot of Birthday cakes which I will add now and again, here's just a selection, from something very pretty and girly with paper thin flowers to something that looks like it will tear through another cake...(see chainsaw post!!) We absolutely love making pretty things here and love to be challenged. It's also great to find out different ways of doing things like different ways to make flowers that we've made for years. It's always eye opening.
Last week as well as the eight tier lace cake; which Helen and Stuart loved(!) we made amazingly chocolatey chocolate birthday cake which certainly killed the chocolate cravings for a week or two... and we made an 'exquisite' little rose and pearl flower spray for a ruby wedding anniversary. Images of this will also be uploaded when the computer plays ball and uploads them. Cake toppers which were sticking out of the top of the chocolate cake were also made last week with 'Happy Birthday' and message piped on to pink hearts and stars. It was all we could do to stop ourselves from eating the remaining revels, milky bar buttons, galaxy caramel balls, malteasers... the list goes on. But we were restrained. It is Summer after all...!!

Lace Applique

Sometimes I love my job. Today is absolutely no exception. Again, a week of differences but two cakes have stood out; one more than the other since it literally towered over the birthday cake and as much as the toppers on the chocolate mountain birthday cake tried, they couldn't reach the heady heights of an 8 tier cake.

 

 

Alternate tiers of this cake had a beautiful lace pattern which was overpiped with royal icing and tiny pearls piped above the lace and above the ribbon on the tiers without lace. Tiers are filled with Vanilla cake which is filled with strawbverry preserve and buttercream, Chocolate Aphrodisiac cake with chocolate truffle cream centre, Boozy fruit cake and lastly our increasingly popular Spiced caramel apple cake; this is so popular as less people are opting for our gorgeous rich fruit cake although still want a little tradition present. Our spiced apple cake is a delicious moist treat made with apples, citrus fruits, spices and sultana, baked to our special recipe and then filled with a layer of caramel and a layer of cinnamon cream. Delightful, and a perfect finishing touch.