Freddie Mercury Cake

Last Monday I had a bit of a disaster day.  I still freelance at my old job in London, and on the train in on my way to work I realised I had forgotten my glasses.  It was too late to go back and I can't see the computer screen without them, so I did a mad dash to Specsavers to get my prescription and see if I could pick up some cheap reading glasses before I got to the office.  After a rush around 3 different opticians it wasn't to be as my prescription is too specialised and has to be ordered in.  So I went into the office anyway to pick up my dunce's hat and a few instructions from my boss so that I could do some work from home.  I got back on the train down to Brighton, hopped on the bus to Kemptown and then as I was walking up the big hill home I realised that Melissa had taken my keys when we travelled in together that morning. GGGHHHHAAAHHH!  Exasperated, I walked to Brighton Police Station who were very helpful, and an hour later, along with two kindly neighbours they eventually helped me break into my own house.  Ridiculous!

I closed the front door behind me and caught my breath.  On the hall table next to the spare set of keys and my glasses case, the answerphone was flashing with a message from a lady called Jennie in Oxfordshire who wanted a cake for her son's 40th birthday on Saturday and could I call her back.  Well Lady Luck must have been feeling guilty.  I composed myself and called her back, and took down the details of the order.  There was a slight pause on the phone and the lady said there's a theme for the party - the Queen.  Interesting... running through my mind were thoughts of regal cakes, crowns and thrones.... then as she was talking I realised it wasn't the Queen, but the band with Freddie Mercury.  I had to smile, as my good wife also has a habit of putting a 'the' in front of band names and TV shows when there isn't meant to be one.  My suggestion for the design was to have a white cake with black diamonds round the edge to reflect the harlequin outfit Freddie used to wear, then a silhouette of Freddie in an iconic pose with the Queen logo in gold lettering.  Jennie loved the idea and all was set.

For what seemed like quite a simple cake, it actually took me a lot longer than I thought it would.  First I googled the images of the Queen logo and the Freddie silhouette, then worked in Photoshop to resize and fit to the shape of the cake.  I printed this off and cut out the image and letters as templates to cut around in sugarpaste.  This seemed to take hours - the letters were so fiddly, the paper kept moving, the paste pulls when you cut it so it's actually quite difficult to cut them out.  Maybe I should have just piped the logo on!

Then creating all the diamonds to be just the right size to fit nicely round the sides of the cake took a few goes to get right.  But when the cake was done it looked really good - simple, iconic and classic.  I took a quick picture on my phone and fully planned to take proper photos for the website the next day before delivering the cake in the afternoon.

Unfortunately as Melissa and I went shopping in town on Saturday I completely forgot about taking the website photos.  Another headsmacking moment of stupidity and frustration.

When I delivered the cake, Jennie loved it and said ooh aren't you clever.   I just smiled and said thank you.