What I like to call "domestic science fiction"...

I'm no stranger to sci-fi fans - my old housemate John was mad about Dr Who, my uncle Sean loves Star Trek and even I have been known to succumb to geekdom on the odd occasion.  Recently I was asked to make a birthday cake for a local man who loves science fiction and actually self publishes his own sci-fi books and podcasts (see his website djburnham.com).  Rather than make him a dalek or darth vader cake that could be for anyone, after chatting to his wife we decided that his birthday cake should be a recreation of his own books and an ipod playing his podcast.  I really got a kick out of this idea as it was so personal to him, and I hoped he would really be touched by seeing his own books as the design.
   

  
I had originally planned to make two separate cakes for the books, until I was struck with the genius idea of making just one large cake and cutting it in two (see Dad - I didn't go to university for nothing).  My recipe makes a 3" tall cake, but to make the books look more realistic I didn't want them to be that high, so I used the recipe for an 11" cake in a 12" tin and it turned out at a perfect height.
  
I levelled and filled the cake and then cut into two, placing one on a separate board cut to size and the other on the large cake board.  Each cake then had to be carved slightly on one side to create the curved edge of a hardback book (20 minutes in the freezer to firm the cake up makes this job much easier).  I then covered each book in buttercream and smoothed off nicely:
  

  
If I wanted to make my life easy, I would have simply covered the whole of the top and sides with black sugarpaste, but anyone who has tried it knows that the huge amount of colouring that goes into making it that black is not the nicest to eat (incidentally, I have found that black Beau paste is much nicer than Regalice).  So, I resolved to work in some chocolate sugarpaste with a little extra food colouring as this improves the flavour, and I also used black only around the edges of the cake so there was as little as possible on the cake.
  
I started with the spine, then added a tiny strip all around the bottom of the cake to look like the back cover.  I created long strips of white sugarpaste which I scored with my favourite sugarcrafting tool - my pizza slice (it's soooo handy for cutting long straight lines or used to trim sugarpaste when covering cakes as it doesn't pull the icing like a knife does).  I then added these strips round the edges to look like the pages of the book (not that you can really see from my photo, sorry):
 

 
Then to cover the top, I used white sugarpaste in the middle and strips of black round the edge.  It was important to get the joins very neat and the top as flat as possible so that the image went on top nicely.
 

 
To make the ipod I simply made a rectangle of marzipan and covered it with white sugarpaste.  I added edible images which I made up specially to show the Ad Astral podcast and a happy birthday message.
 

 
The finishing touches were to dowel the lower cake so that it could take the weight of the upper cake and add the ipod earphones made out of white sugarpaste.  I added the upper tier which I secured with some edible glue to stop it moving in transit on the way to the party.
 

  
I'm very pleased with how it turned out - it's a really bold design that's also really personal.  Dave's wife emailed me specially after the party to say how much he loved it and how delicious it was too.  It always touches me when people take the time to say thank you and let me know how the cake went - when you work on your own it's great to have such lovely feedback and to know that something you have made has made other people happy.

Mighty Mo - monkey street art birthday cake for David

I don't know why January has a reputation for being boring, miserable and staying indoors - last Saturday Melissa and I were back up in the big smoke for our third London party in as many weeks.  Our good friend David turned 40, and to celebrate he invited his friends and family and threw a lavish party with a film screening and a slap up 3 course meal in a top London hotel - he really spoiled us all.

A few of us clubbed together to get David something really nice, and part of the gift was a Brighton Bakery birthday cake (I happen to know the owner there so can get a good discount haha).  David really loves monkeys and I toyed with the idea of creating a carved cake in the shape of a monkey - that would have been pretty cool, but if it went wrong it could have looked a bit...special.  David collects and is a big fan of street art and I thought I could make a cake in the shape of a brick wall with a Banksy style image on it, but that idea still didn't seem quite right.  Then Melissa told me that David really liked a particular graffiti artist called Mighty Mo who paints his iconic monkey across London, and he'd recently bought one of his prints.  This was the perfect image for David's cake, and along with a cheeky message this would be something he would really like.

 
Back before Christmas I made a vodka bottle cake and used a local company who print edible images onto sugarpaste to print the label.  It turned out really well, so I thought I would use the same technique for this cake.  I never did a post for the vodka cake so here's the picture:

I'd made the trip all the way over to Seaford to get the image so I had to make sure the cake was good as I didn't have a back up.  I started with an 8" square cake which I cut and reshaped into a rectangle and covered with orange brick coloured sugarpaste.  I used my handy brick texturing tool to create the brickwork effect and then used a dry brush with some red colouring dust on top to create a bit more texture.   The cake was then ready to add the edible image.
 
The image itself is on very thin sugarpaste which is very fragile and can be quite tricky to work with - once it's stuck you can't move it so you have to get it right first time.  Here are my top tips:
1. Trim around the edge of the image on a flat surface using a cutting wheel, making sure you have a clean cut through the paste all the way around - you'll find you don't need to press too hard as it's very fine sugarpaste.
2. Put the image still with its backing into the freezer for exactly 90 seconds.  This makes the image stiff so that the backing peels off easily.
3. While the image is freezing, dampen the area of the cake where your image is going to go with some moistened kitchen towel to make it tacky so that the image sticks.
4. Take your frozen image from the freezer after 90 seconds and quickly peel off the backing and set in place. Smooth gently with the side of your hands moving from the centre outwards to remove any air bubbles.  By the time it is in place the image will have defrosted and gone soft again so be confident and work quickly.

I had planned to take plenty of pictures but our camera had run out of battery and I felt completely foolish.  Luckily our good friend Jo had her camera at the party and has kindly allowed me to use her picture of the cake:

Thanks Jo!

I hear that David took the cake leftovers into work last week and it was all eaten up, and that's always lovely to hear.

David - happy 40th birthday, thanks again for inviting us to your party we had a fantastic time and so pleased you loved the cake.