Sewing cake for a crafty bird

Sometimes I think the best cakes are those with lots of details - often it's not the intricacy of each item but having lots of simple details really makes a big impact.  This cake I made for my very good friend Laura I think illustrates this really well:

As you may be able to tell from the theme of this cake, Laura loves making crafty things, particularly bold and striking cushions - take a look at her blog Always Have A Plan B to see some of the beautiful creations she makes.  When her boyfriend Slim asked me to make her 30th birthday cake, we both knew that there had to be some kind of crafty element involved.  I also had to make part of the cake cake gluten free so I suggested a cushion and a gluten free sewing box and Slim agreed it sounded like a great idea.  He sent me some pictures of the cushions she has made but we agreed that rather than copying one exactly, it would be nice to do one in her style.  I was placing an order for some edible butterflies (incidentally for Laura's mum's 60th birthday cake a couple of weeks before) and I saw these edible mexican skulls.  As soon as I saw them I knew I had to find a way of using them in a cake.  I sent the link over to Slim and he said it was just like some material Laura had used in one of her crafty projects as I added them to the order and waited patiently for them to arrive from America.

To carve the cake I followed a tutorial on Cake Central.  I started with a 10" chocolate and Baileys cake which I cut into just two layers and filled with Baileys buttercream - this would give me a handy guide for the halfway point when carving the cake.  The first step was to mark the cake with cocktail sticks one inch in on each side:

This gives you a guide to score a curved line to mark the basic shape:

Then using a large serrated knife held vertically, cut out the curved edge:

From this basic shape I used a serrated knife again to carve the edges to make nice domed top.  Then, carefully flipped the cake over and carved the other side to give a cushion shape:

I was surprised how much smaller the cake ended up once it was carved - if in doubt, start with a bigger cake than you think you need.

Once I was happy with the shape, I covered the top of the cake with a layer of buttercream and covered this with teal coloured sugarpaste and trimmed to the half way mark round the edge- this would be the underside of the cake:

I then carefully turned the cake over again and covered the rest of the cake with a layer of buttercream and the pale yellow coloured sugarpaste for the top:

Using the line of the teal sugarpaste underneath as a guide I trimmed the edges to match and eased together to make a neat join.  I could have used a thin sausage of sugarpaste around the sides to look like piping but that's not Laura's style so it was slightly trickier to make the join clean but it just needed a little patience.

Then to finish the cake, I brushed over the top with pearl lustre dust (anyone that knows Laura knows I had to get some glitter in somewhere!).  I also added a strip of teal sugarpaste which I went over with a quilting tool to look like the stitched hem of the opening for the cushion.  The final touch was to add the skulls using a very thin brushing of edible glue:

Once it was finished I added it to my custom made board:

Next I turned my attentions to the sewing box.  This was a 6" gluten free chocolate and Baileys cake which I cut into two to make the box and lid.  I put the lid on a separate board and covered it to look like a pin cushion top.  I made a ridge round the edge of the box from marzipan and covered this with chocolate sugarpaste to make it look like the inside of the box for the cotton reels to sit in.  I covered the sides with teal sugarpaste and some edible butterflies for decoration:

Then to bring everything together I made lots of cotton reels and buttons to fill the box.  The cotton reels were very straightforward, made from fat sausages of sugarpast that I rolled a knife around to score a pattern to look like thread, then ends were added on using edible glue and short lengths of dried spaghetti.  To make them look like they were inside the box I cut them at an angle before sticking on to the middle of the box.  I rolled a long length of white sugarpaste and drew on numbers and rules to make the measuring tape.  My favourite bit of the whole cake was the scissors that I modelled on my mum's old dressmaking shears - I think they turned out really nicely and looked quite realistic.

The cake a was brought out as a suprise at Laura's birthday barbecue bash and she really liked it.  So often when I make a cake I never get to see the reaction of the person I've made it for and it made my day.  Plus I got to have a slice too, another bonus! 

Chocolate Thank You Cake

This Tuesday I really felt like we made it.  The first official day as Brighton Bakery.  The reason being that we had our first commission from someone we didn't know. 

When the phone rang, I was completely caught off guard, I didn't have any prices to hand, but I was so pleased to get the order I agreed to do it for less than I should have charged.  And to top it off, she needed the cake in just two days time.  I was due to be working in London on that day so I made it even harder on myself by saying I would deliver it on Wednesday evening instead.  I had my work cut out but I was determined to do it.

The cake was fairly simple - a 10 inch vanilla cake iced with chocolate buttercream, with a piped message and some handmade sugarpaste roses.  I prefer to cover cakes with sugarpaste rather than buttercream as it gives a better finish, but as they say the customer is always right so I had my first brief to work to.  Just a quick trip to the shops to buy the ingredients and I was good to go.

I used my trusty madeira cake recipe and enhanced the flavour by substituting a tablespoon of the milk for vanilla extract.  Luckily I still had time to make this and leave it overnight to settle ready for filling and icing.

The following morning I started off by making roses out of red modelling paste (I'll do another blog soon showing how I make these):

Annoyingly, I didn't have a tried and tested chocolate buttercream recipe and didn't feel like the one in my book that uses cocoa powder would produce a high enough quality flavour.  I found one on the internet that had rave reviews, but as it contained raw egg I didn't want to risk it.  The one I plumped for was a traditional buttercream with a generous helping of chocolate ganache mixed through.  Delicious.

As with most of my cakes, I levelled the top, then flipped it over and secured it to the cake board with a smear of buttercream.  I was feeling brave and cut it horizontally into 3 even layers and smothered each with the luscious buttercream as I rebuilt the cake. I covered it with a thin 'crumb layer' of buttercream on the top and sides of the cake and put in the fridge to set.  This way, when I did the final layer of buttercream it wouldn't be spoilt by any stray crumbs.

I did the final layer of buttercream on the top and sides and did my very best to make it even, smoothing it out with a palette knife dipped in hot water.  It is so hard to get a good finish using buttercream (if anyone has any tips please let me know!) but I reached the point that I had to stop as I would start making it worse.  Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to get right - if it had a design on top it could have covered any slight mistakes.  But I was working to the customer's brief so I made it exactly how she had specified.  I finished off the cake with a piped pearl edge around the bottom:

After about half an hour of practising my piping technique I had the confidence to pipe the message with plain buttercream on top of the cake.  I then added my sugarpaste roses and the cake was done:

I delivered the cake just a couple of hours later and the customer seemed very pleased, which is all I can ask for.  Let's hope she tells all her friends and the orders start to roll in :o)

Mixing Desk Cake: The Making Of...

I've had such great feedback about the Mixing Desk Cake I made for my friend Dan that I thought I would share with you how I made it. For those that don't want to spoil the magic, look away now!

PS this is a longer post than normal so I recommend reading with a piece of cake and a cuppa :o)

Making The Cake

Dan's party was on Saturday night, so I began making the cake on the Thursday. I didn't have a cake tin big enough, so Melissa and I hopped in the car down to Chatawak, the lovely cake supplies shop in Peacehaven, where you can rent a 12" cake tin for a mere £1.50 per day. I've never made such a large cake before so I wanted to double check with the very helpful owner there as I'd also not tried the recipe before. I was starting to feeling a bit nervous at my inexperience before I'd even started, but I was still up for the challenge). My Home Guide To Cake Decorating has a madeira cake recipe for all cake sizes but for some reason the larger the cake, the smaller the proportion of eggs in the recipe. Also the proportions of self-raising flour and plain flour seemed to be the wrong way round so I asked Sue's advice. She checked against her recipes and said the amount of eggs seemed right but agreed there seemed to be a mistake with the flour and suggested I tried a small test cake swapping the quantities over.

So with added trepidation about the task ahead I went home and cooked a test cake with the tweaked flour quantities. This seemed to work well, but the cake was a little airier that I needed so I upped the proportion of plain flour against the self-raising flour when making the final mixture. I also added the zest of 5 lemons and substituted the milk for lemon juice for extra flavour (in hindsight when I tasted the cake the zest of 8 lemons would have been even zingier). And just to highlight how unprepared I was I didn't even have a mixing bowl big enough, so I mixed the cake in my large Le Crueset casserole pot instead!

When baking the cake I didn't want to take any chances, so I took extra care and double lined the tin with baking parchment and also wrapped the outside of the tin with a few layers of newspaper. To help the cake rise evenly I created a well in the middle of the mix - a tip I learned at pastry school.
As I put the cake in the oven I crossed my fingers, said a prayer to the cake god and hoped for the best. Just over 2 hours later, I was rewarded with a beautiful looking cake:

Cake just out of the oven

Scary moment number 1 - overcome!

I left the cake to cool in the tin on a wire rack, but while it was still warm I spiked it all over with a skewer and drizzled over a simple lemon syrup. I reserved a bit of the syrup to add between the layers. The cake was then left to settle overnight (wrapped and left in a cool dry place), which makes it easier to level and cut the layers the next day.

Cutting and Icing The Cake

Scary moment #2 was getting the cake out of the tin without it breaking. For this I decided to place the wire rack covered with baking paper on the top and flip it over. I then had to turn it the right way up again onto a large baking tray covered with foil. This procedure came with the added sound effects of Melissa screeching "Oh my god let me help you!" and similar panicked sounds but they seemed to help as it turned out without any problems.

Luckily the cake had risen pretty evenly so there wasn't much of a dome to level off (I think the well in the middle out really helped). I tried my cake leveller but with such a large cake it was about as much use as a chocolate teapot so I got out my big serrated knife instead which was much better:

Levelling the cake

I then needed to turn it upside down again so that the smoothest edge was on the top. I decided to put it straight onto the final board at this stage, secured with a good smearing of buttercream in the middle. I added strips of baking parchment around the sides of the cake to protect the board from being marked.

Time for scary moment #3 - cutting the layers. I really wanted to cut the cake into 3 layers but this was quite risky with this size of cake. Having gotten so far without anything going wrong I wimped out and just went for 2 layers. I scored around the edges to make sure it was even, then cut through with my serrated knife, working towards the middle.  

Cutting the layers

I got Melissa to cross her fingers for scary moment #4 - lifting the top layer off onto baking parchment. The trick is to be confident, and with the luck of the Irish I managed to get the layer off fine.
I brushed the exposed layer with the reserved lemon syrup for extra flavour and moistness, then smoothed on lemon curd buttercream:

Adding buttercream

Scary moment #5 - lifting the top layer back on and into position. I was on a roll with pushing through the nerve barriers on my last 4 scary moments, but if the top layer went on wonky it would have been difficult to fix so I really wanted to get this right. Luckily it magically (or should I say skilfully) sat down exactly square on top of the bottom layer.

Adding the top layer of cake

At this stage I was thankful I'd only done 2 layers insted of 3!

I then covered the outside of the cake with a thin layer of lemon curd buttercream and tried to make it as smooth as possible. 

Adding buttercream to top & sides of cake

Once the cake was fully iced with the buttercream I left it to the side and coloured the sugarpaste. I used White Renshaw Regalice sugarpaste and added Sugarflair liquorice colouring.

Coloured sugarpaste

I then rolled out the sugarpaste ready for covering the cake using plenty of icing sugar to stop it sticking. I also used the smoother over the paste while it was still on the board. What I hadn't taken into consideration though, was that the paste would end up being longer than my rolling pin (and my pin is pretty long) so this made my final scary moment #6 ever more nervewracking. I called Melissa for some moral support and we both held our breath as I folded the paste over the rolling pin and lifted it onto the cake. Luckily it went on and didn't leave any marks on the side from the pin:

Cake covered with sugarpaste

I then used smoothers over the top and sides of the cake and trimmed away the excess. I worked a little more at the edges to create a sharper line.

Smoothing the sugarpaste

To make the cake look more realistic as a mixing desk I brushed on some metallic lustre dust (I used Metallic Light Silver from The Edible Silk Range by Rainbow Dust).

Brushing on silver lustre

I then left the cake overnight for the sugarpaste to dry out before adding the buttons the next day.

Making The Decorations

Time for the fun bit!

Using the excess grey sugarpaste leftover from icing the cake, I worked in a little gum tragacanth to add strength. I created one knob to use as a template, and when I was happy with the size I rolled out sausages of paste and cut them evenly, using the template as a guide.

Cutting the mixing desk knobs

I then used the back of a paring knife to create the ridges down the side:

Creating the ridges

Then repeated the process over and over until I had enough. I needed 38 but made a few extra just in case there were any casulaties :o)  
I also created the sliders using black sugarpaste, again rolling a sausage and cutting even pieces, then shaping using the little knife again. I made 7 in black and 4 in grey, plus one black knob using the same method as before.

Shaping sliders

I rolled out more black sugarpaste for the small black buttons and the black plugs for the top plus a rectangle for the LED display. For the black buttons I simply cut 4 thin horizontal strips and cut again vertically to make 32. For the 6 black plugs I cut the paste using a large piping nozzle and marked the inner circle with a smaller nozzle and added 3 dots to each. I made the red and white component cables by securing liquorice inside red and white tapered sausage shapes and marking small lines with a paring knife at the top.

Finally I made 12 small grey jack plugs and 4 slightly larger grey plugs (to fit the red and white component cables) which I painted using the silver lustre mixed with a little gin (mmm - any excuse). Unfortunately I don't have a picture but here they all are on the finished cake:

Elements for top of cake

I then poured myself a well earned glass of wine as all the sugarpaste decorations needed to be left overnight to firm up.

Decorating The Cake

This was the morning of the party and said another prayer to the cake god as there was no time left to bake another one now.

I made up a batch of royal icing and several piping cornets out of silicone paper. I always forget how long it takes to do royal icing, especially when you need several different colours (I used white, red, blue, black, grey and green).

I piped the colours on to the top of the knobs (8 white, 12 red, 12 blue and 6 black) and left to dry before adding a thin line of grey on top to make the dial. The sliders all had a white line piped down the middle. Two of the four component plugs needed royal icing in the centre (1 red 1 white). I also piped the LED display with a grey bar and a red number 40 (as it's Dan's 40th birthday).

Then for the most exciting bit of the whole cake - adding all the decorations and making it come to life!

I used grey royal icing to secure all the elements (that way if any did show underneath it wouldn't be too noticeable). I started at the top with the plugs and then used a pen with edible ink to draw on the model number box. I had based this on Dan's actual mixing desk so I kept the same brand name, but made up the model number to be personalised for him.

Edible ink pen - my new toy

I then worked across from the left, spacing things as I went before securing with royal icing so that I didn't go wonky. I scored lines with a knife and added the text before sticking down the sliders.

Assembling the final elements

Adding the knobs

Once all the elements were stuck down with royal icing, all that was left was to pipe the red, green and one black dots to the right of the cake and I was done. 

Time to stand back and admire my handiwork:

Final Mixing Desk Cake

Mixing desk - profile

I nearly forgot scary moment #7 - transporting the cake over 70 miles by taxi, train, bus and foot to the party in Soho without it getting damaged.   Next time I would really only ever deliver by car - taking it on a London bus can be treacherous but walking about a mile with a cake that is much heavier than you would think in a 16" box is no mean feat.

And scary moment #8 - was Dan going to like it?

Well this was really the best moment of all - he loved it.  It went down really well and everyone in the room was watching as I carried it in. Plus it tasted good - what more could I have asked for?  All in all I was really pleased it had all gone so well.

Bring on the next one!

A whole new world - Brighton's Sugarcraft Exhibition

Last Saturday it just so happened that round the corner from our house, Brighton Racecourse was hosting a sugarcraft exhibition.  I had seen the event advertised in Peacehaven's lovely cake supplies shop Chatawak a couple of weeks ago and decided that it was an opportunity I shouldn't pass up. 
We had some friends coming round for lunch (Melissa reassured me that she wasn't missing out on coming along with me) so I made sure I was there when it opened up at 10am.  I had forgotten how unforgiving Brighton hills are on the walk up, and hoped that this was going to be worth the £5 ticket fee and my now perspiring brow.   Well if the queue at the gate was anything to go by then this was a bigger deal than I had originally thought:

I listened to other people in the queue lining up the demontrations they were going to - "Oh I've done Ruby Buffong's sweet peas before" was my favourite one - they were all so clued up on all the techniques and who the speakers were I felt like a real novice, and ever so slightly scared.  It was like I was about to enter the bizarre underground world of the cult of cake decoraters...

I'm not sure what I expected from the exhibition - maybe a few cakes on display, local shops and cake decorators with stalls showing their creations, maybe some samples to try, some things to buy.  Well cute little old ladies serving lemon drizzle with a cup of tea this was not.  There were industrial amounts of sugarpaste icing on for sale in flavours ranging from vanilla to marshmallow to chocolate and in every colour of the rainbow.  There were pots of coloured powders that stretched across tables several metres long and a metre deep in every kind of sparkle and lustre and hue that you could ever want or need.  There were cutters and tools, wires and flower stamens, icing pattenmakers, ribbons, cakeboards, decorating books, modelling designs - it was really overwhelming. 

And that's not even mentioning the displays.  Well I don't even think they were cakes, let alone was any of it designed to be eaten.  There were 20 or so displays measuring about 2 metres wide by 1 metre deep and 1 metre tall all with the theme of childrens books.  Here are a couple of them:

My favourite one was of two scenes from Brambley Hedge but unfortunately my photo of that one didn't come out.  I spoke to one of the ladies that made it - they made 120 mice figures of which they used 92 - a team of 22 had been working since January to make the display.  Madness.

Earlier this week I had felt pretty chuffed with myself for a wedding cake I had decorated that had some frangipani flowers that I had made from sugarpaste (photos to follow soon).  I felt like I may as well have made them out of playdough when I saw things like this:

I did pick up a couple of tips while I was there - using cocktail sticks and pipe cleaners to stabilise sugarpaste figures; how to shape a lily and colour it so that it looks natural using powder colours and a paintbrush; and realising that loads of people cheat and use moulds to create decorations for their cakes.  I might well invest in some - people will think my skills are so impressive :o) 

I'm really pleased I went, and maybe next time I will pay the extra to go to one of the demonstrations because sometimes it's not that easy trying to learn from a book.  I also picked up one of the powders which I will try for the first time this week to colour icing (I've only ever used coulouring pastes before), some pretty polkadot ribbon and a fine paintbrush which will be good for detailed work, plus I've got heaps of postcards with good websites to try for decorating supplies.

On my way back home I called Melissa to tell her how it went.  She asked if maybe I would like to enter the competition or have a stall when it comes back next time.  I had to laugh :o)