I often find it a little difficult when asked if I can make a cake for a male. It seems to be quite a challenge coming up with a general theme, and trying to make the cake look 'manly' ! It is far easier when decorating cakes for girls as the possibilities are endless- hearts, flowers, butterflies etc!

I usually try and find out about the persons' personality, hobbies and interests before deciding on a design, but again this isn't always an easy task! Luckily, this time I was given quite clear instructions, and I was able to design the following two cakes (fairly!) easily.

The first was a 60th birthday cake for the dad of a friend of mine. She told me that he supports Burnley football team and so I painted the team logo onto an icing plaque using food colouring, which was placed in the centre of the cake. To stick with the theme, I used the team colours to cut out lots of '60s' from icing to decorate the top and sides.


My second cake was a 'Thank you' cake for a man named Pete, who apparently likes old steam trains, singing, and growing fushias with his wife! I managed to get all three of these themes onto the cake by painting a steam train and flowers on the top, and decorating the sides of the cake with musical notes. Using food colour pastes and powders to paint on cakes is a great method when you need to do an intricate design.

Now this is definitely one of my top five favourite cakes. Three layers of deliciously moist coffee flavoured sponge, studded with walnut pieces and soaked in a dark coffee syrup. I make this cake now and again for a local health clubs' cafe (ironic, I know) but this week I decided to make it for my Dad's birthday so that me and my family could all indulge in a few slices!


I normally layer the cake with a coffee butter icing, but as this is rather sweet I decided instead to make a coffee custard buttercream (unfortunately my family don't like sugar as much as I do!). This is essentially a custard, with butter beaten into the mixture once cool to make a smooth and spreadable icing. This was quite a risky icing to make, as there is a chance that the mixture could curdle once the butter is added. Luckily, I didn't have any problems and was very happy with the finished result! It was lovely and light with a good coffee flavour and teamed perfectly with the coffee sponge.


Despite this, I am in two minds about the icing. As much as I like the smooth and creamy light texture it has, the flavour is slightly too buttery and not quite sweet enough for me. I think butter icing is still my firm favourite (I can literally eat the stuff with a spoon).
Anyway, the cake went down well with all (even my sister who doesn't like coffee or walnuts!) and there is only a small chunk left.
Gosh I love birthdays- why? - CAKE

As many of you may already know, I am a huge Disney fan so I was thrilled to have made and decorated two Disney themed birthday cakes this month.

The first was based on Cars, an animated Disney Pixar film, which features-believe it or not, human-like talking cars ! The cake I made was designed for a young boy called Kai, who just turned two years old. This was a really interesting cake to make as it consisted of three tiers, each with a completely different design. The first tier I made to look like a car tyre by using black icing and marking out a tyre design using a knife. I was unsure as to how realistic this would look but it turned out a lot better than I originally thought and was actually the easiest tier to make!


The next tier was designed to look like a racing flag, which I did by cutting out black squares of icing and arranging them on the cake in a chequered pattern. Fairly easy but time consuming- no surprise there! I also made the Cars logo out of icing to put on the front of this cake, but instead of icing 'Cars' on the front I iced 'Kai' - clever huh (!)

Finally, for the top tier I decided to go for a sort of american desert-type scene to tie in with the theme of the film. As you can see, I added little cacti, mountains and even a 'Route 66' sign, which I think is kinda cool :)


Now of course the cake wouldn't be complete without a mini Lightning Mcqueen (one of the main Cars characters for those of you who don't know) made out of icing. I can honestly say that this was probably the most difficult character I have modelled out of icing but I got there eventually and it doesn't look all that bad!

I was really happy with how the whole cake came together once stacked- it was nice to see that my hard work paid off!

So from one Disney cake to the next....

This one was for a young girl Hollie who is also a huge Disney fan like myself but she has a particular fondness for the character Tinkerbell.

After much pondering, I came to the conclusion that Tinkerbell would be best made as a 2D image on the cake, rather than a 3D model. As much as I would have liked to make a 3D Tinkerbell, I thought it would be too difficult to get all her features perfect and unfortunately I just don't have all the tools/equipment to make such a detailed character (however that is not to say I will never give this a go!)

Now and again I am asked to make a birthday cake or other type of celebration cake with only a couple of days notice. This is always a bit of a challenge as I have to make a decision as to how to decorate the cake rather quickly! I usually ask the customer for ideas, for example themes and colours that I could use, and then go from there. A couple of weeks back I made a few birthday cakes for three different people, and this is how they turned out!

This first cake was actually based on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury festival. I've never actually been to Glastonbury but I was given a postcard from the event which had the image of a rainbow in a pyramid shape on the front. It was also suggested to me that I put a few stars on the cake so I decided to do a shooting star over the rainbow.

I think my sister has had a constant supply of cake in the past few months due to the fact that she had a three tier birthday cake to get through and because I have made cakes for her boyfriend Rabbi and one of her flatmates Laura. Today it is Chandni's birthday, one of Helen's other flatmates who she became close friends with in her first year of university.

Helen told me that the chocolate tier of her birthday cake disappeared the quickest, so this is the cake we decided on for Chandni. I used my favourite rich chocolate cake recipe which my mum has always used for birthdays, but instead of doing the usual chocolate fudge icing I made buttercream instead. Buttercream is a cooked icing with a meringue like texture, quite different to butter icing. I first made chocolate buttercream a few weeks ago and realised how wondeful it is! I find that it is lighter and less sweet than butter icing, but still extremely indulgent.


I think the buttercream gives a lovely shiny finish to the cake, and makes it look oh so tempting! As you can see, I had some leftover icing cocktail glasses from Nikki's cake so I used these to put around the edge (Chand loves cocktails!).

There have been a few birthdays this year, including my sister ofcourse, and I've felt really privelidged to be making cakes for such special people in my life.

Okay, so you're probably wondering why I've been a bad girl? Well, it's fairly obvious really...I've not updated my blog quite a while (as you may have noticed!). However, that isn't to say I haven't been baking. Quite the opposite really. I've been very busy baking, cake decorating, and trying to fit in a little college work inbetween (eek!). I was planning to wait until college was over until I made my next blog post, but tonight I decided that would be far too long, and that I would get straight to work on a new update. So here it is! As I have made quite a lot of sweets and treats in the past few months, I thought I would share a few of the best with you.

Last week we celebrated a special occasion, as my (not so) little sister Helen turned 21 years of age. With help from my sisters boyfriend Rabbi, me and my parents organised a suprise jungle themed party for Helen last Saturday, which, luckily we managed to keep a suprise until the big night! The party was a success and everybody seemed to have a brilliant time.

I put myself in charge of the sweets and cake (not suprisingly) and created a birthday cake that tied in with the jungle theme. I'd actually been planning this cake for a long time as last year, I said to myself that Helen's 21st birthday cake would be the best cake I've ever made! I really wanted to live up to my own expectations...

The finished cake consisted of three tiers made from different types of sponge: fruit cake, chocolate cake and victoria sandwich. The best three types of cake in my opinion! I decorated the cakes in animal print designs and made jungle animals out of marzipan (I also sneaked in a Tigger, did you notice?)

Everybody was certainly very impressed with the cake (including Helen) and although it took a lot of work, I felt a great sense of achievement once the finished piece was put together- the hard work always pays off in the end- especially when you eat the first slice!
I managed to get a few close up shots of the marzipan animals as I think they are kinda cute. What do you think?