Christening cake

I have just finished my first christening cake and, even better, someone is going to pay me for it! I played around with various ideas from a teddy bears' picnic to a train on a track and settled on some toy toppers - a teddy bear, a train and some building blocks. The colour theme was blue and purple on white. I used purple to add some contrast so that it wasn't too wishy-washy with just pale blue.

I made the teddy in the same way as for my recent teddy bears' picnic cupcakes, but instead of flower paws I added purple stars to coordinate him with the other toppers.

The train proved a little harder - I really wasn't happy with my first attempt but then found a great shape thanks to The Cake Journal. The only thing I changed was using fondant buttons for the wheels (the client really liked this detail)

The building blocks were much harder. I started off making them too big and had to cut them right down in size. It was hard to get a cube shape but I persevered using my cake smoother and the flat surface of the work mat until they looked reasonable. It was also quite hard getting them all the same size. I have some letter embossers so used these to add some detail. If I was to do these again, I would decide on the arrangement of the blocks first and then imprint the letters as I found that, since I randomly imprinted the letters, they weren't facing the right way once put together. I was able to cover this "mistake" by making one side of each block purple and adding a blue star. This also helped coordinate the blocks with the other toppers so it worked out okay in the end.

I finished off the toppers with some lustre. I mixed snowflake lustre dust with a little bit of vodka and painted it onto the purple and black elements of the toppers. Doing it this way makes the lustre more intense than just brushing the dust onto the fondant. The vodka evaporates which means the fondant doesn't get soggy.

The cake was a 9.5" victoria sponge with lemon zest and lemon buttercream. My two tins were slightly mismatched so I had to do a little cutting to balance the outer edges of the two layers and a little levelling on the tops of the sponges to make the cake flat. My last decorated sponge had a middle bulge showing through the fondant icing but with research I realised that the buttercream had been too soft so this time I made the buttercream reasonably firm for the middle and then softened it with more lemon juice to dirty coat the sides and top (dirty coat is a thin layer of buttercream that "traps" the crumbs). I put the cake in the fridge while I did the school pickup and later added a thicker layer of buttercream to the top and sides (no crumbs to fight with on this layer!) and then covered the cake in white fondant.

The cake was placed off-centre on a board so the name could be placed at the front of the board. I had covered this with white fondant last week (to allow it to harden so that it didn't mark when the cake was put on) and glued a blue ribbon to the edge of the cake board.

I recently watched a tutorial on YouTube where the person used a pastry/pizza cutter to trim the excess fondant so I thought I'd give this a go. I can see with some practice that this will work very well and for a first attempt it wasn't too bad - just a little high in a couple of places. I covered these slight uneven edges with a blue fondant ribbon.

The fondant ribbon was hard to do. I bought a Wilton ribbon cutter when I was in the States recently and I think it will take a bit of practice for this too. The "cutters" don't cut as cleanly as I would like but overall it gives a nice effect. The only really hard thing was rolling a piece of fondant long enough to go round the whole cake in one piece and keeping a consistent thickness along the length. It took about three attempts but I got there ...

Finally, to finish the cake I added the little boy's name. I used this as an excuse to buy some letter cutters. Again these are going to take some practice but I think that they turned out well. They are slightly bigger than I was expecting but I think they look good on this cake.

All that is left to do now for the Christening is to make some cupcakes with blue and purple buttercream swirls.

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Teddy bears' picnic

Our road had it's first street party on Saturday and there was a cake competition. I wasn't planning to enter as we only got back from holiday on the Saturday before but Jason kept telling me I should and on Wednesday night I had a flash of inspiration as to what I could do and went for it.

I made a teddy bears' picnic on cupcakes, so each cupcake made up a part of the whole "picture'. I decided to colour theme it red, white and blue as I had these colours already (and added a purple rug and green grass) and overall it came out really well. The only thing to let me down were the cupcakes themselves.

I haven't made enough cupcakes to find a recipe I like so I opted for one from a cupcake book I was given and it was far too dry. I slightly overcooked the outer cupcakes which didn't help so the ones the competition judges tasted were far from the best. Shame to say I didn't win but rightly so, if I'm honest. Something to work on for next year's cake!

I started with the fondant bears and then made the strawberry cake, plates and cups. The cups were very hard and next time (!) I will try adding some Tylose/CMC powder to strengthen the fondant and make it easier to work with when modelling the paste. I decided the plates needed some food on so I made a little jam sandwich by rolling two thin layers of beige fondant and one layer red then sandwiching them together and cutting out triangles. I made a banana, orange and apple and used a little bit of red liquid food colouring with a paint brush to add some colour to the apple and some shading to the banana. I also filled the tea cups with some silver sparkly Barbie writing icing.

I made a big purple picnic mat which I embossed with a flower pattern mat and then cut out circles for each of the cupcakes. I piped grass on the outer cupcakes using my grass piping nozzle (note to self: when using up "old" buttercream make sure it doesn't have lemon zest in as it doesn't go through the nozzle!) and then finished off the whole scene with some toadstools, flowers and obligatory lustre dust and sparkle!

PS. Can you tell that the red teddy was my favourite?

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Jelly Belly jelly bean rainbow cake

My husband is addicted to Jelly Belly jelly beans so this year I decided to make him a gluten free jelly bean birthday cake.

I found a gluten free cake mix in the local supermarket which I decided to try and it was amazingly easy, although sadly didn't taste as good as I had hoped. I got two packets and made three 6" sponges and six cupcakes. I cut up a random selection of Jelly Belly bean Belly Flops and put these into two of the sponges, creating a jelly bean confetti cake (lots of recipes for this on the web).

The confetti layers sandwiched a plain layer and all were fixed together with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream. I then coloured some buttercream green for the sides of the cake and some blue for the top. My daughter and I then sorted out a selection of beans the colours of the rainbow and created a rainbow on the top of the cake. Random beans and a jelly bean flower were stuck to the sides of the cake. 

I topped the cupcakes with Betty Crocker chocolate fudge icing and a "sprinkling" of jelly beans.

I even managed to hide the cake from hubby until his birthday and, needless to say, neither the cake or the cupcakes lasted long!

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Handbag-tastic cake

It's my wonderful mother's 70th birthday on Monday, and as she is the one who always helps me with my children's fabulous birthday cakes I felt a home-made special cake was in order.

It was very hard to decide on the design but after playing around with a few ideas I finally settled on a handbag-tastic cake (inspired by a little cake I spotted in Harrods last year).

I covered a large cake board with fondant which I coloured a slightly dusky pink and put a green ribbon around the edge (I had this already). I made the cake triple layer to make it bit more substantial without being huge and covered this with lemon buttercream and white fondant.

I made a selection of handbags, creating five very different bags. The colour theme turned out to be pink, green and purple, mostly dictated by the colours of fondant I already had and the new pink I had coloured up. I think it works well. I used some icing nozzles to pattern some of the bags (the "knitted" bag and the circles on the clutch bag). I also used a new embossing mat for the flowers on the big pink bag, and a modelling tool for the stitching. I decorated some of the bags with cut-out fondant flowers, silver,pink and green edible balls and a fondant button (using a new mould I recently bought from Pretty Witty Cakes) and used my extruder to create a rope handle and a tiny tassel!

I decided I needed to "display" the bags on the cake so made some "marble" pillars to sit them on, mixing white with some of the pink fondant. The marble effect is created by rolling the fondant between the palms of your hand until you get the desired effect.

The buttercream was a little too soft and so the cake is a bit lumpy but I hope it adds to the charm! I decided to tidy the join of the cake to the cake board with a pink fondant rope. This was made using my extruder and the trefoil disc which creates a trefoil shape roll which then needs to be twisted to get the rope effect.

I decided to be kind and not mention 70 anywhere on the cake, so I have cut "Happy Special Birthday" in the three colours I used and added sparkle powder to them. I also moulded a selection of buttons in the three colours and glued them to the sides of the cake to add some interest.

Now we just have to get it to the restaurant on Monday and hope that she likes it!

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Easter eggs

I decided to make Easter eggs for family this year rather than buy them and found it all quite addictive.

Many, many years ago I collected coupons and sent off for some egg moulds which I rediscovered at the end of last year. I bought a selection of dark, milk and white chocolate and also some mini honeycomb and fudge pieces.

I wasn't technical in the making of the eggs (ie tempering the chocolate etc) as I worked on the principal that the eggs wouldn't be around long enough to "bloom". I melted the chocolate in the microwave and with a bit of practice I figured out how long to "zap" it for - several short bursts to the point where there were still some chocolate pieces that looked solid but with a bit of gentle shaking they collapsed into the melted chocolate.

I made a selection of all dark eggs (for dairy intolerant hubbie) and milk eggs for others. The fun bit was decorating the eggs. I made some mini piping bags from greaseproof paper and melted the white, milk and dark chocolate in the bags in the microwave. I then cut a small hole in the piping end and had fun making flowers, spots and just drizzling randomly across the eggs. When this had hardened I spooned in the contrasting chocolate for the egg and added either fudge or honeycomb pieces, both of which were delicious. When these had set I then melted a little more chocolate and stuck the two halves together to make the complete egg.

I was very pleased with how they came out ...

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Fairy birthday - the cakes

And so to the cake(s). My inspiration for the whole party was a fairy toadstool cake in my cake bible (Debbie Brown 50 Easy Party Cakes) The fairy toadstool in the book was very pink and I decided (and Sophie agreed) to do hers with a red top. I baked two madeira cakes in 2 litre pudding bowls and then carved them a little to give them a less rounded shape. I'm not a great fan of madeira cake, I much prefer a victoria sponge but for this I needed the denser cake so it would cook properly in the middle without burning.

I covered the cake board in green fondant on the day that I was making the cake which didn't give it time to dry out and harden. This meant that I kept catching it so I ended up covering a few of the worst marks with flowers and toadstools etc.

The base of the toadstool cake was covered in white fondant and the top in red. I had to carve quite a lot off the top cake to give a more toadstool type appearance, which meant that it was much smaller by the end. It was very tricky to wrap the red around the top and tuck it under but with my cake-making accomplice (my mum) it turned out reasonably smooth and only a few folds along the bottom curve (which didn't look out of place for a toadstool). I added white spots in three different sizes and smoothed the edges of the circles with my finger to thin the fondant out once in place on the red top. Since the cake was going to be moved to the party venue, I fixed the top of the toadstool to the base by putting six wooden skewers into the bottom cake with a couple of centimetres sticking out the top and pushing the top cake onto these.

Then came the fun bit where I added a door, window and flowers to the toadstool and little toadstools, flowers candles and Tinkerbell to the board. I created a small hillock to stand the flower candles in and then piped "grass" in green butter icing around the hillock, back of the cake and toadstools. The grass also kept Tinkerbell in place and covered the blue base of the figurine. I had contemplated making a fondant Tinkerbell but my first attempt was so hideous that I quickly abandoned that idea!

I had been given some cupcake stands for my birthday last year and I wanted an opportunity to use these, so I also made some cupcakes. I made two types: a chocolate cupcake with piped buttercream grass and a little fondant toadstool; and a vanilla cupcake with a cream butter swirl and pair of Tinkerbell shoes. 

The toadstools were so simple to make - a ball of white fondant flattened on the bottom and slightly squared off to make the stalk, with a coloured ball shaped over my thumb into more of a cone shape, then tiny white balls flattened onto the top for the spots and top and bottom pushed together. If you work reasonably fast then the fondant stays soft enough to stick together and there's no need for sugar glue.

The Tinkerbell shoes were equally as easy. I rolled two sausages of green fondant, flattened the toe bit and then used a ball tool to "hollow" out the middle (by pressing it in three times and then rubbing backwards and forwards to smoothe). I then added small round balls of white on the front and placed the shoes in a V shape.

When I came to make the chocolate cupcakes I discovered I didn't have any the cocoa powder so I ended up using some of Sophie's milky way drinking powder. Not a good swap as the cakes didn't rise properly and burnt very quickly, although I did manage to salvage enough for the party.

This was my first real attempt at piping grass and the nozzle I bought was much finer than the one I'd tried on my cupcake workshop. It was a bit fiddly - too short and it didn't look like grass and too long and it just flopped over. By the end though I had figured out a technique of squeezing and wiggling the nozzle a little to start without lifting, which gave a good base and then lifting and stopping squeezing to get the perfect length grass - hard to describe and whether I'll get the technique again next time remains to be seen!

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Fairy birthday - the party

So the last few weeks were spent finalising the plans for Sophie's fifth birthday. I'd seen a cute fairy toadstool cake in my birthday cake bible (Debbie Brown's 50 Easy Party Cakes) and persuaded her to have a fairy themed party so that I could make the cake!

I found some lovely Disney Fairy invitations on family.com (which also has lots of pretty Disney fairy things to make) and edited them slightly. I then added glitter paint to the flowers and fairy wings.

We held it at the local community centre and it is a great space - big enough to lay the food table at one end, have craft tables at the other and space in the middle for the party games. In addition to balloons, I decorated the hall with some pink netting and crepe flowers tied into swathes.

I decided to keep to traditional party games: musical chairs (with a twist), pass-the-parcel, pin the butterfly on the flower and musical statues. I also set up activity tables to keep them occupied when they first arrived/ inbetween games: a craft (dragonfly peg magnets), fairy colouring and tattoo transfers.

Instead of using chairs, we played musical pillows to start. Each child had a pillow or cushion, then the pillows got taken away a few at a time and when the music stopped they had to all fit onto the remaining pillows. It ended up with all 18 children on one pillow which they all found funny.

We also played pin the butterfly on the flower. I had great fun painting a flower and adding a few fun bugs to it. I scanned a butterfly that Sophie had drawn and added a space to write their names on, then printed and cut out the image and finished with a square of double-sided sticky tape to the back ready to peel.

 

I was a bit concerned that I was being overly ambitious with the dragonfly peg magnet craft: a) it was a bit fiddly; b) I was letting them loose with my die-cutter; and c) would the boys like it; but I needn't have worried. I left my 16 year old niece in charge and almost everyone made one, with one of the boys making four! Details on how they made these to follow later ...

I decided to get green paper bags for the party bags (I don't like the flimsy plastic ones) and folded the top down and sealed with a label (Tinkerbell  for the girls and Terence for the boys and their names). The dragonflies they had made were then pegged to the top at the end of the party. The only downside of sealing the bags before the party was that I couldn't put the cake into the bags as they left. 

The whole party was a great success. I know how incredibly lucky I was to have hubbie running the games (he is a natural party entertainer!) and the help of both sets of grandparents, my sister and her two teenage children. And most importantly Sophie had a great time and there were no tears for the first time in five years!

© 2011 Nicola Noble