As mentioned in my 'About Me' section the first thing I ever really baked (that wasn't a school project or under some form of supervision or instruction) was a cake for a Leverage premiere party. I happened to have a box of Betty Crocker Devil's Food Cake mix in my house so I ran out to the supermarket to buy frosting and decorating supplies. I made a stencil of the show's logo (using the printer and photocopier in the office to print it out, then used greaseproof paper to trace it and a scalpel to cut it out) and used some blue ready made icing in a tube to do the lettering. I had also bought edible lustre spray to highlight the logo. Basically, this is how it turned out:
It looks a bit messy between the V and the R but for a first attempt at something like this I was happy with the result.
The next cake I was asked to make was one for my mom for Halloween. She had bought a silicone cake mould last time she had been visiting family in Vancouver and wanted me to bake and decorate the cake. By this stage I still didn't own any proper decorating supplies so I had to buy liquid food colouring from the supermarket. I don't really recommend liquid food colouring, unless you're making red velvet cupcakes, simply because if you use too much the frosting can taste very bitter and can make it runnier than normal too. I learned that from making this cake because the store was all out of orange food colouring so I had to buy yellow and red and make it myself. The end result however really did look the part.
I used edible glitter to add finishing touches to it, the green around the top and the glowing effect in the eyes, nose and mouth.
The following February was my godson's first birthday and I was asked to make the cake. This was the first time I didn't use a boxed cake mix (sorry Betty Crocker!) Instead I used the Brooklyn Blackout recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. I purchased a teddy bear shaped tin and gave it my best shot.
Henry (as he was so named) was finished off at around 2 o'clock in the morning. It was my first real attempt at piping frosting onto a cake. His eyes are white chocolate buttons, the nose milk chocolate button and the mouth was made from liquorice.
Shortly after that in March I decided to make a birthday cake for my good friend. This particular friend is a big country and western fan so I decided to go for a cowgirl theme on the cake. I managed to find a good image on Google to use as a template and again used greaseproof paper to create a stencil. The cake was Devil's Food Cake made from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook, as was the chocolate buttercream frosting. I made an extra batch of vanilla buttercream and coloured it to look like rope. After watching an instructional video on Youtube of how to pipe rope I went about it. The cowgirls were done with the edible lustre spray and have blue sugar stars as well. The end result:
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