I've Been A Bad, Bad Blogger

I can't believe it's been so long since my last update!  I have had a load of projects since the last entry, it seems I know a lot of people who have friends and family celebrating birthdays etc between September and December!  November was crazy.  I also became shamelessly addicted to Cupcake Wars during my absence as well (and more specifically the very cute carpenter brothers on the show, haha).  I have tried out a bunch of crazy cupcake flavours from sweet potato to sharp cheddar (both of which were very tasty I might add).  Lastly, I have been trying to make a go of starting a cake decorating business!  Part time for now anyway, I still work my 9-5 every day but I'm trying to drum up some cake jobs on top of it (for the time being it's mostly co-workers or family and friends).

 

Anyways, I wanted to share some pictures of the projects I've had in the last few months.

 

 

 

Jungle themed cake and cupcakes for a 1st birthday.

 

 

Chanel handbag birthday cake for an expectant mother.

 

 

A cake inspired by the album artwork for Above & Beyond's album 'Group Therapy'.

 

 

 

Handbag cake with high heel shoe cupcakes.

 

 

Tea themed cake.

 

 

Monster High cake

 

 

 

Zombie Hello Kitty and skull cakes for Halloween





 

 

KFC drive thru cake (which was huge.  It was on a 24" square wooden cake board and was made up of 12 cakes inside).

 

GAA themed 18th birthday cake

 

Another Chanel handbag cake (these proved quite popular for me).

 

 

Christening cake

 

My third Chanel handbag cake

 



 Corset cake.

 

Optimus Prime cake.

 

 

In The Night Garden cake.

 

 

15th birthday cake.



                                   

 

And finally, Christmas cupcakes!

 

More projects due soon so I promise I'll share them as soon as I can.  Thanks for reading!

Here are a few more projects I have been getting up to in the last month or so...

Football jersey cake for an 18th birthday

Elmo cake for a 1st birthday

Race car cake for a 3rd birthday



I have a couple more cakes and cupcakes also planned for later this month so I'll post pictures when they are all done.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cake Projects Since the Last Post

I'm sorry I haven't posted an entry in so long, I did not abandon you!  I have been a busy lady doing cakes for birthdays and cupcakes and even my very first stall (and boy was that exhausting!!)

I'm just going to post the pictures of the projects I've done over the last month or so to give you an idea of what I've been up to (no pictures of the stall unfortunately, I was so tired on the day that I forgot to get some, so tired I even got the frosting on my testers mixed up, oops!!)

Anyways, first up was a JLS cake as designed by the birthday girl herself:

Then there was a Barcelona Football Club cake and I did themed cupcakes to go along with it:

I volunteer at a small movie theatre in Belfast as well and they recently had an event where the staff "hijacked" the screen and put on a movie of their choice.  The winner was the Joss Whedon film 'Serenity' so I whipped up some Serenity/ Firefly themed cupcakes for the staff who ended up having to work that night:

The most recent project I had was a One Direction birthday cake for a co-worker's granddaughter.  Instead of a fairly normal circle or square cake I was asked to make a One Direction t-shirt cake:

I hope you like the cakes, there are more to come this month like a Manchester United football shirt cake and an Elmo cake!  Next month is a race car and my friend's 30th birthday cake too.  Thanks for stopping by!

WWE Championship Belt Cake

I was asked by a co-worker to do a WWE themed cake for her son's 5th birthday.  I thought instead of a wrestling ring cake I would set myself a little challenge and attempt a WWE belt cake.

I printed a bunch of pictures off the internet and photocopied them and enlarged them so that I could make stencils for cutting out the details.  After that I just needed a can of gold lustre spray, some silver food paint and a load of black and white fondant (not to mention a couple of tubs of silver dragees!)

Here is the finished product!

More photos of it are on the facebook page.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake

It was my godson's second birthday this week and I was asked to make his cake.  Last year he got a 3D teddy bear cake (he was named Henry and we felt very bad about cutting into him when the time came, sorry little guy!).  So this year I turned to my good friend, Google image search to find inspiration for his cake.  He is a big fan of the Very Hungry Caterpillar book so it was my first search, and after scrolling for pages and pages I finally found one that would fit the bill.

The actual cake is pretty straight forward: 2 tiers (any kind of cake you want, this one was red velvet and vanilla with green vanilla buttercream), white fondant covering.  It's the bits after that you get to have fun with and use your imagination for the finishing touches.

 

You can use fondant to make a caterpillar for the front of the cake (I use edible glue to stick all the decor on, but if you use a paintbrush to dab water onto the fondant it will stick too).  Around the back and sides I used fondant in a variety of colours to make fruits lollipops to decorate.  I invested in a collection of writing gels as well which is what I used for all the detail on the fruit and to draw on the lollipop stick, and the face on the butterfly.

For the topper, I bought sugar balloons on wires from a cake decorating store, as well as a number 2, which was white, but I used edible paint to colour it green to tie it in with the caterpillar.  Using my writing gels I also spelled the birthday boy's name out on individual balloons.

The tiers are finished off with Skittles candies which are glued in place with the edible glue.  You don't have to use Skittles though, Smarties, M&Ms, jelly beans would all do the trick too.

1st Birthday Princess Castle Cake

My cousin asked me a few weeks ago to create a cake for his daughter's 1st birthday.  He and his wife had a castle cake in mind so I had my work cut out considering I'd never tried anything like that before.  Shortly after being asked I jumped online and looked through pages of images on Google search and also spent a while on Youtube searching for ideas and inspiration.  I stumbled across a video on Youtube that provided me with the perfect ideas for this cake.

I knew I would have to use fondant icing again since it gives a better finish than buttercream for these kinds of projects, so this got me a little worried since I'm still not great at actually applying the fondant to the cake without a couple of holes or folds (I really should practise more).  So I went and collected my equipment and supplies from a local decorating shop and just decided to go for it.

I made two different kinds of cake for it, the base is devil's food cake and the upper tier is vanilla (just in case there are some crazy people at the party who have an aversion to chocolate).  Each tier has two layers of cake in it, with vanilla buttercream in between and on top to secure the fondant.  A friend came over to offer moral support for the evening but eventually got put to work helping me smooth the fondant onto the cake (thank you!).

After the tiers were both covered I rolled out some more of the pink fondant to line the bottom of the top tier to neaten up the edge.  After that I used some ivory fondant to make doors and brown fondant rolled out to line it for the door frame.  The door handles are heart shaped sprinkles which I got online.  All of these details are secured with the edible glue I got as well, best investment ever.  I have used it many, many times.

To finish the top tier off I rolled out more of the pink fondant and made the trim for the top.  It was just cut out by hand, I didn't measure it so it's not entirely even but I think it still looks pretty good!

After the main work on the castle was done I added a 'D' on the front (birthday girl is Darcy).  The stars are just cut out of yellow flower paste, but you can use sprinkles or fondant.  If the stars don't tickle your fancy try flowers or butterflies!  The large butterflies are also made from flower paste.  The towers are the cardboard tubes from kitchen paper, just covered in the pink fondant.  The windows are fuchsia fondant with the brown fondant serving as window ledges.  The tops of the towers are made from black construction card (again, the colour is up to you, it just happened it was what I had on hand).  The towers are fastened onto the cake with 2 toothpicks pushed into each.

To finish the cake off, I piped buttercream vines onto the castle (the design goes all the way around and is on all of the towers but I only took a picture from the front).  The flowers are all cut from flower paste with cutters (which I did on Monday) and stuck on with my edible glue.  The smaller butterflies are sprinkles too.  Finally, I used my grass piping nozzle to line the base with nice bright green buttercream grass.

It may not be the neatest cake in the world but I have to say I am pretty darn happy with how it turned out!!