Sunflower Cake

I didn't technically make this cake but wanted to include it in my blog as I thought the design was just so unusual and fabulous!  My friend James asked me to supervise him in making a cake for a couple who had just had their first baby, Dharma.  Dharma's mum's favourite flowers are sunflowers so James wanted to incorporate these into the cake.  This was the result!

We cut up a pineapple into really thin slices and gently baked it in the oven, then covered a cake with the pineapple 'sunflowers'.  James also made letters by flooding some royal icing - he was very proud! I hear the cake went down very well with the new parents too!

Christmas 2010

This is slightly out of season, although I'm beginning to think about this year's christmas cake designs, but here are three christmas cakes I made for family and work last year (I was at Waterstone's in Bath).

Red and gold were the theme for the starry cake and the one for Waterstone's.  For the other cake I cut out different sized triangles from white, dark green and light green fondant icing and drizzled white royal icing to create some snow covered trees.  I loved the idea of the trees going all the way round the cake and leaving the top without any further decoration.  It also meant, as we munched our way through the cake, that it still looked pretty half-eaten!

Birthday Cupcakes

The second party for my mother-in-law's birthday was more of a lavish affair! She had invited around 80 people so I set to making cupcakes!  

I made chocolate and orange, vanilla, orange and lemon cupcakes, all iced with a cream cheese frosting.  I used a recipe my mum had found in a magazine.  It's a basic cupcake recipe but you add a syrup to the just-cooked cupcakes to give them added moisture! Yum!

The sugarpaste butterflies were deceptively simple to make - I coloured some florist sugarpaste in a variety of bright colours then stamped out the butterflies with a cutter and left them on a folded piece of paper to dry in a V-shape.  Then, with some white royal icing, I gave each butterfly a body and some decorative dots on the wings.

The party had a beach theme so I decided on bright and happy colours and a big flower for the topper cake.  This was a bit more tricky but, helped along by the amazing Alan Dunn and Sugar Flowers for Cake Decorating, I got there in the end!

Here is the end result, in situ.  We managed to get a few photographs before the cupcakes started disappearing!

Maggie's 50th birthday cake

This is one of the cakes I made for my mother-in-law's 50th birthday.  She had organised one party for family and then a big party for everyone!  I made a square rich fruit cake (I have a secret recipe that a master baker gave my mum) for the party for all the family...

...see how messy I was getting it decorated!

I coloured some fondant icing and cut out different size flowers to go on top and around the sides of the cake.

I left a circle in the middle of the cake for the big 50...

...and, instead of stems for the flowers, the green royal icing spelled out "Happy Birthday Maggie!"