Patchwork Quilt Cake

For my younger sister's birthday I made a patchwork quilt cake. She doesn't like sponge cake so I made her a rich fruit cake which I covered in marzipan and sugar paste. 

My first job was to create the quilt. I used little circles and rolled these into the paste so it was a smooth finish, you have to be careful to roll in both directions in order to maintain the circular shape. I then used a quilting tool to create stitch lines along the cake. 

Top view of the cake

Added to this some buttons which I made using a mould. To finish up I put some yellow ribbon around the cake. 

Side of the Cake

I hope she liked the cake and enjoyed eating it. I hope it was a simple but effective idea. 

If you need a cake for any occasion please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Mum's Sewing Basket

For my mum's birthday cake this year I decided to make a sewing basket cake. I got this idea from a magazine I was given but I made a few little changes to make it mine. I made a rich chocolate cake, filled it with vanilla buttericing and covered it in chocolate sugarpaste. 

When I did the royal icing course mum commented that she liked the piped basket weave effect so I decided to do this around the cake. 

Lines marked around the cake

I marked lines around the cake and then piped the effect between these lines. I also covered and piped on a 8" board, this is to create the lid on the basket. 

Basket weave effect

To decorate the cake I made some rectangular pieces of icing, I used mats to get some fabric effects on these. They were then drapped over the cake and stuck down. I made buttons using flower paste and a mould. These were scattered over the basket and around the edges. 

Lots of Buttons

Buttons

I also made some knitting needles out of modelling paste and stuck these on the board. 

Finished cake

Zoomed in finished cake

Overall I hope my mum liked the cake. I was quite pleased with the it and thought it was effective. 

Chocolate Flowers Cake

I was asked to make a chocolate cake for someone's birthday this week. After showing her my previous flowers cake she mentioned she liked this so I did something along the same lines. She also mentioned that she liked cherries so I put in a black cherry filling for her. I was given a budget for this one so I had to carefully keep all my ingredients in check and make sure I wasn't designing a cake that was too expensive. The rich chocolate cake recipe is more expensive than normal sponge but also decorating in chocolate can add up very quickly if you buy too many different varieties. 

I used half of my usual rich chocolate recipe:

325g Butter

325g Plain chocolate

325g Plain Flour

50ml Coffee

1tsp Vanilla Essence

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

475g Soft Brown Sugar

5 Eggs

300ml Soured Cream

Melt the chocolate and butter together. Then mix all the ingredients together and bake in the oven for at least 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin before you remove (otherwise it just falls apart). 

I sliced the cake in half and filled with a tin of black cherry filling. This is thicker than the standard black cherries in syrup and holds its shape better in the cake. 

I then coated the whole cake in vanilla butter icing. 250g Butter and 500g Icing Sugar. I made sure this was completely smooth to give a good finish on the cake. 

Iced Cake

Next step was to prepare all the chocolate. Firstly I grated a bar of plain chocolate. Then I halved some of the buttons, minstrels and vice versas. I put these in the fridge so they were really cool and I could handle them without them melting. 

Prepared Chocolate

Firstly I used the grated chocolate for the rim of the cake. I had never tried this before but it was very straightforward to do. I press it all into the butter icing with my hands making sure there were no gaps and it was an even coating. 

Next I created a flower right in the centre of the cake using giant milk chocolate buttons. I first place a white chocolate button right in the centre of the cake and then used this to create the flower using the halved buttons. 

I then created the border on the cake by alternating the vice versas. 

Finally I filled in the remaining space making some flowers with the halved white chocolate buttons, vice versas and minstrels. 

Finished Top View

Finished Side View

Overall I was pleased with this cake and how it looked. Creating cakes like this is very effective and gives a nice finish. My customer seemed very happy with the cake and that's the most important thing. 

Chocolate Celebration Cake

I was asked to make a cake for my friend's 40th birthday this week. The brief I was given was a chocolate cake, 12", with plain buttericing. To decorate she isn't keen on fondant icing so I set about using chocolate pieces, I wanted the design to be stunning so I did a bit of research and managed to find a good idea using buttons and other round chocolates. More on that later.

The first step was to create a massive 12" cake. I didn't want to make a normal sponge so I decided to opt for a lovely chocolatey recipe, in fact the recipe that was used in my own wedding cake. Fortunately the recipe was already for a 12" cake so that made things much easier. For the first time I didn't do a trial run I just made it straight off and hoped it'd be ok. This is partly due to time but also due to cost, with the large quantities of ingredients required this cake isn't cheap.

Ingredients:

650g Unsalted Butter

650g Plain Chocolate

100ml Strong Coffee

3tsp Vanilla Essence

650g Plain Flour

2tsp Baking Powder

2tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

950g Light Soft Brown Sugar

10 Eggs

2 x 284ml Soured Cream

Method:

Melt the butter and the chocolate in a pan over a low heat until they have fully melted. Stir in the coffee and the vanilla essence.

Chocolate and Butter

Place the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sugar into a large bowl.

Dry ingredients

Beat together the soured cream and eggs.

Soured cream and eggs

Pour the egg mixture into the flour followed by the chocolate. Stir the mixture until it is all combined and smooth.

Using a large new washing up bowl to mix it all together

Pour this into a greased 12"/30cm tin and place in the oven, 160oC, for 2hrs30mins.

In the greased tin

Check the cake is cooked by inserting a skewer and checking it comes out clean.

Cooked

 Leave the cake to cool in the tin, it will firm a little as it cools making it hold its structure once you try and remove it.

Removed from tin, on the board and ready to go. 

I left the cake to fully cool overnight on a 14" cake board. In the morning I got out 325g butter and left it to get to room temperature. This was then mixed with 650g icing sugar and vanilla essence to make the butter icing for the cake. 

I sliced the cake into 2 halves and filled the middle with butter icing. 

I needed to make more butter icing for the outside so I made another 250g butter, 500g icing sugar. This was enough to cover the outside and the sides nicely. 

Cake covered in vanilla buttercream

I then covered the outside of the cake in a thick layer, this needs to be thick enough to be able to stick the chocolate decorations into it. 

The next step was the actually decorating of the cake. I used a variety of different chocolates to achieve this look. The first step was to place orange matchmakers around the outside of the cake. 

Matchmakers around the outside

I wanted to do more than just place the buttons etc on the top so I create a floral decoration using buttons, malteasers, aeros, vice versas and some other bits and pieces. I halved all of the larger decorations, this meant they sat nicely in the icing. 

Almost finished. 

I also melted some plain chocolate, poured it into a large biscuit cutter and left it to set to create the circle in the middle. In this picture you can also see stars attached to wire to give the cake a little height and another dimension. 

The final step was to melt some white chocolate and pipe my customers age on to it, 40. 

The finished product top

Slightly side on view

I was happy with the end product, it fills the brief of a chocolate cake and isn't in my usual fondant style at all. I found this challenging as the heat was making the chocolate difficult to handle. Also trying to halve it meant a few bits got broken. The size of the cake was also something I'd never had to deal with before, it was nice to have a large canvas for the decorating but manouvering it was harder. 

If anyone is interested in ordering this, or any other cake, please get in contact. At present (July 2013) I'm only charging for ingredients, this cake would cost £30. Please keep me in mind for any celebration you may require any size cake for.