Gingerbread Pound Cake

I was asked to come up with a gingerbread pound cake for the local coffee shop so after some research I came up with this recipe: 

Ingredients: 

285g Stork

285g Caster Sugar

285g Self Raising Flour

70g Plain Flour

4 tbsp Black Treacle

4 tsp Ground Ginger

5 Eggs

Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease a round bundt tin. 

Cream together the stork and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the black treacle. Slowly add the eggs, one at a time, until all is well combined and light. 

Sieve in the flour and ginger then mix together slowly being careful not to over work it. 

Pour into the bundt tin and cook until the cake is spongy and a skewer comes out clean. Mine took around 1hour30mins. Leave to cool. 

I decorated it with a simple water icing which was made by mixing icing sugar and water together. This was then poured over the top of the cake. 

Gingerbread Pound Cake

Please let me know how you get on if you try this recipe. I love to hear stories and see photos. 

If you'd like to order a cake for wholesale or individual orders please get in touch for details.

90th Birthday Cake

I was asked to make a birthday cake for a 90th birthday lady. My brief was nothing too fancy so I kept it simple with this design. 

To give the cake a little design I crimped around the edge of the cake and board. 

The sugar flowers are carnations, sweet peas, and roses. This is just a simple little bunch to give the cake something a little special. Sugar flowers always lift a cake. 

Sugar Flowers

To finish off the cake I piped a message and used ribbon to create a bow on the front. 

I hope the family liked the cake and enjoyed it. 

Finished Cake

Final Christmas Cake of 2014

The final Christmas cake I created this year was for my own family gathering. I made a rich fruit cake, covered it in marzipan and coated it in royal icing. I used several coats spread over several weeks to produce a reasonable covering.

I made up some stringwork icing and piped these along the top edge of the cake. I turned the cake upside down and piped the top edge of the cake in the same way. I piped shell detailing around the bottom edge of the cake.

Finally I made some sugar roses, freesia and leaves and bunch these together for the centre of the cake.

Sugar Roses and Freesias

I was very pleased with how this cake came out. I think it looks beautiful but it's not particularly Christmassy. I'm sure my family won't mind though. This cake would make a beautiful anniversary or celebration cake. The piping is very fragile though so I would like to do too large cake in this design but I do like the stringwork and think it's very effective. 

Finished cake

Nan's Autumn Colours Cake

I was asked to make a cake which had autumn colours on it with roses and freesias. I decided to make a white cake with some piped details, which my mum tells me makes the cake more elegant, with strong bold colours in the flowers. I spent several days making orange, red and yellow Gerberas, Roses and freesias. I also made several autumn leaves to go in the bunch. 

Roses

Gerberas

Collection of flowers and autumn leaves

The cakes themselves were carrot cake, on the top an 8", and a light fruit cake 10" on the bottom. The fruit cake was covered in marzipan and then white sugar paste, I made this a few days in advance as fruit cake last so beautifully. Carrot cake is much more tricky, it needs to be made very fresh and is also very fragile so much more difficult to decorate. I double coated it in icing in order to give it a better finish. 

Covered cakes

I then dowelled the bottom tier for support and piped detailing on both layers.

Piped details on the cake

The final step was to put it all together. I used the roses to make a large bunch on the top of the cake, this was trimmed with autumn leaves and had freesias for height effect. 

Roses, leaves and freesias on the top

I stuck the Gerberas on the side of the cake for colour throughout the sides. 

Overall I was very pleased with this cake and thought the colours were beautiful. 

Tiger Who Came to Tea

I was asked to make a cake for my nephew last week. He loves the story the tiger who came to tea so I decided to base his cake on this. It was a relatively small cake, an 6" Ginger cake. I filled and covered it in vanilla butter icing and then coated it in white sugar paste. The cake was going to form the table. 

Since the cake was so white I decided to do an effect on the board to make it look like wood flooring. So I did a wood effect on the floor, marked out the planks and allowed it to dry. It was almost a shame to put the cake on it!! 

Wooden Floor

I rolled out some modelling paste, used an impression mat, and then covered then draped the cake with it to form a table cloth. 

I modelled a tiger and Sophie out of modelling paste and placed these on some icing so they were the right height for the table. 

Food on the table

 I also modelled some food for their tea, the idea was this was the start of the tea so there was still plenty left. I also decided to put a sign on the cake so the tiger came for Thomas's birthday tea. 

Finished Cake

Overall I was pleased with the cake. It was quite a white cake without much on it but if you look at the books illiustrations they actually look like this too. Thomas identified the tiger and wolfed down his slice. As long as he and his parents were happy that's all that matters. 

W E Clark Jeweller's Display Cake

In order to advertise I decided to contact some local business and see whether they'd be willing to have a partnership. W E Clark Jeweller's in Lewes were kind enough to respond very quickly and agreed to have a display cake amongst their bridal jewellery in order to advertise for me. I wanted to create a 3 tiered cake that would show off my skills and looked impressive amongst their jewellery, so I decided to do a cascading cake with flower and butterflies. It eventually turned into a cake that matched the colour schemes that I had for my own wedding and I designed it along with my tastes, and my husbands. 

For the flowers I made some small liles, orchids and plenty of sweet peas. I did also make some roses but I decided not to use these on the cake as they didn't really fit in with the scheme. I also made some butterlies on wires and allowed these all to dry so they could be stuck on the cake. 

Flowers drying

I covered 3 tiers of dummies and a board, trimmed them with a plain white ribbon, I didn't want the cake to stand out at all as really it's just a back drop for the flowers in this case. I originally planned to pearl coat the cake but it kept raining (I spray the cake outside) and so I decided to just leave it plain in the end. 

I wired the flowers together using the lilies to make centre piece to start with. The sweet peas trimmed the edge of each cake and introduce the intense colours and finally the orchids fill in the gaps on the side of the cake. If I wanted to do this design on an actual cake I'd need to rethink the flowers a little as for this cake I just placed the wires straight into the cake. I obviously can't do this on the real cake. I also stuck some butterlies on the cake, down the side and amongst the flowers. 

Finished cake

Lilies on the top

Close up of Sweet peas and orchids

Once all the flowers were placed on the cake I allowed it to really dry and settle into place and then I dropped it off at the jewellers. I was really happy with where they said it was going to be placed and I look forward to seeing it in place soon. I hope that it'll look beautiful in their shop, it's certainly a lovely shop, I'd recommend a look. I'm very grateful to them for agreeing to display the cake and I hope that I'll get some interest from it. They certainly took enough business cards from me!! 

http://www.weclarkandson.co.uk/ 

Teddy Bears Picnic Cake

For my dad's birthday this year I decided to use my recently learnt modelling skills. I made him a teddy bears picnic scene with a grandad, grandma and Amelia. Mum, who ordered the cake, asked that I made a light fruit cake so I made an 8" cake and covered this in marzipan and sugar paste. 

I edged the cake with "grass" which I cut out of sugar paste and stuck around the outside in a 3d effect. I made a rug and also draped over the top of the cake in a 3d effect. On top of this rug I carefully modelled the bears and stuck them down. I needed them to have some food to eat so I made a chocolate cake, bread and some carrot sticks, in an attempt to be healthy!! Each bear was eating a different piece of food with grandad eating the cake of course. 

Picnic Food

The final step to the cake was to place flowers around the cake, they were placed side and top. These were simple blossoms that were cut out using a plunger. 

Teddy bears in the field

Final Cake

Overall I was happy with this cake and my dad thought it was lovely which is all that mattered. It was nice to have a different cake in my portfolio. 

Red Roses Cake

I was asked to make a vanilla sponge this week decorated in Roses, preferably with a red theme. So I decided to do just that.

I made a 10" Vanilla Madeira sponge and filled this with vanilla butter icing. I crumb coated the cake, covered it in a thin layer of icing to coat it, and then I covered the cake in white sugar paste. I wasn't happy with the way the cake was covered, this is primarily because I didn't cover the board first and tried to do it in one go. I ended up marking the board and making a bit of a mess of the cake but hopefully it wasn't too obvious by the time I'd finished. 

I made a selection of roses in dark red, lighter red and cream. I made 1 full blown rose with wired outer petals and the rest were then unwired petals but wired roses. I also made a selection of rose leaves. These were arranged in a posy design with the full blown in the centre, the others around it and then the leaves along the bottom. 

Rose Posy

To trim the edge of the cake I decided to follow on the theme and I made some more rose leaves, these were placed all the way around the cake and I made some Christmas Roses to stick on top and break this up slightly. 

The board was trimmed with red ribbon. Gary told me that the cake looked too plain so I decided to make some red petals to scatter over the cake and break up the white a little. 

Finished Cake

Finished Cake

Overall I was fairly happy with the cake. I still have a lot of practice to do on covering cakes but I was pleased with the decoration and was quite proud of the cake. I hope the birthday girl and her family enjoyed the cake and I look forward to make more. 

Roses Cake

I was asked to make a cake for my sister in law and was told that I could use it to practice anything I wanted,wooo! So I decided to use the cake to practice the roses that I learnt last week on my Sugar Flower Diploma, these are wired flowers. The only request I had was that I used raspberry icing on the cake, so of course I obliged!! 

I decided to try out a recipe that I obtained from Confection Perfection, in Maidstone, for a lemon cake. I thought the lemon would go nicely with the raspberry. In this lemon cake, for flavour, you use lemon zest and fresh juice. Also once the cake is cooked you pour a lemon syrup into the cake. This makes the cake lovely and moist but also intensifies the lemon flavour. The cake was also a much deeper and better size than my previous cakes so the quantity of mixture seemed perfect. 

Once the cake was cooled I filled and covered it in raspberry buttercream. I left it to harden but due to the weather it never really firmed as much as I'd like. In future I'd put it in the fridge for a short time in order to really harden it up. The reason I say this is because when I tried to cover the cake in sugar paste it was very difficult to create a good finish. 

I covered the board with sugar paste and then trimmed the board and cake with teal ribbon. Next step was to make the roses. 

Time to make roses

I decided to make the roses in a pale pink to contrast the teal trim. I coloured in 3 tonal shades so that the centre of the rose was darker than the outer petals. Using the techniques I learnt last week (or which I will try and put a blog post up later) I made a bud, half rose, full rose and a full blown rose. I also made some rose leaves out of white platinum paste, which I dusted up to the right colours and jasmine out of blue flower paste. 

Centrepiece

All the flowers are wired so they can be manipulated into a spray for the top of the cake. I design this and held it together using floral tape. I then cut off the wire and then placed it into a flower pick for the centre of the cake. I used a few extra flowers around the edge of the cake and then placed petals on the cake. 

Top View

Overall View

Side View

Full Blown Rose

Bud and half rose

Other Side, buds with petals

Overall I was pleased with the flowers, especially for a first proper attempt. I will, of course, practice much more. I wasn't pleased with the covering of the cake but I was fairly pleased with the decoration of it. 

Jessie Cat Cake

For my daughter's 1st birthday I decided to make her a Jessie Cat Cake based on the character from Sing and Sign. She loves it when Jessie pops out of the box so I wanted to copy this in her cake. She also likes bright colours so I decided to make the cake a rainbow cake so that when it was cut it was really colourful inside. 

In order to create the box I decided to use 9" square tins, this is quite large so I needed quite a lot of cake mixture. My first attempt didn't really work out so I made some adjustments and came up with this recipe as the one I was happy with. 

Ingredients:

800g Butter

800g Caster Sugar

800g Self Raising Flour

16  Eggs

2tsp Baking Powder

2tsp Vanilla Essence

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the flour, baking powder and vanilla essence. Finally beat in the eggs until everything is combined and the mixture is smooth and creamy. 

Divide the mixture into 6 bowls (not 7 as I kept doing!) and colour each mixture with paste colours. These will give you a intense colour without changing the consistency of the mixture. I only have 8 colours so I had to use what I had, yellow, red, blue, green, pink and purple. 

Coloured Cake Mix

I used foil trays to bake the cakes so that I could bake several at the same time. These were trays, like lasagne trays, that I bought from the local Lakeland. Bake the cake for around 20 minutes at 180oC until the cakes spring back. 

Coloured Cake

Whilst they were cooling I made butter icing with 2:1 ratios of icing sugar to butter. I layered up the cakes using the butter icing and coated the cake which formed the crumb coating. 

I covered the cake in white sugar paste and then green sugar paste. I cut a cross on the top, folded this back to form the opening in the box. Using different colours and circles I decorated the box. Using icing I made a Jessie cat head. I would have made this out of rice krispie if I had more time and resources, next time, this time this was the quick option. It did drop and lose it's shape a little but not too drastically. 

Box ready for a cat

Something I also did for the first time on this cake was to edge the board with ribbon. This is certainly something I'll be doing again as it really gave a lovely finish to the board and looked much more professional. 

Finished Jessie Cake

Overall I was quite pleased with the cake and had many lovely comments about it. It was great fun to create. 

Coffee and Walnut Cake

For his birthday this year my brother asked for a coffee and walnut cake. I had a busy week last week with cakes so this was the most simple of them all. The aim was just to make a nice simple cake that tasted good. 

To make the coffee cake I used a standard sponge cake recipe and added in some coffee and chopped almonds. I then baked it and left to cool. 

I filled the cake in coffee butter icing and also coated the whole cake. I decided, since I had plenty of grated chocolate left, to put chocolate around the rim on the cake. I then used walnuts to decorate the top of the cake. 

Finished Coffee and Walnut Cake

I have no idea what this cake tasted like, as I don't like coffee or walnuts, but he said it was very good. I was pleased with the finished effect of the cake and thought it had a good appearance. 

Formula 1 Cake

For Gary's second birthday cake, he wanted a mercedes formula 1 cake. Since it was a much more difficult shape I decided to go with a fairly simple flavour, lemon. I made a lemon sponge and covered this in lemon Italian merringue buttercream. 

I found a picture of a F1 car on the internet, made this the size of the cake and then used this as a template to cut out the cake. I then cut another level in order to create the seat shaping. 

Cut sponge

I covered in the buttercream and the covered this in silver sugar paste. Using a round cutter I cut out some wheels and covered these in black sugar paste. 

Close up of the car with the wing

I made a front wing out of flower paste, which is stronger than standard sugar paste and hardens over night. I also made a back wing but after 3 attempts at these I decided to leave it off because they kept breaking and I'd run out of time. I also attempted to paint the advertising onto the cake but again I had to leave it partly due to time and partly due to skill. 

I was fairly happy with the cake but it wasn't as good as I hoped. I would have liked more time and skill to make it better but it was clear what it was meant to be so that's a good start. 

Finished cake with a wing (which later broke!)

Cricket Cake

As you may, or may not, know it's Gary's birthday today and I decided to make him 2 cakes. Lucky boy!! I wanted to make a simple cake that focused more on flavours and a more complex cake, which will be posted later.

The simple cake was to be decorated with a few cricket pieces but I was going to try some new techniques. First was the sponge it's self. He wanted raspberry and white chocolate flavours so the tricky thing was to get these flavours to balance. White chocolate is quite a subtle flavour and I was afraid it'd be dominated by the raspberry. I made a vanilla sponge and then stirred in 200g of chopped white chocolate. I then added some raspberries and stirred these in carefully to try and maintain their shape and structure.

For the icing I made Italian merringue butter cream. I will post how to make this at a later date, and stirred in some homemade raspberry curd, again will post about this later. I filled the cake with icing and also gave it a coating in the raspberry icing. 

I then made a white chocolate ganache by heating some double cream and adding white chocolate to melt in. Ideally I would have done a 4:1 ratio of chocolate to cream but I didn't have enough chocolate so I used a 2.5:1 ratio. This seemed to work fine and I had a thick chocolate mixture. I spread this over the cake and left it to set. I then covered this is green sugar paste and smoothed it, creating a crisp edge. 

I made a bat, ball and stumps out of sugar paste and stuck these on the top. 

Finished cake

Overall the cake looked ok, it was very simple. I could have put more details on the cake if I'd had some more tools, which I don't, but it was ok. The icing was too thick and so towards the edges the balance wasn't right. However, if you had a slice from the middle it was much better. 

Internal view

Macmillan Cake Sale Cake

Gary's work have an annual cake sale to raise money for their charity of the year. This year it is Macmillan so I decided to make a cake for them to sell at the sale. 

I made a rectangle cake, recipe found here, and cut the cake in half. I cut out a few squares from the bottom layer to create some legs and then placed the cakes on top of each other. I used chocolate butter icing to stick it together and cover the cake. The cake was then covered in white sugar paste. 

I wanted to create a table cloth so I made a thin square out of sugar paste and painted around the rim with gold paint. This was placed over the cake just sticking on the top and allowing the sides to hang down naturally. 

Table covered in a cloth

Using blue paste I cut out some circles for plates, to create the inner detailing I used a ball tool and flattened the centre. 

Plates

I then created various different cakes to go on the plates, starting with some chocolate brownies. 

Chocolate brownies

Followed by a selection of other goodies. 

Jam sandwiches and chocolate cake

Scones and mince pies

The whole selection of cakes

To finish off the cake I made a banner for the front with Macmillan on it. 

Finished cake

Finished cake

I was pleased with the effect of the cake and thought it looked good. People at Gary's work were impressed but they didn't want to cut into it because it looked too good, apparently, so I'm not sure how much money it actually raised. The cake did get eaten in the end so hopefully they enjoyed it. 

If you'd like a cake for any event please get in contact, I can make cakes to your budget and specifications.