Austin's 6th Birthday - October 2009

Ewan's 5th Birthday - August 2009

So Ewan requested a pirate theme party, along with a pirate ship cake.......and accommodate his playmobil pirates. This cake had been planned a good few months in advance and there was a lot of cake involved.

The sails which were made ahead of time were made from fondant, the crows nest was a carved out ice cream cone. After several cones and attempts at poking a hole through the bottom to allow the dowel rod to go through, i finally cracked it! Literally! The plank, anchor and lettering was also made from fondant. The 2 ends of the boat were formed using the sports ball pan and then hand carving, then i stacked them. The dowel rods doubled up as support and masts and worked out really well!! The rocks used on the cake were also edible, i found them in a candy store in downtown Plymouth, and they were really yummy!

The entire boat sat on a 2 layer sheet cake which became the ocean and one corner an island where the treasure could be found!

The fun part for me was not having to do perfectly smooth frosting for the sea and went to town on the two toned colors and texture.

A lot of time & hard work, but me mateys loved the cake and it definitely served as good old fashioned swashbuckling grub!!!

Jungle Cake for Jayna

I was asked to do this cake by a mum at Ewan's school for her eldest daughter Jayna.

I wanted to do something a little bit different and modern. The cake was made up from a 2 tier yellow cake with chocolate & vanilla buttercream frosting. Two 9 inch cakes stacked, and one 6 inch cake on top. The Palm tree, rocks and zebra stripes are all edible and made from fondant. The palm tree trunk is an Oreo stick! I had to eat several since they were so delicate and kept breaking! Shame! All animals are plastic! I designed the writing to look like vine leaves and this theme continued around the top of the cake. Brown sugar was sprinkled around the base to look like sand.

Afternoon Tea for two!

My eldest son just graduated from his preschool , so i made his teachers a British Afternoon Tea gift baskets, containing, homemade scones, European strawberry preserve, cups and saucers and a tea-towel! Cheers!

I just bought some mason jars and fruit pectin in the hope that i will attempt to make my own jam preserves, then I can use them in my cake fillings. and thus no preservatives, fruit juice sweetened and good for you!

Ryan's 3rd birthday

So Ryan wanted a Thomas birthday cake for his 3rd birthday. To make the cake i found a tutorial onthe internet which i base most the cake on, but also used serval othe references since no Thomas toy is th esame, I had to use what toys i had in the house. And being an Architect i also had to try and get it to scale the best i could! I mouled this cake by hand from a 12x18 inch 1.2 sheet pan. This is the largest cake i have ever baked. The cake which was chocolate filled the entire kichen aid mixer to the brim!

I also froze the cake in advance as suggested (first time i have done this to), but it really helped with moulding the cake, and did not impair on the taste of the cake at all! Thomas's face, wheels and lights were made from fondant. the rest was frosting, including the coal in the back of Thomas which I piped individually.

The cake was a big success, and made my little boy very happy! The entire cake was eaten!

I also made cupcakes in yellow cake and iced them in blue royal icing. the toppingscame from a cake box mix that I bought whilst in England containing edible rice paper images of Thomas and Friends and royal icing mini train sprinkles! Perfect!

Saturday Night Fever

So things have been fairly quiet on the cake making front, however whilst on my annual trip home to the UK I did make a fondant cake topper for my best friends's husbands party. Alas i wa snot able to make the cake since I would be getting back from a short trip to London with hubby, so i suggested i did this instead! The theme taken from the invite was of my friends husband in the John Travola pose in front of a giant disco ball: See link below for a picture. http://www.collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Saturday_Night_Fever_DVD/saturday_night_fever_30th_anniversary_collector_s_edition_dvd__large_.jpg

So of course i had to replace John T's head for John B's head! Here is the result!

Tiered cakes

So this is my first attempt at a tiered cake, as well as my first attempt at homemade MM fondant, made in honor of my British friend here for her 40th birthday celebration.......

The cake consisted of a 8 inch round bottom layer made of chocolate cake filled with a layer of white chocolate ganache, fresh strawberries and raspberries, and topped with raspberry buttercream frosting. The second layer (6 inch)and top layer (4 inch) were a light orange chiffon cake filled with orange buttercream frosting.

All cakes were covered in buttercream frosting and MM fondant.

I researched all the different ways I could do a tiered cake and also had to take in to account I had to get it to the restaurant in one piece.

i used dowel rods in the bottom and second tier for support and used a long dowel rod going through all 3 tiers. And this is where the fun started. It was recommend to me that each layer should be on its own cardboard plate, so as I was pushing the dowel through the top tier the card buckled into the second tier, thus pushing it into the cake, when i noticed the middle tier was bulging, i immediately stopped. to my dismay the middle tier had a crater! Consequently I removed the plate on the 4 inch and discarded it!

Needless to say the cake still held, and arrived in one piece to the venue, and most importantly tasted and looked great! Not bad for a first attempt.

With regards to the MM fondant, it tasted really good, so i will definitely be using it again in the future! I just wish I got the knack of putting it on the cake without creases and tears! Practice makes perfect! And most of the time you can cover up the imperfections with the decorations! Shh! Don't tell anyone!

Here is the results of the mini christmas cakes I made for Ewan's teachers at school. The fruit cakes were started in November (later than i should have) using a great recipe from a british cake decorator book by Mary Clee Cladman. I used 5.25 inch round mini springform cake pans. The cakes were topped up almost weekly/fortnightly with brandy until the final layers of apricot glaze, home made marzipan and royal icing were used to finish the cake off. I decorated the tops of the cake with fondant trees and royal icing baubles, and ribbon around the edge.

They were presented on a decorative ceramic plate with a candy cane and wrapped in a large seasonal celophane bag! I was really happy with the finished product, with contained a card explaining how and why we have christmas cake in the UK.

Christmas cake is normally served at around teatime. A Christmas Tea is traditionally very light -- cold meats, cheeses, pickles, salad, sandwiches, Christmas cake and mince pies. (Although to be fair, on Christmas day, the eating never stops from lunchtime to bedtime: chocolates, crisps, biscuits, cakes, fruit, nuts, sweets etc. Well, we do buy a lot of food -- so we do our best to eat it all!)
Christmas cake was originally Twelfth Night Cake, a rich fruitcake made to celebrate Epiphany. But the Puritans had removed Twelfth Night from the church calendar and by the late 19th Century it was becoming a night associated with mischief making, so Queen Victoria banned it as a feast day in 1870. The bakers, not wishing to lose any money, simply iced the cakes they'd already baked to represent a snowy scene and sold them as Christmas cake instead.
Homemade with raisins, sultanas, currants, glace cherries, candied lemon & orange peel, grated zest and juice of oranges, butter, eggs, flour and lots of brandy. Then baked for several hours, left to mature for several weeks and finished with marzipan and royal icing. And finally presented to you from the Palfreyman Family as a gift to enjoy! Just store this cake in an airtight container and it will last for several weeks!

If you are interested here is the wording on the labels!!!

"Christmas cake is normally served at around teatime. A Christmas Tea is traditionally very light -- cold meats, cheeses, pickles, salad, sandwiches, Christmas cake and mince pies. (Although to be fair, on Christmas day, the eating never stops from lunchtime to bedtime: chocolates, crisps, biscuits, cakes, fruit, nuts, sweets etc. Well, we do buy a lot of food -- so we do our best to eat it all!)
Christmas cake was originally Twelfth Night Cake, a rich fruitcake made to celebrate Epiphany. But the Puritans had removed Twelfth Night from the church calendar and by the late 19th Century it was becoming a night associated with mischief making, so Queen Victoria banned it as a feast day in 1870. The bakers, not wishing to lose any money, simply iced the cakes they'd already baked to represent a snowy scene and sold them as Christmas cake instead.
Homemade with raisins, sultanas, currants, glace cherries, candied lemon & orange peel, grated zest and juice of oranges, butter, eggs, flour and lots of brandy. Then baked for several hours, left to mature for several weeks and finished with marzipan and royal icing. And finally presented to you from the Palfreyman Family as a gift to enjoy! Just store this cake in an airtight container and it will last for several weeks!"

Ethan's 3rd birthday

So I finally did the lighting McQueen cake., and the red and black turned out well! It took me hours of colour mixing and piping, as well as a problem with the McQueen pan (i hate those pans) everything always sticks. Tip lots and lots of shortening! YUK! Anyway, after a second attempt of the cake, it turned out well!

The final cake was chocolate, with buttercream frosting. The car shape sat on top of a 9x13 cake that was piped in a white and black chequered flag. The car was then carefully placed on top and then i decorated that which took me the best part of half a day.

The end result though was worth it, and Ethan loved his cake! So did my eldest as well, he demolished the biggest slice of cake he has ever had! Kids, chocolate and frosting, you can't go wrong!

Well my next big job will be to finish off my Christmas cakes. I have to make the marzipan, fondant decorations and the royal icing! The smell of the brandy is soooo yummy when i unwrap the cakes to top them up with more brandy!

Here is the cake I just made for my friend Sarab, who's had a bit of a bad pregnacy and only just alsmost human again. So I wanted to treat her and make here the best chocolate i have made so far! She is also an ugg boot fanatic (she has at least 4 pairs) so I decided to make an ugg boot out of fondant and gumpaste. The Ugg boot turned out well and was also the perfect size to be a candle holder! The fondant circles were added to for a modern twist to the cake!

The cake was filled with whipped chocolate ganache (using a good quality cocoa powder) and the chocolate cake was flavoured with raspberry extract, and covered with chocolate buttercream. The chocolate cake was from a new recipe, using sour cream instead of milk, which made it quite moist. My friend loved the Ugg boot, to, and I am sure it is the world's smallest Ugg Boot!

Halloween (2)

And for my own pre trick or treat dinner I made more lemon and coconut cupcakes (yum) as well as halloween sugar cookies and decorated them in royal icing.

Halloween (part 1)

I offered to make 24 cupcakes for Ewan's Halloween party at school. Life is so much easier with my kitchen aid mixer........I decided I wanted the cupcakes to be special, even though 4 year old would probabky devour them in one bite! So I did my first attempt of using the candy melt method after being inspired by the book Little Cakes from The Whimsical Bakehouse http://www.amazon.com/Little-Cakes-Whimsical-Bakehouse-Cupcakes/dp/0307382826/ref=bxgy_cc_b_img_b...... This is a really cute book with lots of ideas and recipes. A few of which I can't wait to try. Anyway here are my results. It took a lot of time and effort but the results I think were worth it! Especially after the feedback I got from the teachers.

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My first request......

I was asked by my neighbour to make a cake for her work colleague's birthday, nothing fancy just lots of chocolate! So that is exactly what i did, with chocalate raspberry frosting and with some chocolate buttercream roses thrown in for good measure.

My neighbour has also asked me to do her son's 3rd birthday cake (Disney cars theme) so looking forward to that at the end of the month and coming up with some ideas..........unfortunately for me Lighting McQueen is red, and I hate doing red food colouring!

Liz's Birthday

Despite being exhaused after my efforts with Austin's cake, his mum, AKA one of my best/oldest friends here decided to have a birthday also around this date, and of course who can resist the temptation to make another cake!!!

This was a simple cake but i wanted it to be totally adult and delectable for a group of girls.....so i made a Chocolate Baileys carmel cake with chocolate Caramel Baileys frosting.........yummmm is all i can say, def. could taste the Baileys but that was my intention! All 1/2 cup of it (just in the cake).....I also played around with candy melts for the first time which was fun using them as shavings and leaf cutouts! A good opportunity to practice!

Optimus Prime Truck Transformer cake

Here is the results of my largest cake yet, finished on sunday in time for my friends son's birthday! I made most of the fondant details last week, and started the rest the beginning of this week (6 days before) . The cake was a big success, and I was really pleased with the result.



It is 22 inches long in total, and comprised of 2 x 9x13 inch yellow cakes, 1 x 9x13 inch chocolate cake and 1 x 9 inch sq chocolate cake. the cakes we sandwiched together in different layers of strawberry Jam preserve and also chocolat buttercream frosting.



I also used fondant details and painted them in edible silver dust. The large square piece of fondant ont he back is Optimus Prime's face done as a stencil, spraypainted and then outlined (all edible). The pipes are made from pretzel sticks wrapped in fondant!

Finale Cake Wilton fondant and gumpaste course (Day 2)

Ok so I had problems with the marzipan, the taste was great the texture was wrong maybe it was because i did not add corn syrup? I made it last year and it was perfect and rolled onto my cake easily, this time it was a nightmare! I will have to think of another use for it! and try out a new recepie for christmas!

I ended up using an apricot glaze and 2 layers of fondant, boy fondant is hard to smooth over on a cake without creases! I guess practice makes perfect with this one, i can't see much call for fully covered cakes with fondant, i know most people prefer the taste of buttercream! Ithink i woudl much rather use fondant as a decorative tool instead!

I am going to be making a cake for my friend's son's 5th birthday ( a 3D transformer cake) and he has specifially requested no fondant, he only likes buttercream.........gosh kids are pickiy these days! LOL! That's a few weeks away yet, although I am already planning it!

Finale Cake Wilton fondant and gumpaste course

just preparing my finale cake for the Wilton Fondant and gum paste course. i have decided to do a traditional British fruit cake in an 8 inch round this time (as opposed to my usual white/yellow cake) so that the cake will last until my mum and sister come in 10 days! The fruit cake and my house smelt wonderful when it came out of the oven (3hrs 15mins of baking time) Phew!

You are supposed to allow a fruit cake to sit for several weeks and allow it to soak up the brandy on a weekly basis, so although i can't do that this time, i at least have a practice cake before christamas! Being a brit living in the USA tradional christmas fruit cakes are either very expensive or hard to find! So I decided making my own from scratch is the best way to go!

I will use apriocot glaze over the fruit cake and then cover it in the marzipan I have made which i will use as a base cover and then use rolled fondant to cover the cake. I am not sure yet how I want it to look yet, i am waiting for inspiration! The class is tomorrow! I will probably use a combination of the fondant flowers i have made in previous classes with additional decoration.