tins and needles

Just before Christmas my sister asked me to make a 50th birthday cake for her friend. The birthday man loves  his music and was having a bit of a ‘jam’ session at his local bowling club to celebrate so I decided an electric guitar cake would be fun.

To be any fun…I had a crazy idea the guitar had to be a life size Fender Stratocaster. Here are the WIP shots.

For the wood grain effect I used the spray gun but got carried away so it ‘s a bit darker than I had liked.

Here’s a shot of the little bits and pieces going onto the cake.

I even managed to use a needle and thread for this cake. Yep, the guitar strings are a Perle 8 cotton(!) and I used the needle to thread them through the tuning pins.

It’s not everyday you blow out 50 candles so I made sure the birthday boy would have to huff and puff every single year of his age!

The cake was life size but not big enough to feed the whole party so I baked music themed cup cakes for the kids. The cakes were topped with music notes piped with royal icing.

For the cake stand I found some old vinyl records at the local op shop, bought a handle off ebay, googled some tutorials and $5 later had a pretty cool stand!

I loved how the cake stand turned out, might try this out with my stash of  pretty cake plates!

I’ve been busy baking in the kitchen. My friend Liz loves Tiffany & Co,  so I decided to make a little surprise for her 40th birthday present.

I started with this 5″ square cake…

Then added a lid.

And finally tied it all up with a bow!

So now my little girl wants a Tiffany box. She’ll have to settle for a cake one!

We had a birthday in the family last week so naturally I was in the kitchen baking some cakes. My little girl wanted a science party with slimy goo, magic potions, water rockets and an erupting volcano!  Here’s the birthday cake …

First step was baking it in a large dolly varden tin. This cake needed height, to avoid left over chocolate cake for a week(!), I used a covered styrofoam round for the base of the cake.

Then I made some coloured toffee and poured it over the cake tin to resemble lava. I used the spare shards of toffee for the lava sprays.

A couple bars of crushed peppermint crisps for the rocks and grass and it was all finished!

And of course it needed some sparks!

Birthdays in our household generally mean a week of celebrations. We had another party and this time my girl requested a ‘moshi monster’ cake. With some frosting, a printed logo and a few figurines, here’s the second cake…

Just a tip, instead of piping or printing logo’s using icing sheets, I often print the desired design on paper and cover it with clear contact. The contact protects the paper from any moisture in the icing. It’s quicker and cheaper than printing on icing sheets! Happy Baking!

Before I fell in love with fabric, my first hobby was cake decorating. After a couple of classes, I was hooked and had bought every cake decorating tool under the sun. But then I discovered it was easier to pack away fabric rather than wash up a kitchen full of cake tins!

So the cake decorating stopped and I bought a sewing machine and the rest is history. I did however pull my tins out this week and made a delicious chocolate mud cake for my cousin Kristy’s birthday. Kristy wanted a cake she had seen on the Couture Cake Classes website. I was afraid I’d lost my cake decorating skills…but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out….and it was a FUN cake to make!

Firstly the cake was covered in chocolate ganache to prepare it for the fondant.

Then I whipped out my Kitchen Aid pasta attachment (for the first time!) to help roll out the pink and white stripes to the same thickness.

And finally a candle on top for the finishing touch, and some matching camellias from the garden.

Design inspired by Couture Cakes

Now my little girl wants one for her birthday!