Another Alan Dunn class

I cannot believe it has been over a month since I last posted!  Time certainly does fly when you are having fun.  Needless to say I have been incredibly busy these past few weeks, what with cakes, work, horses and my family.  So busy that even when I have had a moment to spare, I have been simply too shattered to write anything.  Now I am in the middle of a long holiday weekend and had (gasp) only one order for a dozen cupcakes to deal with.

So, my dear readers, here's what I have been up to since last I wrote: Last weekend, just barely over a month after I traipsed over to England to learn the art of sugarcrafting with Alan Dunn, I find myself yet again attending a course of his.  This time  the venue was in Donderen, Holland, in the company of about 20 other women.  Never in my wildest dreams did I forsesee learning from him again so soon, yet there I was; bright eyed and bushy tailed, eager to learn.  Donderen is a tiny, adorable little village about 4 hours drive north from when I live, so when I realized Alan was going to be teaching there, I signed up right away (with Alan's help!).

 The two day course aimed at teaching us how to make a Clematis, nigella corsage out of either sugar paste or cold porcelain.  I chose the latter as it is less fragile and therefore easier to transport.  When he announced that we would be making one clematis flower with one nigella flower to accompany it, I naively thought this would be a nice, relaxing weekend........how wrong I was!  First of all, all the other women were professionals, and possibly half of them were sugarcraft teachers themselves.  Talk about feeling like the newbie!  Secondly, the pace was relentless and by Sunday noon I was seriously fighting panic.  It seemed to me that everyone else was so much faster and more proficient than I was.

First I got impatient making the centre of the clematis; so many stamens to make and glue on.  I realized afterwards that I hadn't made nearly enough.  it's fiddly, exacting work and my eyes were having serious trouble focusing on such small detail.  I really do need to go get my eyes checked.........Then there were so many leaves to make. Each leaf is made of three leaflets.  The leaves are arranged in pairs up the stem and we had to make AT LEAST 8 pairs of leaves.  That's 48 leaflets that need to be individually shaped, veined, wired and dusted.  I was barely half way through making the leaves when Alan was already demonstrating how the needle-like leaves of the nigella plant are made.  Each stem had to have 5 sets of 3 leaflets and we were supposed to make lots of stems.  I never got further than 2 stems.

Making the clematis flower itself was rewarding work, although I had a few moments of insecurity when I compared mine to my classmates' flowers.  Mine seemed so plain and anemic next to the vivid purples and blues that were being made.  I don't know why I chose pink; probably because no one else chose pink!  Again, although we were supposed to make only one flower, several women managed to find the time to make two, or even three!!!!!  We were also supposed to make butterflies, but I opted out when I realised I wouldn't have enough time as it was.  Besides, only a month earlier Alan had shown me how to make his gorgeous butterflies.

Class was supposed to end at 16:30 on Saturday afternoon, but at 18:30 we were still working hard.  At 19:30 we left in a cavalcade to a neighbouring village for dinner, after emptying our wallets in Ellen's charming little store (see picture below).  I have to say that the pizza we ate was the toughest, most leathery pizza I have ever eaten.  2 hours of dogged sawing and jaw-numbing chewing later, not one of us had finished our pizza!  We were definitely hungry, but after so much effort we were too exhausted to continue eating!  With seemingly endless reserves of energy Ellen invited us all to her charmingly cluttered home for drinks after dinner.  By now it was close to midnight and I at least was flagging.

My hotel was about 3km from Ellen's place, but when I got there it seemed to me that all the doors were locked!  I had been given a key for the front door, but none of the doors I tried had locks that matched the key!  00:30 and I'm getting seriously worried.  Worst of all, I had left my notebook with all the necessary phone numbers at the course venue.  Finally, after creeping all round the hotel I located the kitchen door, which amazingly was open!  Frowning at the poor level of security, but happy for the carelessness, I entered the hotel through the kitchen, much to the consternation of the bartender who was still on duty.  I explained to him my difficulty getting in, whereupon he showed me a side door I had not noticed earlier, which was open, saying that that door was the front door to the hotel...and it was  open!  Ooooooohhhhh.....Feeling mightily foolish I slunk upstairs to my room and to bed.

Sunday morning saw all of us present at the course venue no later than 9:15 ready to start the day.  This being despite Alan saying he was not going to be there before 10:00.  I spent my time catching up with my leaves.  When it came time to show us how to do the nigella flower, he showed us two versions.  One was a very impressive, showy flower with feathery petals in the most delicate of pink and white shades.  The second was a much simpler version which could be done in pale blue or white and green.  Just about everyone else chose to do the fancier version, whereas I, being pragmatic, realized I would never have time to complete this version, chose the simpler one.  Hopefully I will have time soon to try making the fancy nigella, just for my own satisfaction.

If all we had to do on Sunday was the nigella, I would have been fine.  But no, we had to make endless stems of grass and lollipop shaped seed heads, the name of which escapes me now.  They were not difficult, but for me at least, they were inordinately time consuming.  Again, I made the fewest of all, for no other reason than lack of time.  By 16:00 Alan offered to dust, ie colour my grass stems for me.  Boy was I grateful for that help!  He was bent hell on dusting the seed heads in aubergine and I was just as adamant that they would NOT be aubergine.  In the end I got my way, even though they looked more like lavender than grass in the end.

Knowing I had a long drive home ahead of me in stormy conditions, I reluctantly left by 17:00.  Unfortunately, my sat nav decided not to function, and after 35 km of driving north instead of south I realized to my horror that I didn't have a road map in the car after all!  I never strayed on to the wrong road, having listed them on a piece of paper, but more than once I merrily drove in the direction, for a grand total of nearly and hour and a half.  I was tired and grumpy by the time I got home, but my daughter, who had been left to her own devices all weekend was lonely and had soooo much to tell me that I couldn't go straight to bed.  Never has it been harder to get up for work on a Monday morning as it was the following day!

It was a week before I had the time to photograph my corsage and upload all my pictures from the weekend.  Once I had uploaded pictures of the clematis I saw it in different eyes.  Yes, it had been one of the least showy versions made, but now I am much happier with the results than I was last week.  I have to keep reminding myself that I have only really been making sugarpaste flowers for a few months now, when all the others had years of experience.  I have had the supreme fortune of being taught by the very best and in time I will be much, much better than I am now.  In addition to more lessons, I need to find the time to simply keep practicing.

Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother's Day at least in Germany, Finland and USA.  This naturally meant that I had a busy weekend, despite being a mother myself!  It also meant that I got to make lots of lovely flowers, which always makes me happy. 

One of my projects was to make a cupcake bouquet for the wife of a colleague of mine.  Having done two of them in the past, I got a bit more ambitious with this one.  I thought that instead of just putting piped rose swirls on the cupcakes, I would actually make fondant roses the proper way (minus the wires).  For variety and balance I made lots of hydrangea blossoms.  On paper it was a great idea, but the logistical problems emerged when it was time to attach the cupcakes to the styrofoam ball.  Namely the roses were so heavy that they were in severe danger of falling off.  So instead of using cocktail sticks to spear the cupcakes on to the ball, I decided to use wooden grill sticks cut long enough to spear...and thus hopefully secure...the rose on each cupcake.

In practice I had to avoid putting roses on the lowest level and the cellophane I used to gift wrap the bouquet also became a support system for the lowest cupcakes.  Not sure what I am doing wrong (other than using too heavy toppers!), but I  am definitely going to have to rethink how I put these bouquets together.

Nevertheless, the problems and headaches that came with making this order were all well worth it when the recipient teared up with joy and flung her arms around me in happiness.  I kept telling her that the gift wasn't actually from me, even though I created it.  The bouquet was delivered relatively early on Sunday morning, so for me it was a perfect start to a lovely day.

Having already completed two cake projects for the weekend, I wasn't ready to call it quits yet.  I had baked a small, 15cm single layer chocolate cake from left over batter from a birthday cake I had made for Saturday, with the idea that my daughter could use it to make a Mother's Day cake for me.  At the last minute I announced that I  wanted to decorate my own cake.  Sounds weird, I know, but I had an idea in my head for a cake that nobody had ordered and I wanted to do it for my portfolio.  My daughter rolled her eyeballs at me, called me nuts, but ultimately was happy to go along with it as she had a massive project for school to complete.

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday, so I sat in our garden and spent a few merry hours making sweet peas and lilies of the valley for my cake.  Both were flowers I had learned to do the other week with Alan Dunn, but as with everything else, practice makes perfect.  I  used a different brand of flower paste than Alan uses, and it gave me ENORMOUS problems!  It cracked, it dried too fast, it was brittle beyond belief etc etc etc.  This meant that I only got half the number of flowers done than I had intended, because so many petals broke, failed or merely refused to cooperate.

I also finally understood the importance of having high quality tools to work with.  At the moment I have a fairly haphazard collection of paint brushes I use exclusively with cake work and I have never really spared a second thought to them.  If my shading was off, or my painting was less than perfect, I blamed myself, and not the equipment.  Having spent three days using state-of-the-art equipment with Alan, I realised that the quality of one's brushes can have a significant impact on the quality of one's work.  I also realised how woefully inadequate my collection of dusting powders is, with the inevitable result that the leaves are far from the colour I was aiming for.  Also, not having a small enough and sharp enough cutting wheel is far more restrictive than not having the correct cutter!  Needless to say, my next shopping list includes GOOD paintbrushes, a tiny cutting wheel, and a whole host of dusting powders!

Learning to make sugar flowers with Alan Dunn

 As promised, here they finally are; the results of three intense days of tutelage under Alan Dunn, probably one of the best sugar flower artists in the world.  During those three days I experienced the whole gamut of emotions ranging from complete and utter self-doubt; "God, I'll never be able to these like he does" to hope and exhilaration; "Hey, not bad for someone as inexperienced as myself!"

On meeting him for the first time I was pleasantly surprised.  I think I had set myself up to expect him to be somewhat arrogant and worldly, but the man who answered my knock on his door was gentle, unassuming and infinitely patient.  He made me feel completely at home and relaxed, making the three days I spent with him very pleasant.

On day one we plunged right into the deep end and he taught me how to make this breathtaking open peony.  Watching him roll out these ultra-thin petals I was struck how easy he made it look.  My first efforts were pathetic compared to him and I was downright embarrassed! However, he remained patient and eventually he declared that we have enough petals to create a peony.  Putting all those wired petals together and wrapping them in florists tape was  harder than making the petals!  I really felt I had 10 thumbs and had great difficulty getting them wrapped tight enough.  But I got it, eventually!

 On my list of things I wanted to learn, I had put down lilies of the valley.  They are my absolute favourite flowers and though I had imagined them to be tricky to make, I still wanted to know how.  To my infinite surprise and delight, they turned out to be the easiest of all!  In fact, they were so easy that I almost felt disappointed.  When I was setting these lilies of the valley up to be photographed, I added a real one in the middle just for comparison.

 Sweet peas were also on my wishlist,  mainly because I simply couldn't fathom how they were constructed. Again, though not exactly simple, Alan's way of making them was far simpler than I could have imagined.  Putting them together was trickier, and although this picture makes them look nice, the petals on my blossoms were in fact a bit wobbly.  I should point out that the sweet pea buds and the uppermost flower are done by Alan himself.  Only the lower two are mine.  Even so, without me asking he wired them all together to make this single stem.

 No flower course would be complete without a lesson on how to make a rose.  The rose is far and away the most popular flower to put on cakes, but also one of the hardest in my mind.  It's not just a matter of putting all the petals together to make a rose, but learning to give the bloom life is an art form in itself.    What surprised me the most was how many petals are needed just for the centre.  Alan kept coaxing me to wrap them tighter and tighter, and to add more and more petals.  Just making that one rose took up most of day two.  In a moment of self-doubt I made some comment about being so very slow, but he was quick to reassure me that no, they take a lot of time and that he's had students much slower than me.

 When browsing through his website prior to the course, I came upon a picture of a butterfly he had made.  it was so breathtakingly delicate and beautiful, that I put that down on my wishlist as well.  By the time he showed me how to construct the body, I was no longer surprised at his attention to detail. Not only did he include the head, thorax and body, but antennae and a proboscus too!

I could go on and on with blow by blow accounts of how exactly we achieved these amazing flowers and the sheer effort (for me) to make them.  There was so much to absorb in each day that I was literally too exhausted to do anything in the evenings.  To be sure, good technique (and a steady hand) are essential for making good sugar flowers, but at the end of it all I don't think that was the biggest lesson I learned with Alan.  He never actually came out and said it, but listening to him, observing him in the garden during our lunch breaks, watching him demonstrate how to create a certain kind of petal, it dawned on me that how one actually sees a flower is what really counts.

Though I have always had an affinity to nature, I haven't ever truly studied flowers and how exactly they are constructed until now.  I have a computer full of photographs of all kinds of flowers and blossoms I have taken over the years, but still I never thought to look so close as to see the relationship between petals, sepals stamens and calixes before.  At first glance a columbine looks so very complex, but this morning I stopped and studied one on my way to the bakery and realized that in fact it was much simpler than I had ever suspected.  I studied flowering hawthorn, rambling roses, forget-me-nots and a host of other flowers this morning and marveled at nature's engineering.  Along with this child-like marveling, I am itching to put my lessons and observations into practice and start making flowers for no other reason than to recreate what nature has designed so well.

In closing I cannot resist including a picture of beautiful Lizy, Alan's oriental black cat.  This little imp provided endless hours of entertainment and comic relief with her attention-getting antics.  By far the most amusing cat I have ever met and I have fallen head over heels in love with her.

Easter rush....

 This Easter was definitely the most rushed and "unholiday-like" that I have experienced!  All work and no play as the saying goes.  Unfortunately it was so busy that almost the only quality time I had with my daughters was just prior to Easter when I thought to include them in the Easter cupcake process.  With no tutorials and armed only with our imaginations the three of us sat down to create some Easter chicks and bunnies for cupcake toppers.

 We worked hard, laughed a lot and made an unholy mess of my "studio" and came up with some cute little figures.  I then baked and iced some cupcakes and again gave my daughters free rein to decorate the cuppies as they wished.  This is what they came up with.  I thought they were adorable and this box was proudly presented to my brother and niece when they stopped by for the night on their way back to England.

 Easter weekend continued at a frenetic pace with three birthday cakes to complete.  Below is my first ever attempt at a Barbie cake.  I wasn't happy with the draping of the over skirt, realizing after the cake was done and delivered that I could have first made the over skirt and then added the draping separately. Aah well, we live and learn!

 I also got to make another Minnie Mouse cake, which was interesting to compare to my first attempt a year ago.  Looking at it critically I feel that although this one has a far better finish and looks more professional, the proportions aren't as perfect as on the first one.  The ears are too close together, the bow is too narrow, etc etc etc.  I also experimented with my extruding gun to make the "piping" that trimmed the face and formed the letters.  I bought the extruding gun when I was at the Lorraine McKay course in Maastricht earlier this year, but except to make hair I haven't had the time to play with it to see what else it can do.  I really liked how easy it was to make "piping" and saw the beginning of a long and meaningful friendship with this handy little gadget.

 Easter Sunday was spent creating yet another birthday cake, this time for a colleague of mine.  This cake was challenging on so very many levels that I found it hard to know where to begin.  The cake had to be gluten free.  The flavour was to be a complete surprise, as was the theme.  The cake had to include marzipan and be as "fondant free" as possible.  I decided to recruit the help of my colleague's husband and instantly regretted it.  He wanted the cake to have a "Strandkorb" which is a German beach chair for two that can be folded away into a huge basket.  The beach had to be reminiscent of the beaches on the island of Sylt in the North Sea.

Originally I thought to cover the cake in marzipan to represent the sand, but the only marzipan I could find was very dark, and since the sands of Sylt are almost white I rejected that idea.  However, the problem remained on how to incorporate marzipan into the cake.  Hmmmm.....Finally it came to me:  A chocolate cake made with rice and corn flour, filled with marzipan and raspberry coulis.  So after much experimentation  on how to soften the marzipan and much consultation with experts on the internet, I concocted a marzipan spread out of brandy, heavy cream and marzipan.

Now came the next problem; what else other than marzipan can one use to cover a cake that is not too sweet?  White chocolate ganache!  Whipped up to lighten the texture and to enable me to make it look like sand.  The sand dunes were made of white chocolate modelling paste which I placed on the cake prior to icing it with the ganache.  I used MM fondant dyed blue to make the waves and to cover the board.  I made shells out of modelling chocolate and used them to decorate the base of the cake.

The Strandkorb was hugely challenging as I had to work out the construction in a way that it would be properly supported.  In the end I had to create a sand dune out of modelling chocolate to support the back rest.  Even so, it was leaning far more horizontally than I had originally intended it to be!

So that was my Easter.  Busy, busy, busy, but oh so much fun!

Weddings and romance

No sooner had I written my last entry when things got busy again. By last Sunday I was so tired that I actually was not looking forward to decorating any more cakes.  An alarming state of affairs!  Nevertheless I took a deep breath, grabbed a large mug of very strong tea and got to work on my last cake for the week.  Fortunately it was a relatively easy cake and one that I have done before.  You can take a look at my latest football themed cake in my  photo gallery.

In my last entry I also talked about making a wedding cake for practice, but not two days went by when lo and behold I got my first order for a bona fide, real wedding cake.  Sooo, it was scrap the practice and jump in the deep end.  Fortunately it was for only 35 people which made the task just a little less daunting.  I was given very little instruction as to how the cake was supposed to look, except what involved the topper.  There is a very inside joke involving "soup chicks", thus I was asked to make a bridal hen and rooster in a bowl of soup, with the bride's cat somehow involved.  This is what I came up with.

Below is a picture of the whole cake complete with topper.  The side design mimics the pattern on the bride's dress and is painted freehand directly on the cake.  My original idea was to pipe the design on with black royal icing, but my piping skills are so rusty, that after a couple of practice runs on a dummy cake I gave up.  Painting black on white was also quite frankly terrifying!  I admit to being so nervous about doing this that I sat in front of the pristine white cake with my paintbrush in hand for ages before I mustered the courage to begin.  In the end it came out better than I expected, but boy, was it stressful!

A little while before this wedding cake a friend of mine had a birthday, so I decided to surprise her with a mini heart shaped cake as a gift.  Vintage style cakes are also very much an in thing these days and now I had a perfect opportunity to try one.  I love the combination of light blue/duck egg with pink and so this colour combination came instantly to mind.  I also had some new jacobean style cutters that were just begging to be tried out.  The combination of tiny roses, pearls and gold was heavily influenced by cupcakes I had seen on Flickr by Cotton and Crumbs.

Easter will be busy with seasonal cupcakes/cakes for family and friends.  The week after Easter promises to be exciting as it has become official that I will be spending 3 days with the renowned Alan Dunn famed for his sugar flowers extraordinaire receiving personal instruction on the fine art of making lifelike flowers!!!  I am thrilled about this opportunity and can hardly wait!  I promise you I will blog ALL about it by the end of April.

Spring flowers

With sunny skies and longer days, spring is definitely here despite the cold nights.  The snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils are in full bloom and it won't be long before the cherry trees start to blossom!  After the inevitable green cake for St. Patrick's Day, I had a relatively quiet weekend to look forward to.  I had a cupcake "sampler" order for Monday which inevitably left me with extra cupcakes. 

For a while I have been itching to try making a cupcake bouquet and now that I had both the time and the cupcakes, I got to work making flowers.  I also got to practice my buttercream roses, which I have to admit I haven't done in years.  The cupcakes are an assortment of vanilla, lemon, strawberry and chocolate flavours.  In the end I was pretty pleased with the result and so was my friend who received it.  She is battling cancer and I thought I would cheer her up with this edible bouquet.  Perhaps next time I make one of these I will try using fancier cupcake cases and more ribbon.  I think this is a great gift idea for anyone who loves cupcakes.

I also had time, finally, to practice making sugarpaste peonies.  Here is a picture of my very first attempt.  Not perfect, but I hope that in time they will get better.  They are not so much impossibly difficult as time consuming; each petal must be hand shaped and shaded and there are so many in each bloom!  To make this peony I followed an online tutorial...in German no less! For those interested the link is http://tortentante.blogspot.com/ .  Monika is a very talented lady whose cakes have won prizes and have been featured in wedding magazines. 

Last but not least, here is this year's St. Pat's Day creation.  Every year the Irish staff members throw a buffet lunch for all staff members at the school and it has become habit for me to provide the cake for them.   I will admit that the leprechaun is recycled from last year's cake, but everything else was fresh!  The beer mug was made from rice krispie treats with the "foam" being Bailey's flavoured buttercream, yum!  I am somewhat amused to see how inordinately popular the rice krispie treats are with the staff.  The Brits like it because I suppose it is a familiar treat from "back  home", but the Germans have been hitherto completely ignorant of this treat.

Next on my wishlist is time to make a tiered wedding cake, just to prove to myself that I can do it.  Tempting as it is to use up every free moment cake decorating, I do have to make time for my family and the garden occasionally!  However, before I get too caught up in the wedding cake theme, I have a birthday cake to create for my husband......

Busy times......

Last week was definitely the busiest I've had since December with cake projects to complete every evening after I came home from my day job.  It was challenging, exhausting, but also exhilarating.  I am always eager to learn new methods, try new things and extend my repertoire in general and last week was no exception! 

This champagne bottle cake was a first for me and much harder than I anticipated.  Having read on the internet that using rice krispie treats is the in thing to use in 3-D models, I decided to use this method for the bottle.  But I had a devil of a time getting the surface smooth enough for my liking.  In the end it came out OK; not perfect, but not so bad for my first effort!

The bucket was relatively easy and I was quite pleased with that.  The flowers were another first for me.  The design is loosely based on that of an anemone, but as you can see, there are no black stamens.  This is primarily because I didn't have any black stamens on hand, and in the end I ran out of time to dye them myself.  At one point I considered painting them on, but came to the conclusion that I liked them better this way.

Below is a close up of another fantasy flower I used last week for a different cake.  For this flower I followed the instructions of a tutorial and it involved wires to put the whole thing together. It was time consuming and a bit fiddly, but well worth the effort in the end! I am in the process of trying to get private tuition from a professional in the art of making realistic sugar flowers.  I yearn to make perfect flowers indistinguishable from the real thing.......

Below is a cake I did for a dear friend of mine at the request of her young daughters.  They knew exactly what they wanted their mother to have, and it was real pleasure to help them out.  This cake is not covered in fondant, as the girls were emphatic that they didn't want it for their Mum.  Instead I covered the cake with whipped ganache, but realised too late that it would have been better to use unwhipped ganache.  The latter would definitely have given a smoother finish! 

This is one of the things I find so frustrating about not being able to do this full-time.  My time is so very limited, being restricted to the evenings and weekends, that if I'm not happy with  the way something came out, I rarely have the time to do it over.  I find myself making more compromises than I am  happy with.  I get so envious when I read how a fellow cake decorator had time to experiment with an entire cake for no other reason than to practice a new technique.  Until I take the plunge and garner the courage to quit my day job, that luxury will not be a part of my life.



Speaking of experimentation, the McDonald's meal pictured below was a huge experiment for me, done with no tutorials or instructions of any kind.  I have never done this before, but I found it great fun, and not nearly as challenging as I expected!  This was all well and good as this was the last of 5 cakes I completed last week and I was literally exhausted.  My tiredness showed in that I made several crucial mistakes in the baking phase, and had to bake the cakes twice, with the first lot going in the bin.  The worst part of this was that it had to be a banana cake and I ran out of over ripe bananas.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find over ripe bananas in the supermarket when you need them?!  I didn't succeed in finding any, so had to make do with plain old ripe bananas.  I hope the flavour came out ok!

The drink was also made out of rice krispie treats and this time I was smarter.  I covered the rice krispie treats with buttercream frosting and stuck the whole thing in the fridge for an hour or so to harden.  Then I smoothed the frosting before covering it with fondant.  Much easier!

I also made two other cakes, which are pictured in my photo gallery, but not here.  They were easy and fun to do.  By Saturday night I was more tired than I remember being in a loooonnnng time after surviving on barely 5 hours of sleep a night all week.  Yet I was not stressed or strung out.  The true beauty of this work is that I find it so pleasurable, that no matter how busy, or tired I may be, I actually relax when I sit down to make my fondant creations.  And so I look forward to my future projects with glee!