Topsy Turvy Teapot course

These past couple of months I have concentrated on honing my existing skills and learning as much as I can about anything related to cake decorating.  Over the Easter holidays I packed my bags and headed up to the Netherlands for a topsy turvy teapot course.  When I saw this course advertised I enthusiastically signed up at once, as I still have painful memories of having my daughter's topsy turvy cake collapse in front of all her friends.  I was determined to learn how to do this right!  Then to have the Kaysie Lackie of The People's Cake (http://www.thepeoplescake.com/) in Seattle teach this course really was the crowning glory of it all.

At this point a lot of you non-cake people are probably wondering, Kaysie who?  Well let me enlighten you:  Kaysie Lackey is a young, very talented cake artist who is probably best known for winning the Food Network Challenge not once, but three times!  She has also won several cake competitions and has been featured in several magazines. These days she tours the world giving cake courses while running her own cake business.  A very impressive young lady indeed.

On the first day of the course we concentrated on creating plates of various sizes out of gumpaste, and making the teapot spout, handle and the teacup handle.  Sounds like an easy day, but believe me, we worked hard all day.  We had to make everything in duplicate, or even triplicate (except the plates) to allow for breakages.  Thank goodness we did, because of some bizarre quirk the gumpaste was not behaving as it should and took much longer than usual to set firm.  This made them more fragile, too, so there were a fair number of breakages on the day we put things together.

We also spent a lot of time cutting and carving foam core of various thicknesses to form the base of the teapot and teacup.  I learned to dislike carving foamcore intensely!  Still, I do appreciate it's surprising strength and versatility.  The next step was stacking and carving our cakes.  Below is the bottom of my teapot in all it's naked glory.

Kaysie of course made carving look sooo easy and effortless, as you can see in the next picture!  What she did in just a few minutes took me forever!

                                        

Day two was spent covering the teapot with fondant, making the lid and carving the teacup.  We also hand-painted  all the components.  Being terminally indecisive, I had drawn and sketched my cake before the onset of the course.  I figured that I will have gone through a lot of trouble and money to take this course, so I'd better be pleased with my end results.  Ambitiously I also decided to try some folk art on my teapot; something I have literally never done before in any medium. So a couple of days before the start of the course I looked up some video tutorials and practised some strokes on my marble worktop.  Then I practiced some more on a teaplate in my hotel room.  The brushes that I have weren't great for the job, but when it came time to actually apply brush to my teapot, it seemed to go ok.

To my surprise I generated a lot of curiosity from my fellow course mates and there was that awkward moment when I was pressured into giving a quick demo in the middle of Kaysie's course.  I did say over and over that really, I've never done this before, but that seemed to fall on deaf ears.  Anyway, here's what I came up with.

                                       

Here is a picture of my naked teapot, just waiting to be painted. 

Having done so much on the first two day, I was naively expecting the last day to be nice and easy.  How wrong I was!  First task was to construct the armature for our cakes, so out came the screwdrivers and power tools. Once the flange was securely in place we covered out baseboard in black fondant and then proceeded to make  cobblestones. Kaysie showed us how to make realistic looking stone using three colours of fondant and three colours of dilute paint.  The finished result was surprisingly realistic.

Once that was done we covered the bottom tier (in our case a dummy cake) with white chocolate fondant for the tablecloth.  Then came the exciting part; stacking everything together!  In the midst of all this hullabaloo a reporter from the local newspaper came!!!  He took loads of pictures, interviewed  the organizer of this course and then filmed a sequence to be aired on the web news page!  So I got my 30 seconds of fame on this newsclip, haa haa!

The last thing we did was make a plate of sandwiches and pastries to hang precariously over the edge of the table.  We were again given free rein to do whatever we wanted.  In the end we all shared our little cakes.  So the little filled cookies and liquorice allsorts are from another course member.  In return she has some my swiss roll.

Once we had all completed our masterpieces, a great deal of time was spent taking pictures; pictures of our cakes individually all together, with Kaysie's cake, with us individually, group shots etc etc. 

All in all it was a very intense three days of tuition in which I believe we all learned so very much.  Kaysie was an excellent teacher who demonstrated with humour and patience throughout. 

By the way, I transported this cake home almost fully assembled (only the teacup and pastry plate were removed) and it survived a 4.5 hour drive at speeds well over 120km/hr and it survived intact!  Now it is gracing our coffee table at home until I can bring myself to dismantle it.  In time I will redo this cake entirely out of styrofoam so I can display it indefinitely.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wedding cake practice

 The year has got off to a nice, slow start which after an incredibly hectic November and December I am actually relishing!  Best of all it has given me time to practice new and trendy techniques which can be used for wedding cakes and anything else really.

 I had been dying to try out this new technique called billowing for ages; I just haven't had the time or the opportunity until now.  It looks just like puffs of fabric and I loved how very easy and effective it was.

Then I bit the bullet and tried brush embroidery on the middle tier.  I admit I have tried this once before, but the results were so dismal that I never photographed it.  This time it came out better, but is clearly something I need to practice a lot more!  I liked the way the blossoms came out, but next time I will leave out the vines.  It made the whole thing look a bit clumsy in my mind.

 My original plan for the top tier had been to try some royal icing string work, but after several hours of trying I scraped the whole thing off and decided to try ruffles instead!  I do want to master stringwork, but it will be some time before I am confident enough to go public with it!  After a lot of headbanging with the royal icing, the ruffle technique was gratifyingly simple and pretty.

Then this cake had to sit patiently for a week until I found the time to make a peony for the top.  I have been doing quite a lot o roses lately, so I thought with spring just around the corner, it would be good to practice my peony.  I have a new set of peony cutters, so this looks rather different from the peony I learned to do with Alan Dunn last year.

Next on the list is something romantic for Valentine's Day.  Orders are picking up, so hopefully I will have time to create something:)

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy holidays, happy new year!

It never ceases to amaze me how fast time can fly; has it really been nearly 2 months since I last posted!  The end of the year has always been the busiest time of the year at my day job, and not surprisingly it has become the busiest time of the year in my cake world.  In addition to birthdays and Christmas, 'tis the season for TLS's "Dickens by Candlelight" production.  A lovely interpretation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol".  For me it meant providing enough cupcakes and Christmas cake to keep 5 audiences happy during the intervals.  That translates to about 300 cupcakes and 150 portions of Christmas cake over a 4 day period.  More than once that meant baking after I finally got home at about 10pm.  Sleep became a coveted luxury!

In addition to all that I provided a cast party cake for the cast and crew.  I had all kinds of grand ideas as to what it would look like, but in the end time, or more precisely the lack thereof, dictated the outcome. I was so busy that I never even took pictures of the cake, let alone all the cupcakes and Christmas cake.

So instead I've posted pictures of this year's Christmas cakes.  The snowman is an Alan Dunn design and provided the theme for this year's Christmas orders.  Seven of these cakes were made this year, with slight variations to the theme.  The poinsettia cake was a labour of love and ambition for my parents.  I shipped this cake to Finland and hope to goodness it arrived in one piece!

Finally, the bauble cake was our family cake for this year.  It was a rush job done on Christmas eve morning but I love how it came out.  I took inspiration for the side design from my daughter's cardigan and the rest sort of evolved by itself.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cymbidium Orchid Cake

This cake was ordered days after I delivered the Hibiscus cake by another colleague for  her Mum's 75th birthday.  The brief was simply,"white Cymbidium orchids, make it look beautiful".  I didn't really have clear idea in my head how I wanted the cake to look, but I started out by making the orchids. I took my time, making lots more than I needed so that I could pick and choose the best ones for the cake.  Once the orchids were complete, everything sort of evolved by itself from there.  I decided that a very, very pale ruby colour should be used to cover the cake.  Then I realised I needed something in a soft, delicate green and the next thing I knew I was making eucalyptus leaves.  My next idea was to add some tiny filler flowers, such as jasmine or stephanotis, but as usual, I ran out of time.

It always amazes me just how much time making something as simple as leaves can take.  Each leaf needs to be individually wire, veined and dusted before they can be wired together to form a stem.  It also took ages for me to figure out how to wire the flowers and leaves together to make an attractive spray for the cake.  Alan Dunn makes it look so simple, but trust me, it isn't!!!

All in all I was extremely pleased with the way this cake came out.  Hard and time consuming as they are to make, I must say that flowers give me the most pleasure to make. There is something so unbelievably beautiful in even the simplest flowers.  For me it is such a thrill to be able to even vaguely reproduce that beauty.

In closing I can't resist adding that the recipient was so delighted with this cake that she refused to let anyone cut it!  She has put it on display for all to see and no amount of pleading can make her eat this one!  Luckily it is a sacher torte which keeps very well for longer periods.  Even so, perhaps I should have made it out of styrofoam........

Thanks for stopping by!

Tropical flowers and elephants

With summer at an end and autumn upon us, the pace has picked  up once again.  I have noticed some evolution in the type of cakes requested of me, which for the most part pleases me greatly.  Having invested a great deal of time and money in learning the art of sugar flowers, I had been a little disappointed that these were the one thing that were not in demand.  This hibiscus cake has changed the pattern.  This is a cake I made as a thank you gift to our fitness trainer on her last day with our group.  It was my first attempt at hibiscus and cape leadwort, so I made twice as many flowers as I needed and picked the best of the bunch.

The cake itself is an organic chocolate zucchini cake filled with organichazelnut chocolate ganache and covered with organic white ganache.  I recently made another organic chocolate cake and tried to make organic fondant.  It was such a headache, so expensive and so utterly impossible to work with that I swore I would never do anything with organic fondant again!  Please note that there is nothing organic about these flowers:))

Approximately the same time I had an order for an elephant cake.  Although no flowers were involved, I thoroughly enjoyed making this one.  The original detail had been for a fully 3-D elephant standing up, but after sleeping on it I realised that I didn't have the experience, let alone the knowledge to do this.  I knew I didn't have enough time to do a trial run, so this is the compromise.  The head is solid fondant with gumpaste ears and tusks.  I think I was a bit timid with the wrinkles and folds, but in the end better safe than sorry!

My original design was to be of an Indian elephant with full parade paraphenalia, but at the last minute I changed my mind and made him an African elephant.  I loved the idea of the massive ears much more....and luckily so did the birthday girl!

A Year has Passed.....

Hard to believe it has been over a year since my first blog entry, yet so much has happened and I have learned more than I ever thought I would in a year.  One Lorraine McKay figure course and two Alan Dunn sugar flower courses later I like to think my skills have significantly increased.  Although I started out a year ago thinking I would branch out into the world of cupcakes,  I now realise  that my ultimate love is for sugar flowers.  Alan Dunn never ceases to amaze me with  his talent, and I have a dream of one day being able to make flowers that look absolutely real.

After my great success with the Christmas cakes I made in bulk for many of my colleagues, the New Year saw a marked increase in cake orders for me.  Most of them were children's cakes, a great place to begin, I believe!  Although somewhat limited in how much one can earn with children's cakes, I have to admit that they are always great fun and immensely rewarding to make.  I treasure the wide-eyed looks of wonder and delight of each birthday child when he/she sees his/her cake for the first time.  it means more to me than the money I earn from the cake to see those little faces shining with delight!

When I make cakes for adults, the focus is entirely different; despite the admiration for the cake itself, usually the key factor is the flavour of the cake.  How delicious the cake is seems to be the ultimate criteria.  Just recently a friend and colleague ordered two undecorated cakes for a party he was planning.  He actually wrote on the invite that there will be "Sonja's cakes"!!!  What a compliment that was:)  Lest I lead you astray, I should also note that despite the shift in emphasis with adult cakes (and I don't mean naughty cakes!) these have invariably also been the most challenging to make.

After a year of  making cakes to the tune of nearly four a week, excluding the summer holidays, it's time to start writing the business plan and to make concrete plans for the future.  My clients and friends, colleagues who have bought my cakes have given me the confidence to really make this a reality.  So time was spent this past summer talking to people and my banker about my prospects and finances.  With a lot of very encouraging feedback I am hatching a plan.

But before I can fulfill this plan I need to take more courses and practice, practice, practice my decorating and my flower making skills.  I also need to  compete, successfully I might add, in order to give myself more credibility.  Sooooo, come next spring I will be entering my first competition(s).  Wish me luck and keep your fingers crossed for me!!!!!!

Making Godetias

Back home at last and definitely time to catch up on my blogging!  I have been traveling a lot and so have taken a break from cake making.  Nevertheless, I had time to practice my flower making skills while relaxing in the country.  My father challenged me to make him some sugar Godetias, which he is particularly fond of.  With no tutorials, cutters or veiners for this particular flower, only the real thing as a model, I accepted the challenge.

I wish I had a better picture of the original, but by the time I thought to do so, a downpour had rendered most of the Godetias in the garden unsalvageable.  So this rather pathetic little bloom served as my model.  I took one of the blossoms and dissected it into all it's separate parts and then set about finding a petal cutter that would most closely resemble that of the Godetia.  I did think of cutting the petals free hand, but wanted to guarantee a uniform size.  In the end I used a GEM cutter for the cymbidium orchid throat, from which I trimmed the sides straight and cut off the tip.  Then I made a little notch in the top of the petal.  I wired each petal with a 28 gauge wire, softened the edges with a ball tool and used the silk veining tool on both sides of the petal.  I then left them to dry on paper towel petal formers.

Once I had made enough petals for 6 blossoms, I made several buds by rolling a small ball of sugarpaste into a narrow cone and threading it on to 26 gauge wire.  With the narrow end of the Dresden tool I made three longitudinal scores around the bud.  The leaves were made freehand by rolling a small ball of sugarpaste on to a 28 gauge wire , then shaping it into a small cone before rolling it flat.  I then softened the edges with a balling tool and gently shaped each leaf by pinching it in at the base, making a gentle fold and then gently bending the wire to a slightly curved shape.  Once dry I dusted the buds and the leaves with a mixture of lime. white and ivy green dusting powder.  The leaves were slightly darker than the buds and I made sure to leave the central vein undusted.  The real Godetia has leaves and flowers all down it's stem, but I decided to make only one group of flowers at the top, with only a few leaves and buds on each stem.

To make the pistil I used a 22 gauge wire and bent a small loop at the top with pliers.  Then I made 4 tiny, tiny teardrop shaped balls which I flattened with my fingers before using CMC glue to stick on the wire around the loop.  Once all 4 were firmly attached I pinched the tip of each ball and curved each one outwards.  For the stamens I used 30 gauge wire cut into short lengths.  I used a miniscule amount of sugar paste and twiddled it on to the wire.  the aim was to make a very narrow, pointed stamen.  Once I was satisfied with the shape of the stamen, I very gently curved the tip of the stamen.  Four stamens were needed for each blossom.

Once the pistils and stamens were dry, I wired 4 stamens around each pistil and arranged the stamens so that they were all curving outwards. I then dusted the stamens with a mixture of lemon and primrose dusting powder and set them aside.

Since Godetias come in a large variety of pinks, reds and even white, Dad wanted me to make the two stems I was making in different shades.  So I decided on salmon pink and bright fuchsia.  Unfortunately I didn't have the exact shades in dusting powders, but I got fairly close with the salmon by using pink, rose pink and a pinch of primrose.  Each petal was dusted before I wired them together.  I left the edges almost white, and made the middle of the petal deeper in colour for a more realistic effect.

For the fuchsia petals I mixed plum with vermillion and rose pink.  For the base of each petal I added white and brushed on a very pale layer on both sided.  Then I started from the top of each petal with the stronger colour and worked my way down towards the base, leaving a clear demarkation of colour.

Once all the petals were dusted I wired 4 petals around each stamen-pistil group, overlapping each petal slightly with the previous one.  To make the sepal I took some pale green sugarpaste, rolled it out fairly thin and cut a very fat teardrop shape freehand.  I then softened the tip of the teardrop with a balling tool and used the silk veiner to vein the outside of the sepal.  After moistening the base of the teardrop I wrapped it around the base of the flower, pinching it in firmly right beneath the petals and then twiddling the rest down the stem.  I didn't quite get the shape I wanted, but according to Dad it looked real enough.   Then I used the thin end of the Dresden tool to score the base longitudinally.  I shaped the tip by pinching the tip and gently curving the very tip outwards.  Once it had had some time to dry, I dusted it the same colour as the buds.   

At last it was time to wire everything together.  First I wired a bud just below each flower.  Next I wired three flowers together, bending the stems to make an "umbrella" of flowers.  Starting at the point where all three flower stems met, I attached the leaves in pairs with each subsequent pair at right angles to the previous pair.  Next I dusted the leaf and bud stems to blend in with the leaves and stems.  Finally, to seal the colours I steamed both stems of flowers and sprayed the petals with glaze to give them a bit of a shine.

Dad was immensely pleased with his Godetias and planned to use them on his birthday cake.  I only wish I could have been there to make the whole cake for him!