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.