Sausage Dog on a Cake

So this one was another unusual request and not to mention a fairly big cake to make! There were plenty of worrying and stressful moments involved, I mostly hated sausage dogs throughout the entire icing process. Once I started to put the sausage dog together my worries started to melt away :)

The Project: Sausage Dog on a Cake
The Theme: Sausage Dog on a Cushion
Ingredients: 
Cushion:
For the Cake:
24 oz Sugar
24 oz Margarine
24 oz Self Raising Flour
12 Eggs
For the Icing:
1 large pack of Royal Icing
Purple Colouring Paste
Plain Butter Icing (coloured purple) for the middle
Jam for the middle
Sausage Dog:
For the Cake:
2 Eggs
3 oz Caster Sugar
3 oz Self Raising Flour
For the Icing:
Plain Butter Icing (Coloured purple) for the middle)
1 large pack of Royal Icing
Brown Food Colouring
Black Colouring Paste
Red Colouring Paste

This cake was made up of two layers for the Cushion, with a Swiss Roll to make up the Sausage Dog on the top. Lots of work involved, it was a really big challenge. I'm not sure that I would have done anything in particular different, but I would have allowed myself more time, even though I started it very early, this cake did take pretty much all day to finish and I still felt like I was pushed for time at the end.

This project did not start off particularly positively, I started baking the cake, once it had been in the oven for around 10 minutes, one of the flip switches turned off, resulting in the oven going off (nightmare for a half baked cake! If the temperature dropped too much, the middle would sink!) Thankfully the issue was found and I was able to carry on with the baking. Talk about scary though!

I made the cushion by baking two rectangular cakes and shaping them into a cushion shape with a knife. 

You can see a little better on the below picture, that I then smoothed off the edges and cut a little slope into each side and sandwiched them together using the purple butter icing and jam.

Once set, I covered it with the white icing and smoothed it over (which would have been a lot easier if I had one of those smoothing devices).

Around each edge,I created a cushion trim and tassels on the corners using the Royal Icing, coloured purple, and twisted together.

Although I was using edible glue to stick them to the side of the cake, they had to be held in place whilst they dried. I found that using pins (which had been sterilised) worked the best, as they didn't leave big marks in the cake and I could easily take them out when it was dry enough to hold itself up.

When the sides were on, I was able to cover the join with the tassels

Now that the cushion was mostly finished, I needed to move swiftly on to the Sausage Dog. A little known fact about Swiss Rolls that is never on any of the recipe instructions - you need at least 10 hands to unwrap it carefully and remove the baking parchment when it's cooled, whilst making sure that you do not unroll it so much that it cracks or breaks, just something that I've realised over the years.

After I had managed to successfully unroll, peel off the parchment, fill with purple butter icing and re-roll, I could start on the rest of the body. Using the off-cuts from the cushion part of the cake, I created the four legs and the face of the dog. I had to use some butter icing mixed with cake crumbs to get the shape of the face right as well as for the hind legs and his rounded bum

Finally able to start with the decoration of the Sausage Dog, I covered the Swiss Roll, with it being the main part of the body, I needed to attach everything to it.

I placed him on the Cushion and added the legs. The front legs were placed on first and the back ones added afterwards. The hind legs needed a little more work with the upper part of the leg needing to be seen, rather than being just stuck on the side of the dog

Happy with the body, I started on the scarier task of completing the face. I had been given instructions and pictures of what the Sausage Dog looked like, so I copied the colourings as best I could. I was told that the eyes looked like they had a lighter background, and that the nose and feet were lighter too. Because of his long ears, the dog it was based on, quite often has his ears played with and folded over, this was a detail that I was asked to add in. I had to make sure that both ears had the brown on the top and pink underneath to ensure that they were the same thickness, once I had done that, flipping one ear back and sticking it there, was fairly easy

Next I added the eyes, with the small part being white to give a glassy, playful look to them.

The final detail for the face to be added, was the nose, which i just hand shaped and cut out the nostrils. I then added the lighter details to the paws and made indents for claws.

The very last thing to do was to write Happy 70th Birthday in purple and the cake was complete!

This was another one of those cakes that I was really happy with at the end. I do think that the cushion could have been smoother, it was just something that I had thought I could fix with my rolling pin, which as it turned out, I was not able to. Overall though, it was a fun challenge!

Total Time Spent: 10 Hours

Useful Tips Gained: Effective Cake Decoration Time Management!

Kitchen Items to Purchase: New Icing Bags. My last one has split, it's time to get a new one, or at least before my next project!

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: None

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: Cake Smoother!! It's never something that I think of when I'm in Hobbycraft or a kitchen shop! 

A Big Animal on a Little Cake

It's been quite a busy week for me, I actually made this cake for Thursday, I would have written it up by now but there was a birthday and Valentine's day and then another cake! (post to follow later).

The Project: A Big Animal on a Little Cake
The Theme: Baby Hippo Cake
Ingredients:
For The Cake:
8 oz Sugar
8 oz Margarine
8 oz Self Raising Flour
5 Eggs
For The Icing:
Jam for the middle
Plain Butter Icing for the middle
1 Pack of Royal Icing
Icing Sugar
Black Colouring Paste
Blue Colouring Paste

I was asked to create a baby hippo cake, one of the more random requests I've had, but I was happy to do it, keen for the challenge and experience of being able to do more shapely cakes. I am really pleased with it, there are a couple of things I would do differently if I had to do one again though, but I'll come to those later. I was also requested to keep this cake small - if you have seen some of my other cakes, keeping it small is quite tricky for me! 

I baked one big rectangular cake, cut out 2 circles, a crescent shape, a slightly bigger crescent shape and a smaller crescent. Then they were sandwiched together with the Jam and Plain Butter Icing to form the body. 

Quite often with shaped cakes like these, I find it creates a better shape if you use the butter icing and cake crumb trick, it gives a smoother finish and allows you to be in control of how you want the cake to look, plugging gaps where you need to and adding any details you can.

Once all the gaps had been filled, I added the nostril detail.  This would have been almost impossible to do once the icing had been on as the under layer would have already set. When I was happy with the shape, it was covered in the grey icing.

As you can see from the below picture. Adding the nostril detail at the bottom layer really worked well, it was really easy to just gently push the icing into the indentations.

Next I added the two ears and the two classic teeth

Then I created the eyes, this was the point when I started to like how it looked, I felt like it had come together. Until this point I was still worrying that the shape was somehow incorrect, it turns out he just needed his eyes to be complete.

Finally, he needed to be submerged in water, (not literally). Other cakes had done water using butter icing, although you have more control over the butter icing, I felt that using the usual water and icing sugar mixed in with some blue colouring paste, produced a much better water effect.

Lastly, I wrote on the back of the Baby Hippo in the same icing, to make it look like part of the water on the Hippo. 

I quite enjoyed making this one, I usually enjoy the cake when it's finished, after I have managed to pull myself through the stress, but I enjoyed this one from start to finish. 

Total Time Spent: 3.5 Hours

Useful Tips Gained: None

Kitchen Items to Purchase: Still need a new piping bag, I bought a pen thing that sucks up the icing and then you can push the plunger back down to write it out, would have been wonderful if it had worked, instead it was a massive disappointment (I would not recommend them). Also still need a smoother.

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: None

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: None

Cake on Fire with Fireman Sam

The Project: Birthday Cake for a 4 year old
The Theme: Fireman Sam
Ingredients:
For The Cake:
30cm tin
20oz Sugar
20oz Margerine
20oz Self Raising Flour
10 Eggs
For the Icing:
Jam for the middle
Plain Butter Icing for the middle
3 packs of White Royal Icing
Peach Colouring Paste
Yellow Colouring Paste
Black Colouring Paste
Red Colouring Paste
Blue Colouring Paste
Blue Decorators Pen - edible ink
Gold Edible Paint

I'm not going to lie, I had some fairly worrying dreams about this cake going horribly wrong, so I started off slightly stressed out about this cake. There were ups and downs involved, including an hour where I mostly hated Fireman Sam, thankfully it all came together in the end and I was really pleased with the result.

I was given a picture of a cake that had already been done by someone else to base this cake on. I kept closely  to the design but instead of using a Fireman Sam transfer, I created him myself out of icing. 

I skipped the pictures of baking, cooling and icing the base - as it's a simple circle - you have all seen it before :)

I was most worried about creating Fireman Sam out of icing so he was the first thing I wanted to make. The theory being that I would relax about the rest of the cake. Fireman Sam was made out of yellow icing for the trousers and a blue jacket. He also has buttons, an arm band and is holding the fire hose. 

Next, I made his face. This is where I started to panic about getting him right. Fireman Sam has changed so much over the years, more recently he has been completely redone to look more complicated. I ended up copying the cartoon face and made a little brown for the hair and a darker peach for the mouth. Although this is where I spent approximately an hour (not included in the total time spent) fretting about the expression on his face.

I created his helmet (after a fair few failed attempts of it being too big or too small) and stuck him onto the cake. Then I made the red hosepipe out of icing and draped it from the nozzle and off the cake.

I needed a break from staring at Fireman Sam, frankly at this point, I hated the sight of him, so I concentrated on the other side of the cake - the fire. I cut strips of white, red and orange icing. I decided to avoid the yellow icing so that I could paint it yellow with a little red to create a flame look.

I painted some flames directly onto the cake too, to give it a little depth.

Happy with the flames, I went back to Fireman Sam to make his hands and feet.

I then painted the buttons and the nozzle to the hose gold before sticking down the hands. Finally, I cut out droplets of water from some light blue icing and drew on the spray using the edible decorators pen. 

Using Fimo, I made stars and letters to make up the child's name and their age and baked them. 

My plan was to attach them to candles and have them lined up along the top of the cake to look like a continuation of the fire. I managed to get them attached to the candles, but one of them fell off so they were stuck to the cake instead.

All in all, I was happy with the outcome :) I am also looking forward to using Fimo on more cakes in the future. maybe to create little figures on cakes, some interesting food for thought for future designs!

Total Time Spent: 6 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Painting directly onto icing to create a different effect
Kitchen Items to Purchase: I did not need a piping bag for this one, but I do still need to purchase one.
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: More Fimo
Miscellaneous Items Wished For: More of those decorative pens!