Similar to last year, I'll catch you up on what I've been up to with my cakes. I've made 11 novelty cakes this year with more in the pipeline for next year!
The first cake of 2017 was in January and it was for a friend's Dad, it was his 60th birthday and he loved Rupert the Bear, this cake was of an annual, so it looked like a book around the sides and had Rupert on the front. I hand painted the background and made Rupert. He was really chuffed with the cake, makes all the hard work worthwhile when you know it's enjoyed :)
The next cake was for the same friend, who turned 30 in the February. He plays a lot of Magic the Gathering, so I made a Magic cake, complete with the logos along the side. I was hoping it was going to look like deck of cards but it ended up more like a box, the overall effect of the marble effect painting worked well, I was happy with the overall look of the cake, but just wish I had been able to improve on the thickness of the top part.
In March, it was my Sister's birthday, I hadn't made one for her in a little while, so I wanted to make something cool for her, she was visiting for the weekend, so I made her a Totoro cake, I had seen the idea for it online and loved it. I covered the main part of the cake in butter icing so that I could make it look like a log base and painted the top to look like the inside of the tree stump. Totoro was made out of icing, he was easy enough to do and I think the effect looks great - she loved it anyway :)
Staying true to the 1 cake a month pattern I seem to have developed this year, it was another friend's birthday in April, he loves Game of Thrones, and I had seen a pretty cool concept of doing a cake of a map online and really wanted to do it, only the one I saw was massive and there was no way I could do a cake that big, so I downsized it and gave it ago. It was quite fun to do, it's mostly butter icing, with the house flags being made out of royal icing. Beyond the wall is water icing, I wanted to get it as white as possible and I needed it to run into the water slightly so that it would look more frozen. I then painted and drew with edible pens the different parts on the map.
I was then asked to make an Optom cake, this one was slightly harder, although I enjoy baking, I find that I enjoy making cakes that are more geeky and novelty, I was pleased with the outcome of it and the recipient really liked it, so that's all that matters really.
In May, one of my repeat cake requesters asked me for a Guardians of the Galaxy cake, specifically baby Groot. I love these films and after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, completely fell in love with Baby Groot - so cute! I was quite excited about doing this cake. I painted the background, with the theme in mind of him dancing at the beginning of the film, oblivious so the explosions in the background. I created his shape out of royal icing and then rolled out thin round strips to wind around him and icing to look like planks of wood to look like the wood and roots he is made out of. You can't see it from this picture, but on the very front of the cake is a stereo - just to complete it.
I had a couple of months off making cakes, after a busy start to the year, not really by intention but I was thankful for the break. In August, I was asked to make a 1st Birthday cake for a little boy who likes dinosaurs. I had a couple of pictures of cakes to work from, I wasn't anticipating this to be much fun but actually it was. Especially the volcano - this is just cake with a hole taken out of the top and filled with red butter icing surrounded by thick chocolate butter icing roughly spread around the top to give the jagged volcano look. I had to cut the bones out by hand as I didn't have a cutter for it - that took a while. For the footprints along the side on the 2nd tier, I just made a cardboard cut out of a dinosaur foot and pressed it into the cake, painting it as I went.
I was then asked to make a cake for the same recipient as the Civ cake I made a couple of years ago. Their main love is Skyrim so I really had to go down that route. I wasn't really ready to create some kind of dragon - as awesome as that would have been, I don't think my skill is quite up to that challenge just yet! I wanted to do the book that you get handed at the beginning of the game, but it also meant that it would be quite a simple cake, so to jazz it up a bit, I decided to do the map underneath the cake on the board, along with coins so that it looked like the book had been placed on the map on a table. The map took the most time. As before it's just royal icing that is coloured and painted on top of. I used my edible pens to create the detail of the mountains and the names of the places.
In November, I had 2 cakes to do, the first was for a little girl who loves Harry Potter - given that Harry Potter has a very special place in my heart, I was more than happy to do this cake. As I had done a Harry Potter cake before, I wanted to make it a little different. I'm not keen on doing the same cake twice really, I like to add a different twist. Last time I did an open spell book with items around it as the main cake, this time I wanted to do the book on top of the cake and wrap the scarf around. She loved it apparently :)
The second cake of November was for another friend, a big fan of Destiny the game, so it seemed a no brainer to do a Destiny themed cake. This one was a first for me - the sphere. I hadn't done a sphere cake before, given the amount of faff involved in this, I'm 'not sure how many I want to do in future, I didn't get the full circle type shape I wanted, it's a little squiffy. The bottom part of the cake was covered in royal icing and painted, with an additional element of silver paint to make it look a bit spacey too.
The last cake of the year was for Gavin's birthday, I had this idea for a while, of doing a Portal cake, I liked the idea of the companion cube going into one portal and coming out of another. I set up the board like a test chamber and actually, it looked pretty cool. you cake quite make it out from this photo, but the cake itself was covered in white, and then I added an extra layer to make the panels on the walls like in the chambers. Of course on the back of the cake is scribbled - the cake is a lie. It wasn't, there was actually cake inside.
So all in all a pretty busy year!
Gavin actually bought me an airbrush kit with colours for Christmas, so watch out 2018 - my cakes are about to step up a notch!!
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