It's all about the Rugby and turning 50

I made this cake last month for a 50th Birthday of a Plymouth Rugby fan. When I first volunteered, I had this image of a rugby ball in my head that turned out to be an American Football and nothing like what an actual rugby ball looks like - this one was a bit more complicated than I initially thought, but it was worth the effort. 

Just for some background information - I used this heraldic symbol as inspiration:

On their website, I found a picture of the below rugby ball, my plan was to simplify it and put it on a cake.

After having baked the cakes, this creation needed some serious shaping to get the rugby ball shape. Cutting away from the top and using another part of a cake for the ends, we were getting somewhere

I then made some butter icing and mixed it with crumbled cake, it filled the gaps and will give a smooth finish to the cake

I then covered the cake in white royal icing and used my smoother to polish it off a bit

Then the tricky part starts - creating the details. Instead of  making the lions on the above picture, because really they are above my abilities - I made a 5 and a 0, I hand cut them and included little lion tails to keep the effect of the heraldic symbol in the above picture. In the middle is the sketch of the coat of arms that I needed to place there to keep the spacing right.

I made the coat of arms by cutting the shield out of grey icing using the sketch I made onto the baking parchment and creating the green cross and miniature castles. I then piped green butter icing onto the board using the multiple hole piping nozzle to give a grass effect.

The grass effect can be seen a little more clearly in the below picture:

After all that piping, I was ready to go back to making the little details. I made some little blue crowns that the lions have around their necks for the 5 and the 0.

I then made another crown for the middle and a claw coming out of the top holding a red anchor, then added the little medallions onto the crowns on the numbers. 

With the detailed part over with, I was able to create some stripes on the ball out of black and red

To finish it off I then made a small white square for a sign and placed a black piece of icing behind it and using the black edible pen, wrote Happy Birthday on the sign. 

Another cake that I was happy with, even if I did have green hands for a few days afterwards.

Total Time Spent: 7.5 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Do more research before volunteering for cakes
Items To Purchase: None
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist - None
Miscellaneous Items Wished For - None

I made this cake shortly after Christmas - one of my gifts was a cake lifter! Very handy - I love it!

Amazing Birthday Cake for Gavin!

So it's been a while! Hi! I've taken about 3 months off from blogging, but I have been busy with cakes, so I will get this up to date as soon as I can. Apologies, I have no real excuse, I have just been busy with Christmas and New Year and then distracted playing with my Christmas Gifts!

Gavin's Birthday was at the beginning of December, I have always avoided doing a Spider-Man cake because it's a bit of a go-to for him to have Spider-Man things and I wanted to be able to do it justice, I wanted to avoid a plain old run of the mill Spider-Man cake - they are so simple, you can buy them from the supermarkets. No, I wanted something a little outside the box that would be fit for a true fan. I chose the face of many Spider-Mans. These were my inspiration;

Spider-Man himself- for obvious reasons - enough said

The Scarlet Spider - a clone of Peter Parker in the Comics who becomes a stand in for our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man

Spider-Man 2099 - A version of  Spider-Man from the comics set in the future

Symbiote Spider-Man - Still our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man but wearing an alien life-form suit, which later became Venom in the comics

4 faces of Spider-Man to make up 4 sides of a cake, I thought it was a fun idea, they all had different spiders, colours and eyes, which would make the cake fairly interesting.

I made it two tier so that I had enough space to make the different faces, spiders and backgrounds. The tiers were made from a large chocolate cake on the bottom and a smaller mint chocolate cake on the top.

I started off by covering the bottom layer with red roll our icing

Once it was covered and smoothed out, I marked a cross on the cake - going through the centre, to gage where each segment would go. I rolled out and covered one quarter of it with black icing for the Symbiote Spider side of the cake.

I wanted the top tier to be a plainer colour so that the face stood out, I also wanted to bring in the Spider-Man perch effect, so I made the top tier into a something that looks like the top of an old building. So I covered the top tier in grey icing. 

I cut out the shape of a face and painted it black to ensure that I got the blackest colour I could get

Using white royal icing, I made eyes for the face of the Symbiote Spider and used the photo of the Marvel figurine to craft the spider to stick on him too, then the Symbiote Spider side was complete. One down - three to go.

I decided to do the most complicated Spider to basically get him over and done with - the Spider-Man 2099. I cut the face out of red icing and painted over it with blue colouring to match his face mask. I also painted the bottom layer to match the colouring on his chest. I then created the spider from his chest out of red royal icing - as it's a flying spider, it was a little tricky, but I got it after a couple of tries - two down - two to go

You can also see from the below picture, that I've added the black building swirls to the edges too.

Spider-Man himself needed to be next - with the patterning to do on his face and on the bottom layer cake, I needed to make sure that this was right without messing it up - as I was using an icing pen and drawing this freehand straight onto the cake. I made his face shape and eyes and drew the web patterns on

Happy that I managed to get that right, I then took the freehand drawing to the bottom layer cake to complete the patterning. Once that was finished, I made the black spider from his chest and Spider-Man side was done - three down - one to go

Scarlet Spider's face was fairly simple, the only slightly tricky thing was his eyes were different to the rest of them, I shaped them by hand quite a few times before I was happy that they were right. I painted the bottom layer to match the colouring on his chest and made the black spider out of royal icing - four Spider-man sides done!

All that was left was to write Happy Birthday Gavin on the top of the cake and it was ready for the glorious tea party that followed. 

Gavin absolutely loved it and I think he liked that I went in a slightly different direction with the cake than just a normal Spider-Man face, this is a cake for a Spider-Man fan - and that's my Gavin.

Total Time Spent: 6 Hours (I think - we are talking 2 and a half months ago)

Useful Tips Gained: Do not be scared to draw directly on the cake

Items to Purchase: More edible pens!

Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: More edible pens!

Miscellaneous Items Wished For: None.

Credits - Thanks to Gavin, who provided very useful information on the background of various Spider-Man characters mentioned above.

Ship Shape 30th Cake

Amazingly, I'm posting this just the day after I finished making it for the event - somewhat unlike some of my previous write ups. I promise to get better.

So this cake had a lot of detail and we had our ups and downs, however the general consensus is that it's my best cake yet. This was for our friend's 30th Birthday.

The Project: Ship Shape 30th Cake
The Theme: Pirate Ship
Ingredients:
for the cake:
30oz Self Raising Flour
30oz Sugar
30oz Margarine
15 Eggs
Enough Cocoa to make it chocolatey (I did not measure it)
Lots of Chocolate Butter Icing
for the decoration:
2 and 1/2 packs of royal icing
Brown Colour Paste
Green Colour Paste
Blue Colour Paste
Black Colour Paste
Yellow Colour Paste

First things first - I baked 3 lots of rectangular chocolate cake

Once cooled, I shaped it into the ship shape, I cut the bottom layer slightly smaller than the top layer to create a curve at the front of the ship

Happy with the bottom two layers, I then cut the 3rd layer for the top of the ship, to create the extra steps

I added butter icing in between the layers and held it together with kebab sticks to keep the shape whilst the icing set enough for it to be a little more steady.

Mixing some of the offcuts with the butter icing to create a form of edible cement, I moulded the shape I wanted for the ship and smoothed out any rough edges, fill any gaps and created the curve for the front of the ship. I had to add more kebab sticks at this point as I was becoming paranoid about the back end of the ship.

Once it was set, I covered the ship in the first layer of icing and smoothed it out. Starting to look a bit like a ship now!

I bought a wood textured rolling pin for the planks of wood to cover the ship. I rolled out the icing, used the textured rolling pin on it and then cut out the strips I needed and started the very long process of covering the cake 

Many hours later and it's covered in wood planks!

I saved space at the back for windows for the captain's quarters too

I left it overnight as it was fairly late already and I still had so much to do, as party day was in the evening on Saturday, I had all of Saturday to add the details I wanted. The next morning I checked on the cake only to find out that the back end of the ship had fallen over - all that paranoia earlier on had come to pass. I was absolutely devastated, angry with myself for not doing enough to prevent it from happening, worried that I would not be able to fix it and concerned that I would not have enough time. A few annoyed words, some tears, hugs from Gavin, a poorly timed joke and a revelation later, I had a plan.

I had originally intended there to be a kraken creeping up the side of the ship, now I needed to make the kraken more prominent and the ship in much more of a sinking wreck. I chopped off the broken part of the rear of the ship and salvaged the top part. I moved the cake back on the board slightly and lifted the front end of the ship to tilt it.

I then covered the bottom of the ship in blue butter icing for waves and to stick down the recently moved ship and the additional part at the back

After covering the entire board to create the ocean effect, I then needed to start work on the kraken attacking it. I made one tentacle coming out of the water and breaking the back of the ship. I just used royal icing, moulded it into shape, cut out circles for the suckers on the inside and painted it green with the colouring paste. The effect of the green paint made it look wet and slimy - exactly what a kraken would be

Now that the main one was made, I then paced the others. three on one side, creeping up the side of the ship and holding the candles and one on the other side sticking out of the water. 

Using small plastic tubes and black icing, I created the cannons

I painted the windows black on the captains quarters to make it look like shiny glass. 

Next I needed to create the anchor, I made it out of the black icing and painted it silver and added some of the brown icing for the rope.

The end was in sight! just a few more details to add and it would be finished. The naming of the ship needed to be done, we went with Dread Hammer, which I wrote by hand using edible pens.

I then whipped up some white icing and placed it on the cake where the waves met the ship as foam.

I also used small amounts on the surrounding ocean and at the base of the tentacles. I then added floating debris to add to the havoc the kraken is causing.

 Finally, I pipped Happy 30th Shadey on the top of the deck and the cake was finished. Just 2 more extras to be placed on the cake.

I cross stitched the skull and cross bones onto black fabric and sewed it to the kebab sticks to form the sails 

Using fimo I made a Pirate Captain Shadey to be placed on the ship

 Finally - it was finished!

I was really pleased with this cake. I think I have to agree, it is one of my best cakes, the detail and extras really helped. Not keen to do another ship cake again though!

Total Time Spent: 17 Hours
Useful Tips Gained: Painting straight onto white icing gives an amazing effect
Items To Purchase: Cake Lifter - the amount of times I have needed to lift a cake and I do not own one of these!
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist - Cake Lifter - that is all
Miscellaneous Items Wished For - None