A Week of Baking...Diamond Wedding Anniversary Cake

My last week has been filled with thoughts and evening of cake, as I was getting ready for my Grandparent's Diamond Anniversary party. As I sit writing this I'm so happy to report they had a fantastic day and it was so lovely to be a part of it.

As I was taking my Nan's wedding dress as inspiration, I wanted to use Cake Lace as the main decoration with the red roses. As the cake was going to be white-iced, I cheated a little and bought a ready-mixed pearlised colour from Claire Bowman so it would stand out against the white.

After spreading the paste into the mat, I put it in the oven and when it was dry, turned it out onto greaseproof paper. The packaging did mention that due to the perry finish it is more brittle and this is what I found when trying to release it from the mould. I had quite a few breakages along the strip, meaning I only had a small part that was useable. I then decided to use the air drying method and left the paste in the mould overnight, ready to turn it out in the morning, which did yield better results and allowed me to free it from the mould pretty much in one piece.

These are two of my better pieces and came out nearly perfect. As I wasn't using them immediately I wrapped all of the strips in greaseproof paper to stop them sticking together and to keep them fresh. 

Each tier was a different flavour with a delicious and fudgy chocolate with white chocolate buttercream in the bottom and coffee and walnut with coffee icing in the top. 

The chocolate cake is the same recipe that I used for my Easter cake and usually has a wonderfully rich chocolate ganache to sandwich it together, however it was a nice difference with the white chocolate instead.

Once I had iced both tiers and left them to dry overnight, I marked the bottom tier for the dowels and then cut them to the correct length before pushing them in to the bottom tier.

Once stacked, I measured the amount of cake lace required and then applied it to the cake using water. When I first bent it around the cake it was a little stiff, however when it absorbed a little of the water it became much more malleable and easier to work with, which made it much easier to stick smoothly to the cake.

I was also pleased with the joins in the lace and it looked very neat waiting for the roses to be added.

I arranged the roses around the cake, trying to make sure I got a good visual balance and that any large roses weren't dangling too dramatically. I then used a dab of royal icing to fix them in their position.

To make the ferns I used an ivy green Renshaw sugar paste, but when I originally held it against the cake it was too bright. I mixed it with some brown food gel until I was happy with the colour, and I think the above shade was the perfect hue for the cake.

When my ordered cutter arrived I set to with my tools to try and make it a lighter and more textured / real looking leaf. I found making my fern fronds difficult as they are so light and etherial in their natural form, so working quickly before the icing got too dry I used various sizes of ball tools to add texture to the leaf and I think I managed to create something a little more life-like!

I played with the position of the ferns until I was happy with them around the roses, and then stuck them in place using sugar glue.

I didn't want the ferns to overwhelm the roses so I used a few dotted around the cake to give an idea. In hindsight I would have liked to use different sizes and lengths to make it look more natural, but I was really pleased with my final cake, and luckily so were the happy couple. 

The end of Lent and a Chocolate Easter Cake!

For Lent this year, I decided to give up Chocolate in a bid to start losing weight in time for the wedding. It's much better if I do it slowly and gradually, my love of all good food would never allow me to starve myself to fit into any dress!

I was surprised that I actually didn't crave it that much during the 40 days and nights, but as a treat when we got to the end I made a wonderfully chocolatey Easter Cake like I have done for the past few years. I used my tried and tested fudgy chocolate cake recipe again, and sandwiched it together using chocolate ganache buttercream. I then used Cadbury's fingers around the edge as my border. I was very impressed that I had such a good rise on my cakes that the fingers didn't reach all the way to the top, however as my fiancee commented as he pinched a finger before I had finished decorating "These are a lot smaller than I remember...!"

If you're wondering how many packs of fingers you need to go round an 8" cake, it's two packets... minus one! 

I then filled the top with everybody's favourite Easter treat, Mini Eggs! Now they are definitely putting fewer in a bag as it took me three whole bags (less maybe one or two as perks for the chef) to cover the top.

I tied a blue ribbon around the fingers to keep them in place and to look pretty, and my Easter cake was finished! It definitely tasted as good as it looked and it was the perfect celebration of Easter and a successfully completed Lent.

SaveSave

World Craft Week - 3rd - 9th April 2017

When World Craft Week popped up on my Instagram feed I thought 'Finally! A week I can really get involved in!" I have been experimenting with my embroidery recently through my stitched pictures and I was keen to get as many examples finished so I can see what works well, what needs to be developed and what may possibly sell.

These designs have all been created using a simple backstitch using a mix of fonts and decorative elements. They all fit in a standard frame and I haven't really strayed too far from this shape whilst I have started.

For my next step I wanted to combine a few more elements so I added a blanket stitched heart with wooden button to act as the 'O' for 'LOVE', I had never appliquéd with blanket stitch before, but instead of catching a small piece of fabric and coming up very close on the other side, I went down through the fabric and ensured the needle was in a straight line so the stitch didn't bend.

I wanted to try another stitch and chose 'Chain stitch' as my next option. I liked the rounded and slightly chunky look of the stitch and thought it would work well on a simple line based design.

I was also reading up about how you should start and finish your threads when embroidering. I always use a knot, but apparently this can make your embroidery lumpy and isn't a very good technique. As a result I decided to use a waste knot which is where you knot your thread through the fabric a distance for your design and then continue with your stitching as normal.

When you reach the end of your thread, on the reverse side weave the last of the thread in and out of your last few stitches...

...and then snip the end to leave a nice neat finish.

After this go back to your waste knot...

...trim the end and weave this thread in and out of the stitches on the reverse side to secure it before trimming. Make sure that you leave yourself plenty of thread at the beginning as I most certainly did not, and it took me a long time to tease the thread in and out with the use of a pin. The thread may have been red but the air was certainly blue!

And here's the finished piece! I was pretty pleased with my first attempt at a chain stitch. It curves very well and f you made a slight error with your pencil line it is a lot more forgiving than straight backstitch and you can achieve a lovely line. 

I've got lots more designs that I want to try, so keep your eyes peeled for new stitches!

A Weekend of Sugarcraft - Red roses

April is turning out to be a busy month of cakes! There's an Easter cake for Easter Sunday, cupcakes for my colleagues, a Diamond Wedding Anniversary Cake, more cake for colleagues, my fiancees birthday cake and then the finale of a wedding cake on the first weekend of May, phew! After that I get a bit of a break until my birthday, for which I am currently dreaming up a design to practice new skills and techniques.

So I made a start on the first cake a couple of weekends ago and made all of the sugar roses for my grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary cake. I looked for inspiration for traditional cakes, but they were all very dull, so I decided to go for something a little more like a wedding cake to make more of the occasion. My Nan had long stemmed red roses and ferns in her bouquet and lace on her ballerina length wedding dress, so I decided to combine all of these elements together on the cake.

I used my trusty Peggy Porschen sugar flowers cake book to help me make the roses, and I started with Poppy Red Renshaw sugar paste mixed with Tylose powder to ensure they set. I made a range of different sizes to make 12 roses in total.

3 rose buds, 3 small roses, 3 medium roses, 2 large roses and one full rose in progress. This is the drying stage before the scary bit of the next layer of petals when you have to turn them upside down to dry!

However unfortunately as the roses dried they lost their lovely deep rose colour and became light and powdery-looking. It wasn't the colour I was looking for at all, so I got out my paintbrush and colours and painted all of the roses until they were the correct shade, all the time singing "Painting the roses red" from Alice in Wonderland! Whatever gets you through the day...!

I used a mixture of three colours to achieve the right shade for the roses.

When wet the roses looked almost like they were made from porcelain! Luckily they are still edible!

You can see the difference in colour between the ones at the front and at the back and I was much happier with the colour as they dried.

Luckily the roses have kept their deeper hue as they have dried which is brilliant. I think next to the dark green of the ferns, the snowy white of the cake and the pearl sheen of the cake lace they will look very impressive and hopefully be a fitting centrepiece to a brilliant day.