50th Birthday Hawaii Cake

Last week as I said was cake week, so I couldn't go too long without mentioning this one. An order for my best friend's co-worker, the brief was...Hawaii! This was to be a 50th birthday cake so it had to be special. I hadn't done a cake like this before so I was looking forward to the challenge, especially as she'd asked for a hula girl and I don't have a lot of experience in making figures but I had to give it a go, and I'm really happy with how she turned out!

The cake itself is a classic Victoria sponge mix sandwiched with vanilla buttercream. The design she'd asked for was a beach/ocean scene, hula girl, palm tree and flowers etc. The beach was easy, it just had to be crushed biscuits (malted milks to be exact), although the only problem with this is that it is of course difficult to get any kind of decoration to actually stick to biscuit so everything has to be held in place with cocktail sticks.

The ocean was made with blue vanilla buttercream and also plain buttercream for the tips of the waves. Marbleling them together leaving the white bit at the top really helped in making them look realistic.

Now for the hard bit, the hula girl. I've always used fondant before, but it takes ages to dry and if too big, sags under the weight. So this time I used Wilton gumpase, it was brilliant! I was even able to use Sugarflair food colouring paste to create all the colours I needed. I did use fondant for her hair and coconut bra but everything else was made from coloured gum paste. For an extra girly touch I added eyelashes with an icing pen. The palm tree was also gumpase, I had to leave the 'trunk overnight at an angle so that it would set in a palm tree fashion :D. The leaves were made by using a leaf cutter, I then rolled it out a bit more to make it longer and let them dry on colouring paste tubs and fixed them on the trunk with royal icing. As it was a for a 50th birthday I made a pink fondant "50" in a curly font and placed it in the middle of the ocean.

For the last bit of decoration I made what felt like a million gumpaste flowers, as they were meant to be Hawaiian flowers I made them white with pink edged (done with petal dust), blue, pink, purple and orange, all with a yellow royal icing middle. I made these with my cherry blossom mould I used on my brother's wedding cake, this meant I could do them super fast without having to worry bout sculpting each one. I laid these round the bottom of the cake and also some smaller ones on the figures for extra detail.

Stepping back I was really happy with this cake, as I said with the biscuit - it was a bit difficult to make the flowers stick to it, but I can't think of a better way of making realistic sand. Delivering it was pretty scary, she hula'd all the way there! But as she was stuck down with a cocktail stick she wasn't going anywhere! And now summer has finally come, who doesn't love a beach cake?

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Birthday Beach Cake! - Seigmenn Kake!

Looking at these pictures you may think this cake is for a child....no no...this cake was for my supervisor! It all started when I brought back these jelly men sweets from Norway, I only bought them as I needed to get something from duty free one day and thought these would be good to share around the office. Well now we are all addicted to them, they're Norway's answer to jelly babies, which I absolutely hate, they're hard, covered in powder...yuck. Jelly men however are soft, covered in sugar and just completely different. Anyway my supervisor absolutely loves them so it was a no-brainer when it came to deciding what sort of cake to do.

The obvious choice was to make a scene involving them, so a beach scene seemed a natural choice. This again was a cake I made up as I went along and luckily I think it came out really cute, it was really easy to do too so it didn't take too long.

I made the bottom fondant a sand colour my mixing Melon Yellow and Dark Brown Sugarflair pastes. For the top I covered half in plain buttercream and the other half in blue mixed with Baby Blue sugarflair paste. I made it look a bit more 'ocean' like by swirling some colouring paste through it and dusted with with cake shimmer.

For the sand I thought I would crumble up her favourite biscuits, malted milks, they're perfect sand colour too which helped, I did learn though it is hard to stick decorations to crumbs, you really have to push it down so it hits the buttercream underneath otherwise it just slides off!

The decoration was easy, cut a few jelly men in half and made them swimmers, then cut a hollow easter egg in half, making it a boat and added a couple of passengers. I'm not sure why I added the flag really I just thought it fitted in and made it look a bit more like a boat. Then for the beach part I made some fondant towels and some sun-burnt sunbathers, giving them little suits I thought they were so cute! I did think about adding a shark fin to the ocean but thought I'd leave it as a peaceful cake!

I even added a few white chocolate starfish and a big gold ribbon to finish the look. As an extra little surprise by hollowing out a bit in the middle and filling it with buttercream and another jelly man!

I have a fun cupcake job for my company coming up next week so look out for my next post :) Pin It Now!