Pink and Ivory 30th Birthday Cake

As I said in my last post this weekend was my sister-in-laws birthday, so of course she got a cake! I've been so busy lately I've not been able to make many so it's nice to have time to actually do a proper cake.

I love making two tier cakes, they're great to give as presents and you can have lots of fun decorating them. I recently bought a textured rolling pin I've been wanting to try out, you'll see this soon on a Baking Buys post. I managed to get my hands on some ivory fondant, I do have ivory colouring paste that I could have used, but if I see it I usually try to pick some up it looks quite pretty next to pink. Which of course is the other main colour, I've become quite obsessed with this colour combo, if you haven't noticed. As this was going down the girly route I thought I'd make it extra girly by adding some cameos. They can be a bit of a pain as i only have one mould at the moment but my new favourite shop Sew White has informed me they will be stocking them soon so hopefully the process will speed up some!

So for both tiers I rolled out the fondant and used the rolling pin to make the spiral patterns, I've learnt that you need to press fairly firmly or the pattern smooths out a bit when you smooth it on the cake, and don't try to roll backwards afterwards or it'll all be destroyed!!

For the bottom I cut out some pink hearts and using white royal incing piped pearls around the edge and the letter 'L' in the middle for her name, Lindsay. For extra detail I made strips of fondant ribbon in between the hearts and made a pink fondant bow the night before so it could dry and not fall to pieces, think I'm starting to get the hang of these bows now!

For the top tier I again cut pink fondant hearts and made a pink and white cameo inside. Again piping pearls around the cameo to add a bit more definition, I love how sweet and detailed they look! I think the spiral patterned fondant looks really nice and effective against the pink and finishing with the gold ribbon around the bottom of each tier really topped it off I think giving it quite a vintage look.

The cake went down really well after a night of drinking, as you can see it ended up covered in streamers from party poppers and devoured over the next two days, nom indeed! I also have to give credit to my mum for the actual baking of the cake as I was too busy she helped me out one afternoon , we're quite a good team!

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Pink and Chocolate 30th Birthday Cake

It has certainly been all about cake in the last two weeks and I have to say I'm knackered! I've had many nights of broken sleep waking up with crazy lazy panic thoughts about the cakes - anyone else? Although I have absolutely loved all of my recent creations so it was all worth it in the end. I started with my pink and white cake pops, Manchester United giant cupcake (blog post coming soon) and this week I had my friend's 30th birthday - a great reason to make a nice fancy cake and try out some new techniques, as if I need an excuse!

It's been ages since I've done a big proper cake so I couldn't wait to get stuck in. The cake itself is a two tiered vanilla and chocolate sponge cake with chocolate buttercream. She loves chocolate so it was the only choice really.

I 'became' Peggy Porschen (or at least I told myself I was!) and decided to keep the chocolate theme but make it a bit more girly (surprise surprise my favourite theme! :D) with using pink fondant icing. The bottom tier is pink with chocolate brown circles, decorated with an italic 'L' for Lisa and polka dot royal icing decoration around the edge.

I have to be honest and say the top tier nearly didn't make it (it nearly went in the bin!), I for some reason just couldn't get the icing to sit on it nicely without any folds - it was driving me mental! I then had the crafty idea of doing the 'suitcase' look to cover up the fold and give it some cute detail. I made up some 'leather' fondant straps and gave them seams with a cocktail stick, luckily they matched up perfectly to cover the bits I didn't like.  I'm quite obsessed with piping detail at the moment so couldn't resist adding some cute royal icing designs in-between the fondant straps.

I wasn't really sure what to do on the top, I didn't really feel like a cake topper would look right but then I had the genius idea of adding her favourite chocolates...Ferrero Rocher! I did initially want to pile them up like in the advert but it looked a bit silly so I thought just to dot a few around symmetrically, and do some more polka dot piping in a circle around the top of the straps to frame the chocolates.

As you all know by now I love adding bows to cakes. I've always used real ones but this time I thought I'd have a go at making a fondant bow which I've never done before. I let them dry for two/three evenings (honestly I can't remember which I think I might be slightly hysterical from all the baking) and it worked brilliantly which I really didn't think it would. I ran some more fondant around the end of the first tier at the bottom and stuck the bow on the front with two extra ribbon pieces running down the front. I'm not so sure I could do this ribbon too much on a giant cupcake, but on bigger cakes I think I'll be doing this a lot now! I would suggest making a few bows, I did, as I've heard horror stories about them collapsing!

The cake went down really well she loved it which is all that matters :D I got some really nice comments about it too, I seem to turn up every couple of weeks with a cake for someone's birthday so they're getting quite used to it now, so expect many more in the future!

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Bleeding Heart Cake

This weekend was my brother's 30th birthday. I've kept his cake a secret for a loooong time as I really wanted it to be a surprise. He's always said he wanted this cake, he's been asking for it for what feels like forever, but I've always said know because it's a bit disgusting! But since I did the brain cake I realised I quite liked making some gore...so I thought I'd have another go!

I'd seen this cake on the Lily Vanilli blog. It did tell you how to make the hear but I didn't really understand the instructions so I kind of winged it. I'd told him so many times that I wouldn't make this cake I knew he wouldn't suspect that this is the cake I would actually make.

The cake itself is a two tiered vanilla sponge cake filled with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream. Which my lovely mother actually made as I had so many cakes to make this week I just didn't have time! I iced the the cake with plain white fondant as I wanted the heart and blood to really stand out, it almost had to look a bit clinical.

For the heart, I used a block of cake and sculpted it into the shape of a fist, as that's what they say your heart looks like. I kind of just did it until I thought it looked right as human hearts aren't something that I'm really that used to looking at. I made the red fondant with lots of Christmas Red sugarflair colouring paste and didn't mix it all in as I wanted some bits to be a bit darker in places.

I made it a lot bigger than it needed to be, laid the sponge in the middle and wrapped the fondant cup almost in a parcel type way and joined it at the top. I used the excess fondant to make three valves at the top, the folds from these in the icing then actually looked like veins too, I even added some extra colour to them to make them look naturally darker.

To make the blood I bought some strawberry golden syrup and added some extra red to make it a bit darker and realistic. I brushed this all over the heart before putting it on the top. I then drizzled it all over letting it slosh over the first tier dripping down. When it had dripped down into puddles I edged it over the next tier to make it look like it had glooped all of the way down.

We did have candles to put on it but we let him see it without first so he could see the full effect. Luckily he absolutely loved it - he's not a psycho I promise! He really hadn't expected to get it so that was a major bonus. I really think I've started something now and that there may well be a lot more gore in the future....

 

Happy 30th Mike!

Nom! x


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