Farm Birthday Cake

This lovely cake was made for a little girl's 3rd birthday. The request was for a girly farm cake, hopefully it's feminine enough for her!
Sometimes I get asked to design a really fun cake that's so pleasurable to make & this was one of those, I keep going out to the kitchen to look at it, I'm going to have separation anxiety  once I've delivered it this evening!
The only actual request was for a black cat, the rest was entirely up to me, the cows were inspired by Kylie Lambert's fabulous models http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecupcake/2977197145/
Here come the close ups!

 I positioned the sheep at the back so he was peering round the corner, I love him!

 I edged some of the roses with glitter to add some sparkle.

 Apple trees and hills.

Peony birthday cake

It was my Grandmother's 80th Birthday at the weekend & my Granddad requested that I make her a cake, I went for a pink peony as she had pink flowers in her wedding bouquet & I wanted a big statement flower to save me the hassle of making a spray!
It was a really nice one to make & made even nicer by how much she loved it, she kept saying 'I never thought I'd ever get a cake like this' which was really sweet.

The inscription was chosen by my Granddad and reads 'Everyone Loves Bessie' which I thought was lovely.

The birthday girl

I found a brilliant peony tutorial here if anyone is interested, really simple & easy to follow http://www.thecakerator.com/2010/08/gum-paste-peony-tutorial-part-1.html

So my next project is a 3 tier farm cake, pictures to follow soon xx

Butterfly Birthday Cake

Here's the cake that put the butterflies made in my earlier tutorial to use, I love this cake - the simple ones are usually the best aren't they?

This was my daughter's official birthday cake, she had two this year but we won't be making a habit of it! It was so much work, we threw her a party at home for the first time, usually I happily pay up and hire a big hall or soft play place - this is definitely the easy option!! It was a lovely day though, we did cupcake decorating and name necklace making on top of the usual party games & party tea, exhausted is not a strong enough word for how I felt after all the girls had gone home! I anticipate the time when they're old enough for a sleepover, feed them a couple of pizzas, hire a few DVDs and camp out in the kitchen with a book, my kind of party!
My next project is making a sugar peony, if anyone has any tips I would really appreciate it! I don't even know where to start.....

How to make royal icing butterflies

This is a simple but effective way of decorating a cake, I just used these and nothing else on my cake & it looked lovely, you could add piped or painted flowers to make it more suited to an adult (mine was for my daughter).

1. Make royal icing in your desired colours, this recipe is fairly close to the one I used http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/6350/royal-icing.aspx

2. Draw your templates out and place under a sheet of baking parchment or cellophane. Using a piping bag fitted with a number 2 nozzle pipe your outlines.

3. Let down your firm icing with a little water or egg white to give you icing of pouring consistency, put this in an icing bag fitted with a number 3 nozzle and flood your outlines.

4. Encourage your icing to fill the outlines to the corners by using a damp (not wet) paintbrush.

5. At this stage you can either pipe more soft icing into the still wet icing to give the effect shown on my butterfly cookies here http://vanillalila.blogspot.com/2010/10/cookies-almost-finished-article-honeys.html 
Or you can wait until they're dry and pipe detail on like this

6. When your icing is completely dry (approximately 24 hours) you can gently remove the wings from your parchment/cellophane and attach them to bodies.
Fold a large piece of card like a fan and line it with baking parchment. Pipe thick lines down the creases and push your wings into each line.

Leave this to dry again, 12 or so hours before gently removing.

I will post the pictures of the finished cake soon xx