Wedding cake production planning is in full swing for next week and one of the elements i really want to get perfect is the bow on the top. 

Sally would like the bow to sit flat on top of the cake with some tails. I am conscience that bows can look rubbish if not done well. So i went in hunt of the perfect icing bow and found this amazing bow from finessecakes.com

Look how beautiful the bow looks on the cake with the stitch detail and realistic knot.  It looks like a real fabric bow which is exactly the quality i want for Sally's cake. 

I am currently working on a new wedding cake design. The bride wants 4 square tiers of black and white pinstripes - with lots of bling.

I am currently thinking alternate tiers of solid diamante bling and crisp white icing with black pinstripes. Thin black ribbon around the bottom of each tier and possibly a black bow on the very top. For the base i am going to stack a few iced boards up and edge with the same black ribbon.

Kind of a mash up of these 2 cakes... 

Happy birthday to my friend Kat who turned 30 this weekend. We celebrated in style - Karaoke!

Kat's sister Jenny made the cake and it was an epic Starwars theme. The Milemmium Falcon was reproduced in all it's grey glory and my favourite bit was the lego Hans Solo figure on top next to the gun turret.

Never before has the Millenium Falcoln looked so glittery!

What do cake do you get a boy for his 18th? Answer: A giant chocolate cake!

This 18 shape cake was made from chocolate sponge filled and iced with a chocolate ganache. To decorate i dusted with gold shimmer and added some silver stars.

 The board was iced with white fondant (try keeping that clean when chocolate ganache is about) and more silver stars.

I don't very often get requests for chocolate cake but this week i had an 18th birthday cake and a wedding cake tester cake to make. I have made chocolate butterbream before but this was my first encounter with ganache.

It seemed simple... in principle. Take equal parts of high quality dark chocolate and double cream (i.e. 200g choc to 200ml double cream) Chop the chocolate. Heat the cream to just before boiling and pour over the chopped chocolate. Wait a few minutes to allow the chocolate to melt, then whisk the chocolate and cream into a lovely runny mixture. Either pour over the cake now to get a thin coating or leave in the fridge overnight then bring out and allow it to come to room temperature and ice the cake like frosting.

As i say, sounds simple. Not in practice. 

My ganache was rock hard even at room temperature and resembled solid truffles not ganache! It also tasted so strongly of bitter dark chocolate that it was virtually inedible except in small quantities. I had to rectify this situation so i made another batch of ganache, this time using milk chocolate. I mixed the new warm ganache into the dark chocolate ganache and it immediately loosened up the mixture. It also gave a sweetness to the ganache that was missing from the first batch.

It passed my husband's taste test getting a 10/10 score and it worked really well icing the cakes. Lesson learnt for next time!

Some of you may have noticed i chickened out of decorating the Vintage cupcakes with royal icing. This is not 100% accurate as i did mix up the royal icing but it was so sloppy i had no chance of getting lovely straight lines and accurate dots.

I have decided i need to go on a specialist course to get some dedicated tuition in this artform but i am struggling to make sure i find a course which will teach me what i want to learn. For example i do not want to learn how to do this:

I know some people love this heavy piping work but it just isn't me. I want to learn how to pipe stripes, dots and designs. A bit like these:

And i want to learn flooding techniques which allow you to make 3D objects such as butterflies like these:

And brush embroidery to get delicate flower motifs such as these:

Now to find the right class!

I have just discovered the www.cakewrecks.com blog. Absolutely hilarious! Whilst some cakes are complete disasters (spelling mistakes etc), some are down right disturbing and some are amazing cakes but so incredibly OTT that they look horrid!

All the cakes pics are submitted so it is harmless fun. An example here - a customer brings a picture of her boss playing golf on for his birthday cake. The picture is stored on a USB drive which she leaves with the bakery. This is what they were delivered:

Classic!

Yesterday was the big day - Dan and Leanne became Mr and Mrs Moynihan! It was  also the culmination of a month of sugarcraft and baking.

The day went off so well despite the weather and the happy couple looked amazing. The cupcakes and Victoria sponge stack were a hit and there was not a trace of cake left at the end of the night. I even witnessed a scissor, paper, stones fight over the last cupcake...

Big thanks to Leanne and Dan for my lovely gift. I hope you have a lifetime of happiness together.

I will blog more this week about some of the challenges and tricks which came up in the last stages of the wedding but for now i am completely caked out so here's some pictures...

PS. hello to Jon who i discovered is secretly my biggest blog fan!

I have discovered a new product which has made my life a little easier. My husband Chris HATES it when i sprinkle icing sugar as he finds a fine film of icing sugar covering everything in the kitchen.

To complete the look of the vintage Victoria sponge stack wedding cake i need to dust the top with lots of icing sugar. As this will be done on the day after i have stacked the cake in situ i had visions of covering the whole recpetion in icing sugar!

Then to my amazement i discovered this little gadget in Tesco. Whitworths have revamped their icing sugar shaker into a twistable version which works really well.

You take the lid off then turn upside down and twist the unit like a salt/pepper grinder  It is very easy to control so you can slowly build up your decoration and you won't end up with half a cup of icing sugar on your cake by accident!

At £2.25 for 250g it is quite expensive and from what i can see it is not refillable but it is very handy for portable dusting situations and to avoid angry husbands!

I had to share these beautiful owl sugarcraft figures! Completely stunning by Sugar High in Virginia