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Hello all. It’s a while since I have been on here – getting a lot of house renovating and other stuff done. Now we are in the new year it’s an exciting time. British Sugar Guild exhibition at Telford in May – our branch, Burton Joyce, have all hands on deck producing a design I created for entering a table in the exhibition branch competition… that will be thrilling.
But for the time being I have been thinking of new designs to take with me when I am demonstrating and this one, would you believe it, was inspired by a cushion.
Mainly hand cut flowers and leaves with piped stitching effect
I was just sitting in my living room when I glanced across at a cushion on my chair and thought that would make a lovely cake… then I did nothing with it and 6 months later I finally got around to it. It is not copied exactly like the cushion but I just used it to get my brain in gear.
Pretty Cushion Inspired Cake Detail
To start with I made templates out of watercolour paper for the leaves and large flowers (it’s quite stiff but easy to cut and store templates). Rolling out the modelling paste to about one millimetre I proceeded to use my templates and cut out my pink and blue flowers. This style does not require any thinning on the edges with the ball tool – just cut and use. I then used blossom and forget-me-not cutters on the smaller flowers.
Making the leaves are the same process as the large flowers. When attaching these to the cake they were not glued totally flat – it’s nice to lift the edges off the cake slightly to give it a 3D effect. Then trimmed with a little delicate piping with royal icing to look like stitching.
With the balls around the bottom I made one the size I wanted and then keeping that aside I measured all the others next to it to get roughly the same size throughout. Now there is probably an easier way or a tool to do this but as you know I do not own a lot of tools and the least amount of tools I use the better – it makes you have more creative flair.
This cake design is ideal for any type of celebration cake – pretty cake for a teenagers birthday or it can even be translated into a beautiful wedding cake.
If you’d like me to decorate a cake in a bespoke style or something completely different for your special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area. Please feel free to leave me an email or a message and I will always get back to you as soon as possible.
I will always endeavour to reply to your enquiry within 48 hours. If you have not heard from me in that time it suggests that there is an error with my mailbox or server which I am currently unaware of and I would therefore ask that you try to contact me by phone or text. Thank you.
This cake was designed around a Play Station hand console for a boy who loves playing all varieties of computer games that are available in todays world of new technology and gadgetry.
Hand Made Modelling Paste Hand Console Cake
Firstly I don’t play computer games so I had to research what a hand console looked like. I basically printed a photo off the internet to the correct size and cut out a template of the shape. After rolling the black modelling paste to the desired height I used the template to cut out the main body of the console then proceeded to rub my fingers around the sharp edges to soften. Creating the handles was a different technique of rolling the modelling paste into a sausage, then reducing one end to a soft point and then cutting out the other end to fit the main body again using the template. This was finished by hand painting all the symbols in edible food colouring.
Birthday Wishes
The square sponge cake is covered in pale orange sugarpaste on which the console sits. Finished off with royal icing piped birthday wishes and black and red stripes to create a striking cake.
If you’d like me to decorate a cake in a bespoke style or something completely different for your special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area. Please feel free to leave me an email or a message and I will always get back to you as soon as possible.
I was commissioned to create this bespoke wedding cake with its cascade of hand-crafted flowers for a couple who loves owls. These cute owls sit on the branch of the delicately hand-painted bride and groom’s names in a beautiful script font.
A single tiered wedding cake with hand-made flowers, hand-painted names and owls
Small pink roses, purple pansies, pink hydrangeas and tiny lily of the valley flowers adorn this one tier fruit cake. All of them made from petal paste and some piped royal icing for the the lily of the valley stems.
Roses, Hydrangeas, Pansies and Lily of the Valley hand-made flowers
The owls were gently sitting with the names so it would compliment the design and add to the overall effect.
Close-up of the hand-painted detail
These hand-made owls are so cute…looking into each others eyes that they make this a special and unique wedding cake.
Overall view of the wedding cake
If you’d like me to decorate a cake in a bespoke style or something completely different for your special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area. Please feel free to leave me an email or a message and I will always get back to you as soon as possible.
Nottingham LocalCard have just celebrated their 2nd Anniversary and kindly requested I make them a cake with their logo to celebrate.
I recently added my business to their website www.nottinghamlocalcard.com so this cake will be featured in their January newsletter too! How exciting!
When designing a cake you need some inspiration so the best place to look for it in this case was their website. I needed to see what the membership card looked like, fonts, colours and any other unique feature to them that might make the cake special. Sometimes it can help by doing a very quick sketch.
Creating cakes has been in my life for over 3 years now and I never stop amazing myself at what I can do or new techniques I can teach myself – there is always something new to learn. I still like to be true to myself and produce a pleasing design out of my head rather than someones book or off the internet with as little cutters as possible (all hand-cut and hand-made; the only shop bought cutters used in this design is the flowers on the girls shoulders and a frilled circle cutter for the skirt). I still get thrilled when I am working on a cake and seeing it evolve as every cake is different and beautiful.
I decided on making a rectangle cake that I could place a plaque (credit card shaped) on top. Firstly, I started the membership card by mixing a similar colour referenced to the website colour (you are never going to match exactly) into some white modelling paste, rolled it out thinly and then cut a rectangle with round corners out of it. This was then left for 24 hours to harden.
The next step was to cut out the logo with a scalpel in white and black modelling paste, let them harden and hand paint a keyline in black around the white letters. After that they were attached with edible glue.
I kept cross referencing to the membership card to make sure I was getting the style correct and that the logo was in the right position before hand-painting the rest of the lettering directly onto the plaque in black and white again following the brand. When all this was complete I carefully lifted the finished plaque up and attached it to the top of the cake with more edible glue.
The website features members’ holding their membership cards so this inspired me to make characters doing the same. I created a man and a woman, both holding tiny cards, wearing the same colours to reflect the rest of the cake and make it all coordinated.
The characters were started from the feet upwards. For the girl the feet and legs were made separately then the skirt is attached on top of that. Then it was time for the body then the arms followed by the head. The man was created in the same way but obviously wearing a suit. The finer details such as the painted toe nails, buttons and small membership card were added last. Inside each figure is one plastic dowling which must be removed if the figures are to be eaten but the rest is all edible.
LocalCard loved the cake and took photographs for their newsletter to come out in January. I hope you enjoyed reading about this.
If you’d like me to decorate a cake in a similar bespoke style or something completely different for your special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area. Please feel free to leave me an email or a message and I will always get back to you as soon as possible.
This is the reverse of the blue pink flowered handbag cake that I created for a demonstration I was giving. As I explained before it is double sided in order for me to have more techniques to show to everyone.
Reverse of the blue pink flower handbag cake
As usual, when I am creating my designs, I like to try something a little different from the norm.
Intricate patterns
When decorating my cakes I like to use as little cutters as possible. Sometimes, when using the cutters, I try to make something out of them that they were not originally intended for.
If you’d like me to decorate a similar cake for a special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area.
This cake is a two sided handbag cake which I made for a British Sugar Guild demonstration in a couple of weeks. It will be used to demonstrate lots of different techniques and hopefully inspire people to experiment with their own cake designs.
Ideal for any celebration!
I painted a pattern in the background to give it some depth. Then flowers made of petal paste were attached over this. The same flower cutter was used to emboss the handbag top and it was finished off using a homemade button mould to create the clasp.
Close up of the detailing on top of the handbag cake
The cake was finished off with tiny piped pale pink dots and silver painted to hightlight the finer detail.
Flower detailing on the handbag cake front
Keep a look out for my next update with details of the reverse side it as it is even better than this one.
If you’d like me to decorate a similar cake for a special occasion then please feel free to contact me for a quote. Copper Top Cakes is based in Nottingham and delivers to the East Midlands area.
This pretty pink handbag cake was designed for a special girls 16th birthday party.
A sponge cake was carved into the handbag shape and then covered in pink icing. A pin wheel was used to recreate a decorative stitching pattern along the edges and sides of the bag.
I made a mould of some different buttons to make icing buttons to decorate the front and back of the cake. I also added some hand made flowers to the front for good measure.
The base is also icing and patterned to look like fabric. It is finished off with a lovely font saying ‘Happy 16th Birthday Abbie’.
If you’d like me to decorate a similar cake for someone specials Birthday then please feel free to contact me for a quote.
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