More cake updates - Part One

Things have continued to be hectic and time consuming, hence my continued lack of posts. I have been busy with cake making though - it does take up quite a bit of free time!

I've had a few orders since I last posted and of course my continued decorating classes which I'll start with as that'll be easier. In cake class we have made calla lilies, 'star/flower bursts', we have decorated cupcakes and we have practiced some writing with royal icing.

I enjoyed making the calla lilies but I found them quite difficult and time consuming to make and not sure I'll be purchasing the necessary tools, not right now anyway.

 The star/flower bursts that we did are designed to add a nice effect to the top of a cake. The 'burst' is placed inside posey picks which then go inside the cake. Numbers can also be used if the cake is for a special birthday or anniversary, as well as other designs such as hearts or butterflies; anything as long as the cut out isn't too big or thick as it needs to be supported on a thin wire. I especially liked the one below where we made the flower red and sparkly!

 One of my favourite classes that we did was the week we had to bring in some cupcakes to decorate in whatever way we liked. I had recently purchased 'Planet Cake', a cake decorating book which incorporates birthday cakes and cupcakes. I decided to use these for inspiration and managed to make a few different varieties; a bumblebee (didn't turn out brilliantly but I did rush that one at the end of class), ladybirds, dragonflies, babies. Although I enjoyed making these, I found that the shape of my cupcakes wasn't always conducive to the design I wanted to use - I need a more dome shape than I had achieved and I'm not entirely sure how to go about getting a better shape - maybe more research for another time.

 Our last class was about writing using royal icing. I don't think I took any pictures of this as it mostly just looked like white squiggles. We had a look at various ways of getting different styles of script onto a cake which was really useful.

Our last class is on tomorrow and we are going to be going through costings and varying quantities, two things I'm very interested to learn properly, and we'll also be attempting to model a person out of sugarpaste.

Anyway that's it for the classes. I'll do another blog post covering cakes I've done recently :)

Life

Hello stranger I hear you say!

Apologies for my absence, I can't believe it's been (just) over a month since my last post! But my life has been overtaken by...well...life, which can so often happen - funny that isn't it?

Everything seems to be happening in such a short space of time, it's been a whirlwind, but it's gone by in a blur that I'm not even sure I could fully explain what's been going on. My work and social life seem to have both exploded over the last month and a fair chunk of my social life has been taken up with cake orders, which is exciting, but also rather stressful juggling it all - but I've managed it (I think!) without too many mishaps.

I do feel like I need a nice calm week at some point - maybe I could just take a week off from work and completely disappear, no one would know where I'd gone. It would be peaceful, but I imagine I'd soon be bored because for all I complain about being super busy, I'm busy doing lots of things I want to do, like the cinema, book club, quiz night, writing group, baking cakes/cupcakes/cookies, decorating cakes, games nights, DVD nights, bowling, dancing, cake class, meals out (occasionally), weddings, author events/chats/signings etc etc etc :) to name a...lot lol. Yet on the other hand...just one week???

I'm hoping to do a few catch up blog posts in the near future, but who knows when that will be lol :)
In the meantime though if you want to see any cakes I'm doing, check out my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Catherines-Cakes/221110464572701

Anyway I'd better get going, starting to fall asleep :D

Night night!