Hareem's Princess Castle

Another week, another Princess Castle. I think I am finally getting it right - or it might just be the copious amount of glitter all over the cake. Of all the princess castle cakes I have made (and there's been a few now), I think this is the one I like best. It's got all the details, but isn't over done. I think I am also getting better at the princesses too. This cake was made up with chocolate cake in the middle and vanilla/rainbow for the turrets and small middle.

Ryan's Jungle

This is the second time I have done a cake like this and am still rapt with how it turns out. I had a wee problem in that when I attached the monkey on the top, his leg broke off. Though I fixed it, you could still see where it had broken, so I modelled up a bunch of bananas and placed them over the crack. I then also put a banana on the elephant's trunk for a bit of fun. Note the candle - I have just found some jungle candles in four different patterns, zebra, leopard, giraffe and tiger - cool.

Claudio's Nike Sneaker

Well there's a first time for everything, and this is it for making a sneaker out of cake. I was dreading making this one because of the detail, but in the end it all just came together nicely. A few weeks ago I invested in a fondant extruder which was quite expensive, but it's certainly made my life a lot easier. The laces of this sneaker were just made by stuffing some fondant into a tube and then screwing the handle round and round, and voila, out the other end came these beautiful laces and all I had to do was attach them to the cake.

Kyra's Shoes

This is the second time I have been asked to make this cake. The only difference with this one was that I added a bit of blue in some of the decorations. Also, at the moment I can't get pearl lustre spray from any of my wholesalers, so had to dab the whole cake with a edible metallic paint. The spray works better and is easier, but the cake still looked lovely and shiny.

Jonty's Fire Engine

I am certainly pleased I put the time into the detailing of this fire engine because when Jonty came over to get his cake, he certainly gave it the once over. It seemed to pass muster. Once again the new extruder came in handy with making a long, long hose to come out of the engine. I made the ladders out of gum paste at the beginning of the week, so they had nicely hardened by time they were needed to put on the engine. Everything, apart from the ladders, was edible on this cake.

Brayden's Buzz Lightyear

This is just a one-tier banana cake, covered in buttercream icing and then a thin layer of fondant over the whole thing. I then copied the picture of Buzz onto the fondant. After that, using black royal icing, I iced all the outlines and finally filled in the portions with a bit runnier royal icing. This is called floodwork and the end result always looks good. I also really liked the way Brayden's name and age were made in the Toy Story style.

Menaal's Princess Castle

My goodness, this design is proving extremely popular. A few differences on this one from the norm - Menaal is a big fan of Barbie Fashionista, so I made one out of gum paste for the centre of the cake, as well as the four little Disney princesses. The customer didn't want a huge cake, so the round corners (turrets?), are actually just fondant covered polystyrene. The heart-shaped pink thing behind the Barbie is a princess candle specially requested.

Mason's Blocks

Wow, I don't think I have made a cake this tall before, and it took some major construction work with skewers to keep everything in place. I was also asked to make a sign to stand at the top with the Happy Birthday message on it but when I placed it in the cake, the sign broke in two, so it was a bit of a last minute panic until I remembered I had a spare Happy 1st Birthday sign which I just rested on the top of the cake. I loved the little Wiggles in their car. A lovely birthday cake for a first birthday.

Thomas's White Lego Ninja

Another Lego Ninja but this time in white. I really do adore the way these little men turn out. The making of the Lego blocks to decorate the board is a bit time consuming, but it looks good. I also stacked up some of the blocks and put the candle on the top, just for something a bit different.

Bev's Baby Shower

It was such a delight to fulfil this order. The customer wanted 60 mini cupcakes with decorations on them - 30 vanilla and 30 chocolate. For the vanilla I coloured 15 blue and 15 pink. The chocolate ones had white chocolate icing on them to make the decorations stand out more.

Javier's Ben 10

Quite proud of this cake as the face of Ben 10 I had to draw myself and I don't consider myself anywhere near an artist. He seemed to turn out recognisable which is all I can ask for. I put a Ben 10 watch around the middle of the cake with Javier's name on it. Only the decorations were fondant on this cake, the main icing was just buttercream and the little balls around the edges were lollies.

Ahnaf's Lightning McQueen

The funny thing about Lightning McQueen cakes is that for a while there he's just a funny shaped cake with red fondant on him, then you add the eyes and all of a sudden he's real. Once again I have used my chocolate rocks as they are so useful. This cake was for a 1-year-old so we wanted to put so we wanted to put some brighter colours on it. I especially like the checkered banner with the birthday greeting on it.

EnviroWaste's Wheelie Bin

My first corporate cake! The picture doesn't give you the perspective of just how big this cake is. The wheelie bin is made up of three big chocolate cakes, one on top of the other. Once again I used edible images for the logos. I then 'filled' up the wheelie bin with all sorts of recyclable materials such as milk bottles, wine bottles and tin cans, as well as a lot of paper. The cake had to be covered in black fondant as this is the colour of the bins at EnviroWaste - trouble is this probably made everyone's teeth grey for a while after eating the cake. I hope all the photos were taken before the cake was cut.

Jayden's Dinosaur

I got the idea for this design from Jayden's birthday invitations which had a blue dinosaur and an erupting volcano on it. The body of the dinosaur is a vanilla cake and the volcano is chocolate cake with red royal icing pouring down the sides. I am using my lovely little chocolate rocks again in the volcano. These have come in very handy and I will be using them again before the weekend is over.

Joe and Gemma's Ford

I was actually going to make the Ford logo out of royal icing, but then decided to just go with an edible image. This is the second time I have used one of these and it makes life so much easier. I wouldn't usually do this, but this week has been quite busy and I needed to save time where I could. It turned out rather well though I don't think I'd use the images all the time.

Perez's Word Search

This one may look a bit like a mishmash of letters, but it does actually spell out 'Happy Birthday Perez 10'. Perez is a fan of word search puzzles and so I decided to go with that in designing this cake. I thought it would be easy, but it took a bit of moving letters around before I got something I was happy with.

Tommy's Otters

For this cake I was asked to put a couple of otters on the top as Tommy's mother is a zookeeper at the Wellington Zoo and looks after the otters. Well, I tried, but can't make up my mind if they are a couple of otters or maybe squirrels shipwrecked on a log of wood. I hope Tommy recognises them for what they are supposed to be.