My daughters 18th- a chance to get rid of some leftover colours… and do something wacky!

Just a week’s notice to come up with a combine harvester for a 21st Birthday.

Traditional sugar flowers, woven ribbon was done with sugarpaste so it did not need removing

For an elderley relative who loves playing whist, garden birds ans her delightful mouseman furniture

“Guess the weight” fundraiser for local school

Complete with flying gulls and flashing hazard lights! The special edition of the farmer’s weekly I designed included all his family members. I really enjoyed doing this cake.

My husband is a Halloween baby and is turning 50 tomorrow. It is a bit of a milestone birthday so I decided on an “old fossil” cake. I made three layers… I mean stratas: coffee, caramel and vanilla sponge and filled with white chocolate and baileys ganache. I modelled the dinosaur bones out of fondant and let them dry for 24 hours. I crumbed a variety of biscuits with grated chocolate and ovaltine powder on top of the chocolate icing to make the surrounding soil. Easy, but looks quite effective.

This time with the addition of fresh flowers.

This is an 18th birthday cake for one of my daughter’s friends. It is a bit over the top, but she insisted having everything on it. I also modelled her pet cat which is trying to get into one of the shopping carriers behind the bed!

What I do with the left over cake is the most important thing of all!

Just finished this for a friend’s son who is 21 on the weekend. Hollowed out a deep sponge I had layered with jam and buttercream. After covering with black fondant I commenced building the engine with a combination of hand modelled fondant parts coloured candy shoestrings and liquorice. The bonnet struts are candy floss sticks covered with fondant, these go down to the bottom of the cake to support the weight of the bonnet, which is simply leant on the top. There is an aluminium “L” shaped brace at the back of the cake (like a bookend) which just peeps above the back of the cake. This stops the bonnet from slipping back and also from pushing the back of the cake out.

Just a simple cake for another friend.

I was asked to do this cake at short notice as the girl who was going to decorate it had become ill. The sponge was made by her auntie and is a very rich, lemon flavoured cake. Base tier is 14 inches and although it is a lovely light sponge, made up it weighs a ton! She is getting married tomorrow and the cake will have a long trip to Wales from East Yorkshire this evening… so can everybody wish it a safe journey!

This was for a family wedding, so I made the cake as a wedding gift. This is the only picture I ever got of the cake and if you look carefully you may notice it has already been cut. I love doing wedding cakes and have done several for my friends, but I am not a professional and my techniques/methods may reflect this sometimes so I am a little hesitant about taking on paid commissions. I would love to do it for an income though. I would not know where to start when it comes to charging for them…

This cake was requested for a gay wedding in Amsterdam. The couple had been together for a long time previously, so the brief was to reflect this. I decided to use a road as the metaphor for their life’s journey together… found out the colour of the car they drive and then the names and locations of the establishments they had owned together. The signposts are made from those candy musk sticks that kiddies like to pretend are cigarettes. I wanted to try and keep the whole cake edible (as i do with all my cakes), but wanted to incorporate some decoration on the sides, so I got back to my man and asked if there were any particular songs they were fond of… my intention was to draw the musical score. “Gangbang” was the answer! I thought in this case the lyrics (if you can call them such!) were more approriate for the occaision. The cake had to travel by ferry from Yorkshire to Amsterdam, and then on to Spain, so i made all the decorations removable, packed them in a rigid box and provided a “map” for where to put signposts, etc back in correct places. It was much appreciated and I got tremendous feedback. It was, (like most of the cakes I have done to date) for a “friend of a friend”... so this one, like many, I did gratis!

A cake made for a horse trainer whose birthday falls on the 29th Feb. My brief was that she smokes Marlborough cigarettes and reads the Racing Post. I asked for a few personal details so I could write up a headline about her (and her horse) along with a little article about the pub where the party was held. Yes the ashtray and stubs are sugar too- for the ash i crushed some sugar cubes slightly and dropped black food colouring into them… it worked a treat! I later added a ring of edible gold pen around the cigarette ends which made them look even more lifelike.

I was given a week’s notice to do a birthday cake for a girl training to be a jockey. I was asked to include black platform shoes, a horse crop and the colour purple. The rest was left to me…