I had wanted to make a chalkboard cake for some time before I made this cake. I spent a lot of time looking at other chalkboard cakes and going over what I would do a million times in my head. When I was finished working, I stepped back and I wasn’t impressed. This had not turned out how I thought it would. Not great.
At the time, I was disappointed but as the cake was needed for a shoot later that day, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. The cake and I went off to the shoot, and afterwards it stayed packed in its box because I wasn’t sure what else to do with it.
The other day, I needed to use the box so I unpacked it, all ready to shove it straight in the dishwasher to recycle the dummies and so forth. When I opened this lid, I just thought “Whoa!! What was I thinking?!? That’s probably the best rose and peony that I’ve ever made.” Instead of going back into the box, it went onto my favourite cake stand. I still get a little warm feeling from the flush of pride I feel whenever I look at it.
I think sometimes that as cake decorators, we get too close to our work. We scrutinise it, tweak it, compare it to the work of others and then scrutinise it again for good measure. What we need to do once in a while is to step back and say, yeah, I made that!

You can see the shoot here: http://english-wedding.com/2015/08/french-romantic-styled-shoot-at-froyle-park-graham-nixon-photography/