Pooh Sticks Cake Collected

She loved it. She really, really loved it. She actually gave me a hug!

I might have another order from her at the end of the year, or early next year, as they're planning on having all the children christened, so will be wanting a cake!

:o)

Winnie 'Pooh Sticks' Cake

It's finished. I love it.

Everything on it is edible - even the bridge. However, for extra stability, the base of the bridge is has been placed on some card. The little 'Pooh sticks' are tiny pieces of spaghetti that I painted brown with colouring gel.

This is one of those cakes that, if you had the time, you could really 'play' with. For example, my 8½ year old son said the bridge should have been arched. I was thinking of putting a picket fence all around the cakes, and you could have had a sign that said "Mr Sanderz" over a doorway - which is the entrance to Winnie-the-Pooh's house. My husband said an oak tree would have looked good! Yeah, I'm sure it would... but I wouldn't know how to start! But you know what I mean? You could really have such fun 'playing' with a cake like this.

It's a good job I had three heads already made from last time I did a Winnie cake, because it takes me so long to do modelling. They're just sugar, so they keep almost indefinitely.

Here's a quick picture I took, but I'll probably take a few more tomorrow and then decide which is the best.

Right - it's gone 1.30am so I'm off to bed. The cake is being collected at 9am tomorrow!

Just a quickie...

She loved it!!!

In fact, it's mum's turn to have "the girls' night" at her place next Wednesday, so she's saving it for then. Good job it's a fruit cake! ;o)

I finished my mum's cake yesterday.

I'm so pleased with it. It looks lovely. And it didn't really take too long, either. I haven't put it on my website or blog yet. Once we're back from dinner tonight, then I'll do it. But I want it to be a surprise. I must admit, Mum isn't really "into" handbags, but I did this cake because I knew it wouldn't take too long; I've had so many other commitments this week that I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time.

Last night I baked one of the cakes for Saturday. This morning, I baked the other one. I've covered the cake board. I'm going to have a bit of a tidy up and then see what time it is. I need to have a shower and do my hair, because we're out for dinner tonight. I should be able to make the pastillage this afternoon. Then this evening I think I'll cover the cakes. The buttercream is already made.

It doesn't matter what time I go to bed on Friday - the cake has to be finished by then, as it's being collected at 9am on Saturday!

Cookies - Finished!

I've done them! I've done them!!

:O)

I've got to put them into a cab and send them to the charity's head office in Shoreditch tomorrow. Mother-in-law is going to give me the cost of the cab back.

So... tomorrow....

Decorate my mum's birthday cake.
Bake 2 x 7" sponge cakes.
Cover the cake board for the 2 x 7" cakes.
Make some pastillage to use in the models that are going onto the 2 x 7" cakes.

I thought I'd just add that today's customer was really pleased with the cake. I really do feel honoured to have made a 70th wedding anniversary cake. I asked her if she didn't mind me asking how old her grandparents were? Her grandmother is 92 and her grandfather is 93. Isn't that wonderful, to have been married for that long? She also told me their family had been in touch with Buckingham Palace a while ago, and that her grandparents got a letter from The Queen. I really do think it's so special.

Right.... I need to go to bed!

Night-night!

The cake is done. Customer will be collecting it any minute.

I've just had a phone call from my mother-in-law to see if I'll be delivering the cookies today. Erm... no. Sorry! She said that if I can't get them to her by tomorrow (when her friend - a patron of the charity - has a meeting at the charity's office), then she'll pay for a cab to take them to CWAC's office in SW4. I'm not very happy about that. When I spoke to the friend on Saturday, she did say that her grandson was helping at the ball and so if necessary, he could take them with him on Saturday. But now, my mother-in-law said that that won't be possible. "It's complicated" she said. No, I'm not very happy at all.

Cookies and Cake

I've never had such a busy week as this one.

This morning I had to go to the cake supplies shop. Traffic was dreadful and it took me over twice as long to get there and back as it usually does.

I've now decorated all the cookies. I have actually decorated 226 (I was asked for 210) and I've got 10 spare (as yet, undecorated. I intend to decorate them and give them to the printer of the little cards on the bags, as a 'thank you').

They're all bagged up.

108 have the ribbons and little card tags on them.

118 still need that part doing. I actually think that that bit takes longer than decorating them!

*sigh*

Last night I baked the anniversary cake which is being collected tomorrow. I've spent today decorating it. All I have to do is the inscription. I might see if I can do it tonight (I need the sugarpaste to set a bit first). Otherwise, I'll have to do it first thing tomorrow morning.... it's being collected at 10.30am.

Yesterday, I also covered my mum's birthday cake in marzipan. I had to cut a bit off of it, to shape it. Oh My Goodness... it's goooooooooooood (if I say so myself!). I do love rich fruit cake. And this one is delicious.

Oh, I got a phone call yesterday from the lady for whom I made the 50th wedding anniversary cake. She kept saying what an absolutely delicious cake it is – and that, in fact, when they have visitors over, if they offer their guests any, her husband glares at her because he wants to keep it all for themselves! LOL! A 5 and a 0 is a heck of a lot of cake for 2 people! But she was so thrilled with it. Her words were 'it's as good on the inside as it is on the outside'. Which is lovely to hear.

Tomorrow, I plan to pipe the inscription on the cake, first thing. Once that's gone, I'll do quite a lot of the cookie bags. Then, I want to work on my mum's cake. That's needed for Thursday. Wednesday I hope to do the last of the cookie bags by the afternoon, so that I can deliver them to my mother-in-law, where they're being collected from. I also need to start work on the Winnie-the-Pooh characters for the cakes which I'm doing for collection on Saturday. Thursday, I want to bake the two cakes for Saturday.

I think that's it.

On paper, it sounds like I'm quite organised. But I'm easily distracted!!!

The modelling of the 4 figures will take me an entire day, probably. I'm a slow worker with a limited concentration span!

Hogwarts Castle - Finished!

It's done. At the end of the day, had it been a cake I'd had a lot more time with, I would have done things differently. But I think that it's better than it was. I think the tall towers and turrets give it more height, more presence. Unfortunately, there's no getting around the fact that I've used ice-cream cones for the turrets and wafers for the roofs (actually, they don't look bad... the teeny-tiny square pattern on them looks like roof tiles!). But I did what I could in the time available.

Katie was so, so grateful. She said that not many people would have done what I did. I'm not sure many cake decorators would have taken on someone else's cake. But I did it for Katie. She said to invoice her and she'll pay me ASAP. But I'm still not sure what to charge. Yes, I had a very late night. And yes, I have a lot of other work I should have been doing. But I don't want to take advantage of her. Oh, and also, she said that when it's my son's birthday next, she also wants to provide an entertainer - free of charge - as a thank you. That's so sweet of her. But, again, I don't want to take advantage.

One thing I've learnt, though, is that I can definitely afford to increase what I charge her for cakes. Obviously her clients are prepared to pay that sort of money. And last time she came to collect a cake, she actually told me to put my prices up!

I now need to crack on with the cookies. However, I'm out tonight. I'm going to have to try to get some help, I think!

Hogwarts Update

It's going a lot, lot slower than I anticipated. I knew it wouldn't be a ten minute job, but it's gone midnight (Steve and I have been working on it since about 8pm) and it's nowhere near done.

In fact, we're only doing a small castle. Because of the time issue, I'm doing a castle on the left and on the right I'm going a quidditch pitch. It's not what she had in mind, I'm sure. But I hope it will be better than what was originally there. It's much, much bigger than what was originally there. It should be a bit more imposing. Obviously, it still needs roofs, etc. But I think it you compare it to the piddly castle that was originally there, it should look a bit better. I hope.

Cake Stops Play!

I got a phone call earlier this afternoon from the party planner from whom I get quite a bit of my work.

She sounded ashen! She said "Suzanne... can you help me out of a situation?"

I said "What's the matter?"

She said "I'll be honest with you. I sometimes use another cake maker. Well, she's delivered a £300 cake and it's crap! I've got a party for clients tomorrow in Kensington. They're spending £10,000 and I just can't take this cake to them." She went on to tell me it's a Harry Potter theme party at the Kensington Roof Gardens. She said the base of the cake is fine, but the Hogwarts castle is just terrible. She said "I'll pay you £200 if you can sort this out for me."

I told her to bring it over and I'd have a look, but that I'd be honest and if it wasn't something I could do, I would tell her.

She's just been. She wasn't joking! The base bit is fine. And there is A HELL OF A LOT of cake. However, the castle is a complete and utter joke. It's tiny. And not very good. So she's left the cake with me and I'll have to completely remove the sugarpaste 'castle' and make a new one from scratch.

This is going to put me back quite a bit, with the cookies. I managed to do 15 more today, from about 10am - 1pm [with only very occasional, short breaks! ;o) ]

Good News and Bad News

The good news is that my sister came over this evening . The good news is that we got all of these cookies decorated, bagged, tagged and ribboned (is 'ribboned' a word?)







The bad news is that I still have all of these cookies still left to do!!!!!!!!

OMG! These are going to take me forever to do. Debra was here for just under 2½ hours.... So I was decorating cookies for 2½ hours. Debra was bagging, tagging and ribboning (is 'ribboning' a word?) for 2½ hours and we got 40 done. 40?! I'm gonna be here forever :o(

225 Cookies Baked

I'm ridiculously, pathetically proud of these cookies. Well... I've never done so many before. Yet, at the same time, I'm also a little diappointed. I mean, I thought that it would just look.... more! Of course, this was the easy bit. I've got to start decorating and bagging them up tomorrow. Eeek! The decorating isn't hard. I mean, it's not like I'm going to royal ice them. Royal icing gives a gorgeous finish. But it's a heck of a lot more work. And seeing as a) there are so many of them and b) they're freebies..... But royal icing cookies does look beautiful. No, the way I'm doing it will just be fiddly!

This is Rita's website. Rita is the lovely lady who taught me about cake decorating. http://www.amatterot.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=Cookies-and-favours

See what a gorgeous finish her cookies have. Mine will be different, as I'm going to use a thin red strip of sugarpaste to decorate them with. But Rita would have used royal icing! ;o) When I grow up, I want to be Rita.

138 Down.... 72 to go!!!

Yay! I got 138 cookies out of the one batch of cookie dough. Some of them are slightly browner on the edges than I'd like, so I will make extra when I'm baking tomorrow, so that I can pick and choose the best. And I'll send some extras, in case of breakages en route.

And the printers who very kindly printed all the little card tag things completely free of charge for me... I'll send them some as a thank you, too.

40 Down..... 170 to Go!!

Actually, I'm steaming through these a lot quicker than I thought I would. I think that when I've finished this batch of dough, I won't bake any more until tomorrow. I have actually got almost 100 from one batch. And I've made three batches! I've only defrosted two batches so far, so I can leave the third batch in the freezer until I need it for something else.

The dough defrosted beautifully and it's lovely to work with.

I'm still undecided if I'll start decorating these tonight.

I bought the plastic storage box/crate thingy this morning. I thought it would be idea to store them in until I decorate them, and then once they're done I can put them back in there until they're bagged up. And then when they're bagged up, I might put them in there for delivery.

Cookies for Charity

I've just had a thought.

It's not enough that I've bought all the ingredients (I reckon it's around £30, give or take a bit) and that I've spent around £17 on bags and ribbon for these 210 cookies, but I'm going to have to buy a LARGE plastic box with a lid tomorrow, so that when I've baked the cookies, I have somewhere to store them until they're decorated and bagged up. And then, once they're decorated and bagged up I'll need somewhere to store them until they're delivered.

And, at the moment, it could be that the charity is going to pay for a minicab to deliver them. So that means I won't get my flippin' box back! (I had a look in the cheapy shop today, and they are around a fiver.)

Agghhhhhhhh!!

Humph!!

I know it only comes to around £50, but for me that's a lot of money right now. I wouldn't be doing this for any other charity. Good job it's CWAC! http://www.cwac.org/

50th Anniversary Cake... the full story.

It's taken me a full week to get myself together after the saga of the 50 cake. Never have I been so stressed, panicked and depressed as I have about this cake. If ever there was a time I thought I might give up this cake decorating lark, it was making this cake.

So, where did I get to? I put the pretty lace border around the bottom of the cake. Then, because I had to hide the join where I'd covered the top of the cake and then the sides, I put another lace border around the top. Then I decided - and G-d knows what made me do it - to paint them gold. To tie in with the golden anniversary, I guess. OMG! What a mess. It was awful! My husband is very supportive and encouraging. But he kept coming in, staring at it, then walking out. And I was getting more and more frantic. I didn't know what to do.

I've often said we're soul mates, because sometimes we do things, separately, but at the same time. In this instance, as I got up from typing a message on a cake decorating forum I use - asking how hard it would be just to recover the cake and start again - he came in and said to me ' Would it be too much to just recover the cake and start again?'. So I knew that this was obviously what I had to do.

He helped me to remove the cake from the cake board. This in itself wasn't easy, because it had been royal iced in place! I had to be careful not to break the cake (because it was a number 5, it was more delicate than, say, a round or square cake... easier to break!) With the cake, came a load of the icing from the board. So between us, we delicately removed the icing and marzipan from the cake and whilst I recovered the cake, he patched up the cake board. It wouldn't be seen, so it wasn't important that it was patched up. Thank G-d it was a rich fruit cake... I never would have been able to do it with a sponge.

HOWEVER, then another 'disaster'. When I put the cake back onto the board, because I'd re-covered it in an ever-so-slightly different way than how I did it the first time, it was one or two millimeters smaller than it had originally been. And this meant that where I'd painted the bottom lace border gold and there were flecks of gold on the board, you could see it. And you could see where it had been patched up.

I literally paced around with my head in my hands, chanting out loud 'What am I gong to do? What am I going to do?' Then it hit me. I mirrored the lace boarder that was on the bottom of the cake, onto the cake board.

I still didn't know what to do about hiding the join around the top of the 5 cake. I knew I couldn't put a lace border on it, because it would have been too much. So I just did a simple line of piping. I was in two minds about whether or not to pipe around the 0. It was so simple and elegant with such nice lines and a nice shape, that I worried about ruining it. But it had to match the 5. So I did. And it was fine.

So, finally, the end result was - I think - a very elegant, under-stated 50th wedding anniversary cake. There was a single white rose that I'd edged with gold, with a couple of gold leaves. The inscription was piped onto the cake and then painted gold. And the gold ribbon around the cake board also gave it a lift.

It was bloody hard work getting there, but I did get there in the end. I was finally happy with the cake. And, more importantly, the anniversary couple were thrilled with it!

50th Wedding Anniversary Cake

So far. I hate it. Really, really hate it. Instead of normal, boring piping painted gold, I thought I'd try a lace effect. Above is how it looked before I painted it gold. Wish I hadn't bothered now. I had to put something on the top to hide where the sugarpaste joins from the sides to the top. And because I'd done the bottom with the border, putting piping along the top wouldn't have looked right.

I'm invited to the function that it's for.... my mother-in-law's best friend's Golden Wedding Anniversary party.

Originally, they ordered it (and I would have earned well from it), but then I decided to tell them it would be my gift to them.

I really, really wanted this to be a "Wow" cake. The caterer they're having also did my dad's wedding a couple of years ago. Well, when I asked him what he thought of the cake(http://patacake-parties.blogspot.com/2005/10/with-hand-made-arum-lilies-eucalyptus.html) he was so rude, he had me in tears. He said "It's Ok... but it's not up to a professional standard". My arse it wasn't. That cake was gorgeous. Absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever. It might not be to everyone's taste, but there was no reason why it wasn't of a professional standard. B****rd was probably just pi$$ed off because he didn't get his cake person to make it, and he didn't get to put a few quid on top for himself! I only asked because, at the time, I was so insecure about my work that I thought I might get a few words of encouragement.

*sigh*

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll just have to finish it and then see how I feel then. But right now, I couldn't feel any more depressed.

Forthcoming Work

So, at the moment, my month looks like this:

9th - 50th wedding anniversary cake.
15th - Pirate ship cake.
25th - 70th wedding anniversary cake.
27th - my mummy's birthday.
29th - 2 cakes for 1 year old twins.
29th - well, a few days before, actually, 210 cookies.

So, no pressure then. Eeek!

Here's how I'm planning it.

The 50th wedding anniversary cake is rich fruit and so has already been baked. I've decided how I'm decorating it. The cake is a 5 and a 0. In the middle of the 0 I am getting a small edible print of the couple on their wedding day. I shall pipe around it and around the edge of the entire cake and then paint it with edible gold luster. I think I'll also put some lace (edible) around the bottom of the cake and I'll either paint it gold, or just edge it in gold. And I think two or three roses, too. It's for next Sunday, so I'll start the cake Wednesday or Thursday, I think.

I'm hoping the pirate ship cake will be collected on the Saturday and not the Friday. That means I will be able to bake it on Wednesday night (12th) , decorate Thursday and Friday, ready for collection on Saturday.

The 70th wedding anniversary cake I'll bake on Sunday 23rd, decorate on the Monday, reading for collection on the Tuesday.

My mum's birthday cake is already baked (it's a rich fruit cake). I have no idea how I'm going to decorate it, yet. But I'll do that all day Tuesday and Wednesday, ready for our meal in a nice local restaurant on the Thursday.

The cookies for the 29th (well, 28th at the latest, I suppose)... I made the cookie dough today and have frozen it. I suppose I will start making those on Thursday 20th. I can spend a couple of days solidly rolling out cookie dough, cutting out the cookies, then baking them. Then I'll spend a couple of days covering them. Then I need to bag them all up. Actually, once they're decorated, I'll need to bag them up - otherwise I have no hygienic storage for them. I think I'll enlist the help of my sister and my brother-in-law. I've mentioned it in passing to them! ;o)

The two cakes for the 29th... well, I don't know for sure what I'm doing yet. The mum has paid me a deposit. But we haven't properly discussed what she wants. All I know is that she wants two cakes on one cake board. At one point she mentioned Winnie-the-Pooh characters. I've seen some gorgeous designs which are two seperate cakes, but they're joined by a rainbow! I'd love to do that! I'll see if I can sell her on the idea?!

So, that's my month and how I plan it. Let's see if everything goes to plan.

Suzanne x