HOW busy?

The Spiderman for the 1st was cancelled.

The Teletubby for the 8th was confirmed.

I forgot another cake (a gift, from me, for a friend's 50th birthday) for the 9th December.

The cookie order has increased from 180 cookies to 360 cookies!! However, I've just found out that I can make the cookie dough, cut the cookies out, freeze them and then cook from frozen. So that's something I may start this weekend. That'll save some time when I'm busy later in the month.

I've just coloured some paste so I can start the fairies for the cupcakes, too.

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A few days ago, our computer crashed. Died.

And we didn't have anything backed up. Oh my G-d! Can you imagine losing EVERYTHING? All documents - that's photos of my children, of holidays, OF MY CAKES! My website. All previous and future orders. All my order forms, stationery, correspondence.... you get the picture.

Somehow, my husband eventually managed to get everything back (but it was touch and go for a good while) except for our e-mails. We lost all of them. Including all my contacts. So if you're reading this and you know me, please email me so that I've got your email address again!

Suzanne x

Busy December

At the moment, December looks like this:

1st Spiderman Cake
7th Birthday cake for my younger son (at the moment, I think he's having a football)
8th I've a Teletubbies cake pencilled in (not confirmed yet)
15th Number 1 with Winnie the Pooh etc
16th Mother-in-Law's 70th birthday party, so a cake required for that!
18th 28 fairy cupcakes
20th 180 cookies
21st My dad's 65th birthday

So that's a possible 8 orders, although 3 of those are freebies for family members.

The Spiderman cake was an order I took over the telephone - the lady's son was desperate for a Spiderman cake and she did a Google search. My cake was on the first page :o) Very happy about that! Anyway, she obviously got my website through that.

Daniel's birthday is actually on the 6th, but we're going out for a meal on the 7th, so I'll take the cake with us to the restaurant.

The teletubbies cake is for the daughter of an acquaintance of my husband. They're not sure yet.

The number 1 Winnie cake is for a friend of a friend of my sister. Or something like that!

Mother-in-Law's birthday is actually 18th December, but we're making her a surprise party on 16th. I think I'm going to make her a cake that looks like a bottle of wine in a wooden crate. That's the plan, anyway.

I'm really pleased with the cookies order. Katie (the party planner) is doing a corporate Christmas party and as part of it, she wants to do cookie decorating with the children. So I'm providing her with: 180 cookies; cellophane bags; curling ribbon; 20 tubes of Supercook Designer Icing; and lots of decorations for the cookies, which will include glace angelica, gold and silver balls, and I'm going to cut lots of little snow flakes, christmas trees, flowers, etc out of modelling paste, so the children can stick them, with the icing, onto the cookies.

I would love to make my dad a black cab cake for his birthday, but I'm not confident enough in my ability to do one. And he's the critical type. So, what I thought I might do is a giant French Fancy... you know the ones - Mr Kipling does them. It's sponge with a good blob of buttercream on the top then it's covered in fondant and they're either yellow, pink or brown. What do you think? It's different! He does LOVE them, but his wife is very strict and doesn't let him have them, except for special occasions.

Number 1 Winnie Cake - Finished

My work here is done!

What saved so much time was that I didn't have to colour any paste... I had some already coloured from the last time I made the figures. Steve - my husband - is quite right when he says I should make a few of each figure to keep in stock. That way, when I get a cake order it will only take half the time to do.

Rocket Cake and Stuff

I've now uploaded a pic of the rocket cake on my other blog (http://patacake-parties.blogspot.com/) and also on my proper website in the children's gallery (http://www.patacake-parties.com/Gallery.htm). It does look good, actually.... if I say so myself. When Katie collected it this morning I gave her some off-cuts of cake. She said 'Oh... isn't it chocolate?' I said 'No... the order form did say vanilla'. She thinks it was supposed to be chocolate. But she definitely didn't order chocolate. I hope it doesn't matter too much.

The number 1 cake for Sunday is baked, covered and on the board. I've decorated the edges with balloons (even though my other number 1 doesn't have balloons around it - I hope that doesn't matter too much). I needed to put something around the sides, to hide a few cracks!!!!! It didn't cover as well as it usually does. Hey-ho... these things happen.

So I've got all day tomorrow to make the 4 characters and do the inscription. The cake is being delivered first thing on Sunday morning. Should be fine :o)

Rocket Cake

I managed to bake the cake yesterday. It came out really flat-looking (nothing to do with how my cake turned out... it's just not a deep tin!) so I baked a shallow-ish rectangular cake, put the rugby ball cake on top of it and cut around. Much better.

I thought I'd get the cake finished in no time whatsoever. However, true to form, it's just short of midnight and I've only just finished. And now I have to tidy my kitchen! It's a bomb-site! A disaster area!!

I'm happy enough with the cake, although the one I was copying is better. Katie told me that she's had space suits made for the party, so I've incorporated them in the model by giving the astronaught blue boots and a blue belt.

I'll take a photo of it in the morning.

Suzanne x

Oh No!

I just about to start making the cake mixture for the rocket cake, when the door bell rang. It was a chap from the electricity company... the workmen re-doing the pavement outside have hit a cable and therefore all electricity is going to go off very soon - for a couple of hours.

Oh no! I can't start baking the cake.

So, I'm going to cover the cake boards and then start making the Winnie characters.

:o(

Stella Artois Cake Update

I just wanted to make a little diary entry to say that the cake got there in one piece! Phew! I was so worried. To give it some added stability, I loosely wrapped some cellophane around the cake and then gently stuffed some bubblewrap into the box. That way, if the cake did start to topple, it had the bubble wrap to 'lean' against to stop it falling.

The customer was thrilled with it. She sent me an email to say:

"Hi Suzanne

It was nice to meet you to and i'm over the moon with the cake! - also made it into work with no problems at all - phew!!!

I will certainly get a picture of Alex with cake and will email it to you on Monday.

Thank you once again

Best Wishes

Lynsey"

And she did indeed email me some photos. One of them is on my 'proper' website (www.patacake-parties.com) and it's on the 'Comments' page.


Sunday 11th, I was in Birmingham for a big cake/sugarcraft exhibition at the NEC. It was great - the first time I'd been. I got to meet quite a few people that I've only ever known via email and websites previously: Hannah - who I met through Babyworld; Sylvia and Bob - who I met through ebay and subsequent apron orders; and lots of members of the British Sugarcraft Guild website. It was so nice to meet people and put faces to names. I was fairly restrained in my purchases ;o) Hannah - I'm still in two minds as to whether I should have treated myself to those large rolling pins that do the embossing!! I'm still in love with them!

Anyway, two cakes for this coming weekend - a rocket and a number 1 with Winnie etc on.

That's it for now.

Suzanne x

Stella Artois Cake - Finished!

I've finished!!! I'm happy with it.

IF I was better at piping onto the side of a cake. And IF I hadn't slightly undercharged (but primarily if I was better at piping onto the side of a cake!) then I might have had a go at piping around the label. On the can of lager I bought this afternoon I've seen that there is a sort of gold scroll which incorporates wheat (or hops, I imagine, seeing as it's lager). But I'm not going to attempt it!

Better?

I know the picture's a little on the blurry side. But is it looking better? Be honest with me! ;o) I think it is. So, OK, it may not be perfectly, exactly straight. But that's because you've got the very straight lines of my kitchen tiles behind it. If you're not looking for it, you probably wouldn't notice (that's what I'm telling myself, anyway!).

However, I'm still concerned about the customer getting it there without it toppling!

Disaster In The Making

I don't have a good feeling about this. I did last night. But now I don't. It's so flippin' big that it's a bit unstable. I have put two dowels the entire way through the cake, but I'm still apprehensive. And the customer is taking the cake to the restaurant in London by tube train. OMG! She's taking it on the tube! Agghhhhh!

I'm sure that putting the marzipan and then icing on it will give it some more stability. When you make things so much taller than they are wide, it makes them unstable. Something to do with the centre of gravity.

But please, please keep everything crossed for me.

What you're looking at is a picture of 4 x 5" cakes, stacked. Each cake has been cut through and filled with jam and buttercream, then the cakes were buttercreamed to each other! (I certainly didn't plan on making quite so much cake when I gave her the price for this! But - and it's entirely my fault - the edible print of the label is bigger than I thought. So I needed to make more cake so it was a little more in proportion.

Phew!

Sorry it's taken me a few days to get around to updating the diary.

Well, eventually, I did manage to cover the cake with sugarpaste. It did help leaving the sugarpaste thicker, although it did still rip a bit. However, I decided that what I'd do is instead of just marking out the front doors, I would cut out the sugarpaste and put a new panel in. This way, I was able to cut out the torn bit of sugarpaste! Clever, eh? ;o)

Once the cake was sugarpasted, I stuck it onto the wooden plinth on the board. Again, I used the 'no more nails' type adhesive that I used to stick the plinth onto the board (I could do this, because the cake was on a board and there was no way the two were going to come into contact with each other). Because of the size and weight of the cake, I needed to make sure it wasn't going to fall!!!!

Before going to bed, I made the panels that had the words 'Mystery Machine' on them. I coloured the sugarpaste, cut them to shape and then left them to set a little over night. The next morning, I traced the Mystery Machine logo onto them and outlined the writing in black, then filled it in with orange colouring gel, watered down slightly. Then, I put them onto the van. In hindsight, they could have been ever so slightly bigger... but that's just me being overly picky.

It didn't look like I had much left to do on the cake, but it still took me all day and all evening (going to bed at about 1am) until I finished.

But I'm really pleased with it. And, most importantly, so was the customer.

Oh, during the day, I also baked a cake in a tiffin tin ready for decorating the next day (Friday). It was going to be a Barbie cake and was being delivered Friday evening.

I'm pleased to say I did get the cake done in time. My brother delivered it all the way to Tunbridge Wells for me (he's a licenced cab driver, so it was a proper paid transaction). The customer was absolutely thrilled with it. In fact, she phoned me this morning 1) to tell me how much everyone adored the cake and 2) to ask how long the cake would be OK for? I told her it was baked on Thursday afternoon and I would say a maximum of 5 days, so therefore she should eat it by tomorrow.