As the title suggests, this past weekend I had an order where I needed to make flowers...something I had not yet done without them being a simple cut and press type.

I needed to make poppies!
So as any self taught decorator would i started looking on Pinterest at Poppies others had made and on Youtube for video tutorials that would help me with this task.

As I only had whatever was in my cutter store to use for the flowers, it was finding the right tutorial and working out the best way to approach it.
I did however buy the poppy leaf cutters, as the leaf cutters I currently owned were not suitable and i wasn't going to do them all by hand!

One of the main images I found was to the Poppy/Rose cutters on the Pretty Witty Cakes website. I also found a great video for a simple tutorial on Youtube that uses this cutter (posted at the end of this Blog). This gave me a place to start...

Much better! It is amazing how just something so simple can completely change how something looks. I was much happier with them like this so, i carried on making the rest that would be needed.

The finished cake was a poppy covered birdcage for an 18th birthday, though it seemed kind of fitting to be making a poppy cake for Remembrance Sunday also.

Well....I had a very quiet week leading up to Hallowe'en (for a change) as I had decided not to spam the local selling pages to try and get orders in, this gave me the opportunity to try my hand at a cake I had been wanting to do since last year...a PUMPKIN cake (with or without a face).

I had recently purchased myself a bundt tin and was dying to try it out on this design. So I trawled though other cake makers blogs and youtube videos for advice and ideas and then set to work.

Having not used bundt tins before I chose to keep the recipe simple (vanilla) so I didn't have to worry about trying to scale it up or down.
So I baked a 4 egg mix for each bundt half, then when they were cooled i sliced them in half and sanwiched them together with orange coloured vanilla buttercream and crumbcoated them into a ball shape.

I was being very generous with the amount of buttercream I used in the crumbcoat, as when it comes to molding the pumpkin shape into the fondant it will push the buttercream sideways slightly.
​
I also wasn't happy with the height of the cake, so I also sliced an extra centimetre off the bottom once the cake was chilled and the buttercream was hard. This gave it a much nicer squat appearance.

As bundt cakes have the hole in the middle I placed a little 4" cake board over the top of the cake to seal it up, and also applied a thin coat of buttercream to it so it would stick and blend in, this central hole could also be filled with hard shelled sweets like a pinata cake...perfect for the trick or treat theme.

I allowed the buttercream to come back up to room temperature so it would be a little softer for the molding process, and allow the fondant to stick properly.

Having never covered a ball shaped cake before it actually took me 2 attempts to get it right, also keeping the fondant a nice thickness so it wouldn't tear when the features were added.
I used one of my modelling tools to push down the sides of the pumpkin, these do not have to be at regular intervals so no need to measure, just do whatever looks right. real pumpkins are also full of blemishes so no need to have it completely smooth.
I then used my fingers to lightly press and smooth down.

i then rolled out the remaining fondant into a long strip and covered the board, sticking it down with a a little water,  I didn't need this to be perfectly smooth as it was going to be a muddy ground so I just ensure it was pushed up against the base of the pumpkin.

The remaining fondant was shaped into the stem of the pumpkin and fixed centrally onto the top. Again using one of my modelling tools I textured this with a lot of lines, using my real pumpkin as a reference.

i then left this overnight to dry out a bit and firm up before I would start airbrushing it.

I started by airbrushing the board brown, I kept this as neat as I could up against the pumpkin so there wasn't a lot of overspray, again it didn't have to be perfect as any brown on the bottom edge of the pumpkin would blend into the effect of it being sat in the mud, and the shadowing due to the shape.
I also made some areas darker than others, as I would later be blending in black and greens to darken it up a bit. This was a great opportunity to try my hand at mixing different shades.

The pumpkin was sprayed straight orange, and i then mixed a drop of brown into the orange to get a darker colour along the grooves and around the base.

The stem was then carefully sprayed with the brown, with a little bit of dark green, being careful not to overspray onto the top of the pumpkin.

Once complete it was left to dry for an hour or so.

As it is usually the little details which can MAKE a cake, I chose to finish it off with a few leaves and vines made using an ivy leaf cutter and my fondant extruder, placing a few around the base of the stem and on the  board.

And I know everyone in my office loved it!

Not to mention everyone on my Facebook page!

With a family wedding on the cards what better gift could I give the happy Bride & Groom than their wedding cake :)

With the tables being set with birdcage centerpieces this gave me the perfect opportunity to try out a cake design I have been wanting to do for a long time...a Birdcage.

I did the usual trawl through Google and Pinterest for ideas and elements I wanted to include on my design (lots of beautiful cakes online to pull inspiration from) and I got to work.

Being a very tall cake i decided to try and cover this one in one go instead of in 2 sections (top and sides)....and I was VERY happy with my CAKE ARTE mat I had purchased at Cake International.

This mat allowed me to flip the rolled fondant over the cake and then peel the mat away, instead of trying to lift the fondant off the mat to cover...less chance of it tearing.

So now I have a smooth covered cake...it is onto the decorating....look for Part 2 of this blog soon :)

LINKS:
"Gunge" tutorial - http://ericaobrien.com/blog/gunge-its-a-miracle/