Hey, Maaario!

Perhaps my most ambitious cake yet?!

I used a circular Victoria Sponge for the bottom tier (covered in green icing) and smaller circular sponge (about 5 inch diametre) for the top, iced in blue. I then stuck on white icing clouds to the blue sponge, along with yellow stars. I made Mario and Yoshi from sugar paste and stuck them on with jam, and then made the mushrooms and yellow ? boxes from more sugar paste, all coloured with dye. I added extra detail with icing gel pens.

Swoooosh

I made my ma and bro a ski themed cake for their birthday:

I stacked two circular sponges and then shaped them to vaguely resemble a moutain, before covering in white roll out icing and placing on a cake board. Next, I scattered icing sugar over the whole cake for a snow effect and added snowflake shaped sprinkles (thanks, Waitrose!) before decorating with flags (oh, more cocktail sticks!) and real (yes, real!) fir trees with the ends sellotaped so not to ruin the cake. I made the skis from icing and then the figures are actually Star Wars action figures - Princess Leia and Boba Fett! - with my ma and bro's faces stuck on. Easy peasy!

Albi the Racist Dragon

Inspired by Flight of the Conchords!

Albi and the badly burned Albanian boy are just sugar paste coloured and then placed onto an icing base. The fire I did with glitter icing from Waitrose and edible gold glitter from Cake Craft (http://www.cakecraftshop.co.uk/)

I can do sensible cakes too...

I made this for Maggie Jones's birthday: a victoria sponge with strawberry jam and vanilla cream iced in yellow with daisy decorations. I got my daisy cutter from the Cake Craft website (http://www.cakecraftshop.co.uk/) and it's fantastic!

Ariba!

Burrito cake! I made the sponge in a loaf tin and then coloured some roll out icing brown and wrapped it around the loaf. The filling is made from icing and yum-yums chopped up, and the figure is made from sugar paste. Then I just wrapped foil around the end for added burrito effect!

For burrito fans everywhere, if you find yourself hungry in London, head to Chilango on Fleet St. Big fat burritos and lovely staff that inspired this cake!

My First X-rated Cake

I never wanted to go down the road of making obscene cakes, but Jo-Anne-San's birthday demanded it, hence the Showgirls cake. Just be grateful I went for one of the tamer aspects of the pool scene...

Oh dear.

Set phasers to stun!

My dad is a big Star Trek fan...his birthday cake was a no-brainer:

I had creative help on this cake from Tom Windsor who helped me with cake logistics and also painstakingly iced all of the tiny windows on..which took ages! This cake is just a circular sponge iced in white roll out icing and then propped onto an oval platform with the two 'wings' (if they're called that - I ain't a trekkie) placed on top. We decorated the whole thing with icing pens and added addtional detail with, yep, you guessed it, cocktail sticks! Always a winner!



Tonari no Totoro

My lovely friend Sarah is a big Hayao Miyazaki fan so I made her a My Neighbour Totoro cake for her birthday. It is just a simple sponge, with roll out icing coloured green and then the decoration up the sides piped on with my icing syringe. The Totoro figures are made of icing and the Catbus is a loaf cake, iced separately, and then decorated with my icing syringe.

Oishii desu ne!

Karlovy Lazne

In Prague, there is a five storey superclub called Karlovy Lazne dubbed "The Biggest Music Club in Middle Europe!" Quite specific geography there. Anyway, on a steno razz to the Czech Republic we visited this magical place and so for Hutch's birthday I attempted to recreate the experience in cake form (well, three floors of it anyway)

This was the first time I had used a cake stand (thanks Annie!) and it was fab! The bottom tier is a flourless chocolate cake that was very rich but very tasty - think I got the recipe off the BBC Food website. Good for coeliacs anyway! Then the other two tiers are Victoria sponges, cut to fit the shelves and then iced over. The figures are made of sugar paste, as is the disco dancefloor.

And no that's not real absinthe, so this cake lost points for authenticity.

Order! Order!

I used to work at the Central Criminal Court (also known as the Old Bailey) - probably the best place to work in the world - and for my colleague Clare's birthday she requested a court cake:

This one was pretty heavily personalised! I made a square chocolate sponge which I then covered in chocolate butter cream. I made the benches from Cadburys chocolate fingers, the dock and judge's bench from choco liebwitz (sp?!) biscuits and then made the figures, wigs and chairs from sugar paste. The speech bubbles are more cocktail sticks and paper...I bloody love using cocktail sticks!

Dun-dun-dun-dun-da-da-daaaa! (Jaws theme, if it wasn't completely obvious)

My friend Hayl's wanted a shark cake - brilliant cake challenge! One of my favourites, it was so much fun to make. The base is just a sponge iced over with roll out which icing which I dyed blue using normal food colouring (I coloured it by kneading the icing with the colouring until it was evenly distributed) and the shark is another lump of sponge covered in grey butter cream icing (I used a mini spatula to apply it) I cut a triangle in the front which I then filled with pink icing, and the razor sharp teeth are flaked almonds - a bit of a fluke as I happened to have some in my cupboard, but they gave a good final effect! The eyes are small blobs of black icing and then the figure is just sugar paste coloured pink - it was easy to shape as it was so small the arms didn't need supporting as they stayed up on their own.

My friend who I made this for looks like Lily Allen, hence the speech bubbles! As you can see the corner of this one got battered as I tried to take it to work on the tube on this plate under a load of tin foil - not cool. I then discovered the joy that is Lakeland and got myself one of these: http://www.lakeland.co.uk/12870/Cake-Box-with-Lifter YES. Although don't spend too long on the Lakeland website, you will spend all of your money in about ten minutes and convince yourself that you really, really need a cake tin in the shape of a train...when in fact you probably don't.

For Dwight Schrute fans everywhere

All he cares about is getting. more. Megadesk. I got a tiny cake tin for my birthday (it's about 5 inches diametre) which I think is probably meant for a top tier, but I have found it is brilliant for making individual gift cakes for people! I used 2/3 my usual quantity of cake batter for this tin which worked fine, and then decorated in glace which all ran together and got a bit smudgy, but I liked the final effect - even if Dwight looked a bit green! The gold flakes are edible glitter - another Christmas present and something which I put on basically everything I bake these days! You can get it from http://www.cakecraftshop.co.uk/ who sell everything you could ever need for cake decorating and the staff are really nice too - recommend!

Pink & Decker

I tried to make a very, very masculine and testosterone-charged drill cake for my mate Daz. Sadly, the red icing I used turned it pink...

D'oh. This taught me a valuable lesson to only use red colouring I have bought in America, where they have no EU regulations and so the chemicals in their food colour is a supermassive free for all! Yay! Anyway, for the drill (or is it a hairdryer? D'OH) I made some square sponges and then hacked them into a vague drill shape and stuck them together with jam, before covering in pre-coloured roll out icing and decorating with grey icing from my syringe and a load of smarties. I always think if a cake goes wrong, just whack smarties on, always a winner.

Na-na-na, na-na-na, na-naaaa.

World Cup cake! This is just two square sponges with a strawberry jam and vanilla cream filling, topped with dessicated coconut (coloured grass green!) and then I did the lines in butter cream with my icing syringe. The football figures and goalpost came from the Jane Asher shop in Kensington - a cake maker's paradise! It's wicked: http://www.janeasher.com/sugarcraft.php I stuck my mates' faces on by butchering some old photos and made the flags from cocktail sticks and paper - very advanced cake-making skills here clearly!!

Sunday Roast Cake

My housemate Gristy wanted to go to Toby Carvery for her birthday so in keeping with the occasion I made her a carvery themed birthday cake. The roast potatoes are sliced donuts, the meat and veggies are sugar paste, the peas and sweetcorn are smarties, yorkshire puds are toffees (I really just wanted an excuse to stick toffees on it!) and the gravy is a very thin glace icing. Tasty!

Good shot of the plate effect in this one:

Quite ridiculous, I'm sure you will agree.