Iceland prep

I’m due to be taking Eve and Leo to Iceland in mid-July.  We are staying in Reykjavik for two days, hiring a campervan for ten days then back to Reykjavik for the final two days. We’ve done a bit of prep but we also want to play it by ear and explore. I thought I’d resurrect the blog so friends and family can follow our progress so I’m just testing this out. 

 

Christmas prep

Three Christmas cakes marzipanned, cranberry sauce made and two jars of clementine curd. It's a busy time of year. 

Minecraft cake

A friend's son wanted a minecraft cake for his birthday in a hurry. I made a chocolate sponge and cut open some blocks, quickly whipped up some green buttercream and piped it on to make 'grass'. I decorated it with some of E&L's Minecraft figures. Job done.

Leo is 10

Leo wanted to go bowling with a group of his friends for this birthday. I made the bowling ball cake by sandwiching together two pudding bowl cakes. To get the cake really spherical I used a semi circular cut out to smooth out the crumb coat of butter icing. Then I used a small circular cutter to make the finger holes. Finally I covered the whole cake in red fondant with orange number detail 

Leo is 9

Leo is having a science themed birthday party at Intech. His teacher calls him Furture Einstein. I enjoyed icing the experiment diagram, but it's not especially accurate! 

Eve is 12

Eve wanted a lemon drizzle loaf cake for her birthday. I decided to brighten it up with some fluoro sugar crystals 

Dad's 70th

My Dad's 70th was coming up and a big party was being planned at his house. I volunteered to do the cake. I decided to go for a case of wine. My brother sketched a label for me.

Originally I had thought of doing the case in fondant covered boards, but this would have been impossible to transport. Luckily I had a couple of empty wine cases. 

He wanted fruit cake but acknowledged that chocolate cake might be more popular. Aside from the type of cake it was all a surprise. I decided to do three bottles of fruitcake (my normal Christmas recipe) and three of chocolate cake. Here is the prototype with the label drawn on with an icing pen. 

The cakes would have been too low down in the wood case, so Ian made a surprisingly strong support out of cardboard triangles. The fondant icing was a real palaver. I ordered some from the cake workshop and the colours weren't quite right, so I ended up ordering online with very expensive express delivery. Here they are pre labels: 

I then had a hectic two hours of piping to finish the labels. My hand was wasted at the end. 

I used some shredded brown paper to fill in the gaps. The whole thing survived the drive up to North London and he seemed pretty pleased with the result. Happy Birthday Dad!