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Not for the faint-hearted! Grotesque beauty in our fragility, worn like a party dress to remind us to celebrate life. My caricature homage to Mark Ryden’s amazing artwork for the Sugarspooks 2017 collaboration. Pretty face with thanks to Sweet Revolutions face mold by Domy. More close ups on Facebook .
Vrooooom, vroom! Meet Miss Lovebug. Dedicated to ice cream trips in our family VW Beetle. Watch the video of her move on my FB page. xoxo
31 New Zealand cake decorators joined togehther to celebrate his films in cake. To see all the pieces, please see Cakes From Middle Earth or www.cakesfrommiddleearth.com I recreated Heidi, who is the femme fatale from the 1989 film Meet the Feebles directed by Peter Jackson. Thanks to New World, I baked several delicious chocolate cakes, carved and covered them in Cadbury chocolate ganache. The couch (which measures 35cm long) and body of Heidi in cake were covered NZ Bakels fondant, which I find absolutely brilliant to work with as it behaves like clay in that seams disappear provided you work with it immediately after placing. The head is styro and the legs and arms are Bakels fondant with tylose. I teased the idea of stockings by painting a wash mixture of Rainbow Dust Colours Ltd pearl lustre from Kiwicakes and decorators alcohol. I also used the Rainbow Dust gold pen for the lounge accents. The finishing details, such as the eyes, hair, and clothes were made with Chocit modelling chocolate.
Oh, oh! Looks like someone caught Santa sneaking a quick L & P in the kitchen. Who looks more surprised? Refrigerator cakelet measuring 4×4×9 in the background. My favourite bit? My kid’s drawings on the fridge and that’s my little Miss Three created in modelling chocolate. I was excited to have the opportunity to create a fun New Zealand twist on the iconic vintage advertisements from the 50s for the Mansion in the Christmas in Frostington collaboration project. Artists from all over the world have joined together to help raise money for three special charities through purchase of tutorial packs and raffles. Please support our cause and head over to www.christmasinfrostington.org to see more of the amazing pieces made.
My husband is a muso and huge Paul McCartney fan, so when I had the opportunity to have a private guitar cake class with Verusca Walker and two other friends, there was no doubt which of his instruments I was going to recreate in cake. The cake is an 11" chocolate mud with dark chocolate ganache. It has a gorgeous clean finish, thanks to Pettinice fondant by NZ Bakels, which I also used for all the guitar details. I used a 1:10 ratio of their chocolate fondant and white fondant for the base colour. Verusca helped me airbrush the sunburst affect with Americolour Cafe Brown, and this shading effect really brought it to life. The Hofner Guitars logo, mother of pearl pickguard, ticket and button are all printed on wafer paper and mounted on hardened Pettinice mixed with tylose. I covered the dark wooden neck with modelling Chocit, as well as the cream trim around the bass body. The armature holding the strings on the base of the Hofner was created by carefully snapping (and not separating) a kebab stick and hot gluing trimmed wooden popsicle sticks to it. I painted all the wood and silver with the 100% edible silver Rainbow Dust Colours Ltd edible silk range, which you can purchase from Kiwicakes. The strings themselves are elastic silver thread which is brilliant, as it keeps taut and easy to handle. I enjoyed making this cake, and glad I was patient enough with the details, which were what took the longest. It's not perfectly accurate, but I tried hard using my husband's '63 right handed Hofner bass as a guide - so I can't wait to take what I learned with this one recreate the next one, which my husband has requested for his birthday! Want to know more about the bass? According to Wiki, in the 1950s and 1960s, Höfner instruments were distributed by Selmer of London. They were considerably more accessible to budding musicians in the UK, giving Höfners a place in history as the "starter" instruments of several well known 1960s musicians. Much of Höfner's popularity is attributed to Paul McCartney's use of the Höfner 500/1 bass throughout his career. This violin-shaped model is commonly referred to as The Beatles bass." My husband told me Paul removed the pickguard (The mother of pearl plate that stops the guitar pick from scratching the finish) sometime in 1966.
I wanted to first thank Candace Chand for inviting me into the collaboration earlier in the year. I am feeling loads of gratitude for being included alongside a lovely team of sugar artists. The piece I chose to recreate in sugar was the Goddess Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the household goddess of most Hindu families. Although she is worshipped daily, the festive month of October is special.There is an important ritual during the festival of Diwali that is performed to invite Goddess Lakshmi into your home. After a time spent purifying and cleaning your home, a platform is created that features many components of the Lakshmi puja. Prayers and gifts are offered to the Goddess asking that the New Year is blessed with peace, wealth, and prosperity. Her four hands represent the four ends of human life: righteousness, desires, wealth, and liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Her top hands hold a half open Lotus and full bloom Lotus, representing beauty, purity and fertility. The Goddess is shown dropping gold coins on the ground, near where you see an owl sitting. The dropping of coins represents prosperity and the owl represents perversion of attitudes in material prosperity. In her clothing, the colour red symbolizes activity and the golden lining, prosperity. The elephants are shown half emerging from a symbolic ocean and bestowing a showering of wisdom, purity and charity. Finally, the Goddess is shown sitting on a lotus. Her posture symbolises to "live in the world, but do not be possessed by the world". The Goddess sits on an 8” chocolate cake, carved with an exaggerated bevel and ganached. The top half was then covered with a layer of modelling chocolate petals painted in edible gold, and the bottom half with modelling chocolate mosaics in two different shades. The Goddess herself is made from modelling chocolate and hand painted with pale gold food approved pure lustre by Caroline’s Sugar Art Services. All the jewelled detailing on her outfit was created using a variety of piping tips to either emboss or punch out. No effort was wasted as you can see her belt and trouser details made use of the punched out offcuts. The elephants and owl are totally hand sculpted. What took the longest, funnily enough, were the golden coins, which were punched out modelling chocolate. I wanted all the texture to be uniform so it was worth the extra effort. I also wanted to have coins spilling from her hand, as illustrated in pictures of the Goddess - so I teased the idea of this with the help of a thin strip of acetate. The final piece was mounted on a large cake board to accommodate the candles which I placed around her.
For years, this cake has been rattling around my head and held top priority in my sketch pad of bucket list cakes. After a forced cake hiatus (a rib cracking major one!), THIS was my first cake in nearly eight months. So it was a major celebration of sorts for me. For the select few that have heard me prattle on and on and ON about this cake for the last couple of years, thank you. Most of all, a heartfelt thank you to my sweet, sweet friends for being such a loving support in my cake journey and cheering me on. For me, it really is all about the love of cake and kinship. I simply wouldn't do it without you guys. Cake board measures 56" wide by 19" tall. Featured centre cake is fondant feathers over chocolate ganached 8" x 6" mudcake. Project is completed in all NZ Bakels Pettince fondant. Little birds are all made experimenting with a combination of fillings, including cake truffle, and chocolate shell casting as shown in the Jack-o'Lantern tutorial for sale in my shop. The structure is out of this world and only have my husband to thank for his endless patience in figuring out seven other things that didn't work. xxx
How incredibly lucky do I feel working alongside amazing cake decorators around the world to raise money and help make children’s wishes happen with the Make a Wish foundation? Very. I’m still pinching myself! My movie choice was “It’s Christmastime Again Charlie Brown” and I chose the sweet dancing scene to recreate in cake. Want to see a short clip of it? So cute! http://goo.gl/olptZt My mini tutorial contribution is on how to create the structure for the mid-air Woodstock which you can find bundled in the Volume 1 tutorial set found on their facebook page. The cakes were 2×8” chocolate mud, carved and ganached and covered with a 1:3 mixed ratio of fondant and Chocit Modelling chocolate. The birds are all in modelling chocolate, as are all the black details you see here, including Snoopy’s big hat. I am completely in love with modelling chocolate, as it was so stable and using a cake smoother, I was able to roll thread-thin pieces, which I used to create the smiles on all the figurines. What a joy to work with. Thank you for looking! Nina xoxo
A real learning cake for both myself and my lovely husband who helped me put it together. Our first real project cake from start to finish. I discovered a whole bunch of things fondant can’t do, and strangely enough can’t wait to make this cake again now that we figured out the learning curve. The hot air balloon is split in two flavours. Top half is raspberry puree infused white chocolate ganache with vanilla bean cake, and bottom half chocolate mudcake with milk chocolate ganache. The 5” basket is chocolate mudcake with chili chocolate ganache. The clouds are made from the offcuts on little cake boards. Hope you like! Nina xoxo
Stands a little over 18" tall (46cm). I have created a tutorial for the balloon cake and also for the people if anyone is interested. Many thanks! Nina xoxo
As many of you know, those of us who fit in cakes late into the night can sometimes find it to be a very lonely job. So it is such a pleasure when you can find someone to play cakes with! In this case, my six year old (aka my Creative Director) and I worked on this little cake project together last year and it was so much fun letting him have a go covering the cake and playing with my cake cutters and toys. It’s 100% his design, and what a fantastic imagination!. And just how cute is his specification sheet? He’s so creative and still my favourite cake mate. PS – In the end, we had to make this cake twice. The last photo is of his little sister, caught red handed. We didn’t realise she could jump that high, so she surprised us all. Poor Mr. Cake bunny lasted one whole day, and is the reason I beg people never to use toothpicks or wire in their toppers, because you never know when or where a little person might strike! xoxo http://www.facebook.com/makeprettycakes --
This is my sweet little version of the stand up ice cream cone cake, a perfect summer cake for us right now in New Zealand! I did take photos in my little photo booth, but thought I’d share the version with my little girl posing to show scale! Needless to say she was thrilled with it. Happy 2nd birthday baby girl!!! xoxo *Strawberry, vanilla and chocolate caramel mudcake flavors, covered in white ganache and fondant. Coconut grass on fondant board. Ladybird inspired by clay crafter Sabrina Cantafio – so gorgeous! Not sure who to credit the 3D cone idea to, please tell me if you know! Nina xoxo
This little Angel stands 15" high on a 16" board. The best part for me, are the wings. I love those happy moments in cake when you're not quite sure what you're doing, but it comes together in the end! I'm revisiting those wings again for my next cake!!!
You know you are cake obsessed when everything you look at has potential to become a cake. I've been wanting to recreate this gorgeous cookie jar, and when Royal Bakery's Santa tutorial came up, I knew -using a few of her cute ideas - how this sweet little Santa was going to come together. Thank you Lesley! 12.5" / 31cm tall, resting on a 16" cake board.
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