Sugarcraft chat

[wem]

I started a thread for cake people a while back but it got a bit lost in Chat so thought I'd try to tempt people into our lovely new baking topic.

Hopefully I'll see some of the posters from the chat thread, but for any new people popping in, introductions: I'm wem, I'm a recent cake obsessive and have been bothering mumsnetters about it a fair bit as I'm starting up cake decorating business. I don't have anywhere near the experience or knowledge of some of the posters in here, but I do have an excessive willingness to chat about cake :)

Let's try this again, eh?

Oh wem, your sheep and teddy cake is really lovely, clever you, oh and well done on someone finding you to make a cake for them, similar happened to me the other day in work, i randomly told a customer i like to bake cakes, next day she came back in and asked me to make her one for her son, shocked to say the least, no idea what design though, male, 43, any ideas???

You do realise you need to put a photo of your Kitchenaid on your profile don't you wem !

? not !

It looks rather a lot like all the other pictures you'll have seen of the white classic Kitchenaid Viking - have a picture of my children in the Kitchenaid box instead

Morning all

I am having a small freak - I have a last wedding minute cake booking to do for another MN-er, she had a thread up about it, I mentioned I made cakes and she asked me to do hers I m really excited too.

Wem - Yaya for kitchenaid, I love mine. I have 2 bowls, 2 paddles and a whisk. I use the whisk for icing and if you beat it for a while it makes the softest fluffiest buttercream icing

wem they are gorgeous! Are they happy with their new box toy?

They love it stealth. The KA box came in a Harts of Stur box and had a million small polystyrene type wotsit shapes wedged down the sides. Luckily they seem to enjoy putting them all back in the box almost as much as they enjoy spreading them round the front room. DH refered to himself as a cake widow[er] when the KA arrived yesterday. I told him at least there's plenty of football to keep him occupied :)

wow blueberry, that's exciting. Don't freak - you'll do a great job :) Are you stepping in to save a cake emergency?

Wem - yes I am! Your littlies are adorable!!

So you're entertained (by KA), DC are entertained (by boxes) and DH is entertained (by football). Sounds like a win all round until the football is over and DH notices that you love your KA more than him

wem, do you have a lightbox set up ? My cakes are always photographed on a background of kitchen clutter and as I've bought a website I'd like to make the cakes look more professional in the pictures

A harmonious household indeed stealth :)

Nigel - I don't have a lightbox, just a particularly sunny corner of the kitchen. The clutter is hidden by the kitchen blind which I detach and drape over my clothes horse, then the backgrounds are fabrics from ikea draped over that. All very professional

could you take a photo of your highly sophisticated apparatus for me as a guide ? It sounds like the sort of thing I could cobble together make

Sure. Clothes horse is being used for its primary function at the moment, but should have a chance to set it up tomorrow afternoon.

Crap. Just set the fire alarm off by putting some bread in the toaster, pottering about, peeking in the oven at current project, then forgetting about it to the extent that when the alarm went off I was half way up the stairs wondering what the hell was going on before I smelt burnt toast. Sheesh. I think I need to get some sleep.

Nigel - my less sophisticated apparatus consists of a large piece of black fabric which gets thrown over the top of the mess artfully draped over the table. Wem's is better though.

How about something like this (can be found a lot cheaper on eBay)?

yes, i've toyed with those stealth. Never quite bring myself to buy one. Somewhere I have instructions for a build your own lightbox but as DH still hasn't finished the painting he started in April 2011 it's unlikely he'll built it for me

I don't think I could bring myself to buy one at that price either, Nigel, but there are some on ebay for ~£10, which brings it down into "I couldn't build one for that much" territory..

Congratulations on the arrival of your Kitchenaid Wem! your little girl's are gorgeous!!!

Re: the light box/light tent. I have made them to photograph my snakes before. It worked well. I just used a large polybox (the sort tropical fish get delivered in, pet shops will give you them for free, I suppose if it's for food use you could give a good scrub out with antibacterial cleaner?) Line it if you want. Cut a hole in the top and rest any old desk lamp on the top with the light shining down into the box. Voila!!! It sounds rubbish, but it works quite well.

It's my baby girl's first birthday today. I've done her cake and used some left over wrapping paper blue tacked to the tiles in the kitchen as a background for photos...

Colour and petal dusts have arrived. Tonight I shall be making asparagus - I had better go and buy some to copy, hadn't I?

Have fun stealth! Don't get them mixed up when you've finished and dunk the sugarpaste ones in a soft boiled egg :)

I need help again. I've been asked to do a cake like this. How do you think they've got the brown colour? She doesn't want chocolate so I've been looking at non-chocolate flavoured brown sugarpaste but one site says it's not recommended for covering a whole cake because the colour is so dark the flavour isn't great. Is it maybe painted on? How much gel colour would you have to use to paint a whole cake? (It isn't going to be that big, maybe 9-10 inches long)

To get a mottled brown colour like the photo, I think a pale brown (beige) and then painting it would work fine - I would just sponge on colour paste mixed with vodka, I think.

Thanks, silly question, but what kind of sponge would you use? Do you think I could use any kind as long as it's new and hasn't been used for anything else?

I would - but then I rarely do things "properly" - try asking Nigel!

:) I've consulted my lindy smithbook and she mentions natural sponge for texture but also synthetic ones, so anything goes I suppose