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?

Ah well, 3 of them were gifts, so not quite a true picture of business exactly :) It's quite strange not knowing whether I'll be getting any other orders. I've exhausted DH's colleagues' cake requirements I think, and no friends kids' birthdays coming up. It could all fall flat on its arse quite suddenly!

wem, can you link up to your website please x

here I am. Have you had a look at my set up picture? I'll take it down once you've seen it, takes away some of the mystique!

that is fantastic !

How's your website going? Have you bought one 'off the peg'? Mr Site looks good.

Wem, your website looks very nice, how did you do it?

just for you lot all done but scarily fragile (and just between ourselves until tomorrow )

Wow Stealth, that looks great!

Fantastic! Did you have plenty in the end?

I ended up colouring some more icing and making extra - mainly because of the casualty rate - the tops of the whole spears are ridiculously fragile - which then presented other challenges since the newly made spears were all floppy - but I do have a small pile of tips left over. I am not looking forward to transporting it this afternoon, though - I think I am going to have to make it a collar.

Just showed it to DH who said "wtf, why would anyone put asparagus on a cake?"!

I have an interesting dilemma now - do I attempt to add a candle, and if so, how?

Maybe one tall thin green candle in the middle? Otherwise I'd have said no candles.

Hope you've been able to transport the cake ok. I bet your dad loves it.

I dropped off some leaflets at a softplay centre today and they said they're looking for someone to supply cakes for their cafe, just carrot cakes etc for them to sell by the slice. Anyone ever done that? I've no idea what kind of margin they'd be looking to make on the cakes and therefore what kind of price I could charge. Also, and I should probably have done this already, but if I start supplying to a business I guess I'll need to sort out public liability insurance. Any recommendations on who to go with for that?

Sounds like an excellent excuse for lots of cake eating research to me, wem. I think they generally reckon on 100% markup, so whatever the going price is per slice, you need to be selling it to them at roughly half of that.

Cake made it in one piece - I will post photos of it cut later.

I've been doing a few sums, but I definitely think I'll have to do some cake eating field research too :)

nannycook I realised I didn't answer your question up/down thread - my friend's dp made my website for me. I'm really pleased with it, but if I was doing it again I'd probably go for an off-the-peg one as it took ages getting it finished.

Anyone seen/done any good fairy cakes? As in cakes with fairies on top rather than little buns.

Didn't you do a beautiful flower fairy, wem ? I like this one

Asparagus cake once cut

Ah, my flower fairy cake is possibly my favouritest of the cakes I've done :) But I've had an enquiry where all she has said is "some kind of fairy cake" so I've mentioned my flower fairy but said I'll come back with more ideas in case she wants something different.

I like that cake - notable for its lack of pink! I like this one too, quite fancy trying to paint the flowers on the side.

Those asparagus spears are truly amazing, and cake looks delicious too, yum :)

Oh yes, that's lovely, wem. What would the white flowers be, do you think - royal icing?

Asparagus cake was G&B "inmate's cake" - so many thanks to whoever it was that pointed me at it - the DC say it is officially the best chocolate cake ever and has to be used for all cakes for ever more even though it did freak me out by taking far longer to cook than the recipe said.

Hmmmmm...

One of Mich Turner's book uses melted cocoa butter to paint on cakes, so I'd have a go with that, coloured with superwhite, I think. From her pictures it seems to give a nice opaque look, better than diluted gel pastes.

Your asparagus cake really is brilliant stealth, is the recipe available online? I gave it a quick google but didn't find anything.

recipe for the cake itself came from this book (as recommended to me by a MNer) - and is online here

Tutorial for the cake, should you be mad enough, is here

No no, I have no intention of trying to make the asparagus! Just want to try the cake itself. I think your cake looks better than the tutorial, far more realistic,

Wem - there is always the standard Fairies on toadstool house cake (Debbie Brown I think) or DD has asked for a tree stump fairy house with toadstools, ivy, ladybirds and fairies.