Thursday 15 October 2015

Cake Fest!

No battle report this week, so instead I thought I would do something a big random and nothing to do with 40k! (Don't worry, normal service will return shortly).
 
I have never been a big fan of cooking, I don't enjoy coming home from a long day of work and going to the kitchen to make a meal. I much prefer throwing something in the oven and crashing in front of the TV.
 
When it comes to baking however, that is a totally different matter. I have only become obsessed with baking over the past few years and it has come as a shock to a lot of my friends and family. I (as have many others) have been partially inspired by the Great British Bake Off- possibly the greatest show on TV. For those of you that don't know, this is a BBC show where each week, a team of 12 bakers are set three different baking challenges and the worst is removed from the show each week until the last three remain to compete in the final. It's a lot better than that brief description makes it sound (for my American readers out there, you had your chance to have this show on your side of the pond, but apparently it bombed. Your loss I say!).
One day, Mary, one day.....

I don't tend to bake all that often, but I do try and make cakes for my friends' birthdays or other special occasions. Listed below are some of the cakes that I have made over the past few years.
 
My first cake was quite an ambitious one. I wanted to make a Minion for my friend Alice's birthday party. I actually made a practice one for the people in work as this was my first time working with fondant icing and I wanted to try and get it right. This is still one of my favourite ones that I have made.
 
Next, we have a pond cake that I made for my partner Ana's birthday.

 
I then made a cake for Eurovision, a copy of the symbol for that year (I forget which one).
 
I then made a cake inspired by Captain America's shield. I think this was because Winter Soldier had just come out and I had a lot of red, white and blue icing left over that needed to be used up.
 
Here we have a Star Wars cake I made for a girl in work, just because she wanted a Star Wars cake.
 
A spaceship for my friend Greg's birthday (inspired by Benny from the lego movie). This was my biggest disaster. It looked great, but was inedible as I picked up slightly salted butter instead of unsalted butter and it make the whole cake taste too salty. I still get crap about this to this day.
 
One of my more ambitious one, I made a snowman for a Christmas party. My first time attempting to do sugar work (for the hat).
 
A simple chocolate one I made for new years day.
 
Another cake for Alice's birthday, this time a turntable.
 
This year for Eurovision, I made a cake based on Conchita Wurst (the winner in 2014). Before you ask, it's abstract and not supposed to have any eyes. I was quite happy with this one (the first time I had tried cream cheese icing) and it even got shown on the BBC during their Eurovision coverage! I was really happy with that.
Conchita Wurst
My cake

 
I hope you have enjoyed some of my cake creations from over the years. If only I could put this much effort and imagination into my 40k.
 


9 comments:

  1. These are fantastic! I need to start posting my curries :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too have a love of baking! And I have used sculpting tools more than once when trying to get things looking just so... Cleaned obviously! Awesome stuff dude :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you like them Rob. I was given my own cake sculpting tools, have yet to use them though. Need to figure out some use for them in the future.
      Was thinking of maybe marrying my love of cakes and 40k- I had an idea to build a Rhino cake at some point. Would be a real challenge!

      Delete
  3. I'm hungry now, which is convenient as it's lunch. These are fab and I share your passion for Eurovision. Bake Off is a sore subject thanks to a farcical poster request for where I work that involved a 'fit for purpose' montage of Mary Berry biting things that was loved locally but rejected nationally because it 'had too much Mary Berry'. Considering I actually had real work to do I was not impressed by having to redo it and then find out they'd got another designer to amend it yet further, despite the customer being satisfied with my amended version - bitter? Yes, like 80% cocoa dark chocolate!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Dave. I have a reasonable level of passion for Eurovision, but my partner absolutely loves it. She was so excited when Lordi were playing last year.

      Delete
  4. I can't stand fondant when it comes to eating, but it really does make for some great-looking cakes. I think the frog pond is my favorite of these, but they all look really cool!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! Yeah, my problem is that I can't roll the fondant that thin without it breaking apart, so the fondant layers get quite thick. A lot of people tend to pick it off and just eat the cake underneath.

      Delete