AI love this thread, so glad you girls are all on here!!!

AThey're lush Nanny, I'm definitely gona try the pigs in mud for my sister next month. She loves pigs, got em everywhere. Not real ones mind, ornaments etc.

AWas easy Maisie, the bride and groom wasn't though as she wanted their bums in the air.

Wow, I was only away for a few hours and had to spend 10 minutes on catching up! That's it, no more going anywhere for me...

Mel- I just formed the twirls around the handles of my butter knives (they're nice and round and just the right size), waited until they had hardened and then slid them off. Anything round would work though obviously. I think they make the bow look extra special.

nannycook - I love your pigs in mud and ducks in puddle cakes. I've never thought of putting people in there before. I've made a few of them now and they're so fun! I want someone else to ask for one now so I can put a person in there haha. And you have got me thinking with the duck cake too!

Natt - I love that mountain cake. It is my Mum and Dad's 30th wedding anniversary in June and I was considering making them one of those mountain shape cakes that have all of the mile stones and dates as 'road signs' along the path up the mountain. Not sure if anyone has seen these? I'm completely scared about doing the whole mountain shape though. How did you do yours?

Just had a picture send to me of the gender reveal cake being cut, she was thrilled with it phew! Just glad it was nice and bright blue inside. I always worry that the colours will fade when you bake the cake. I made a rainbow cake last year that had me so worried until it was cut! 

AI love this thread too, everyone's so friendly and helpful. Messy cakes are my favourite! I'm messy by nature I think, smooth, perfectly iced cakes terrify me! Is it only me or do you all love to see everybody elses cakes? I love reading the threads, joining in, getting solutions to problems etc but I get quite excited when I see a cake. Maybe I need to get out more!

AAw Sugarluva, I think that's a lovely idea for your mam and dad! I've never seen one but (based on natts cake) I can imagine it and I think it would be fab!

It's not just you maisie don't worry I spend hours looking at pictures of cakes haha. Usually in envy because I know mine will never quite turn out like the picture I intended it too! I love seeing people's cakes on here most of all though, it's much better when you can talk to the person and tell them how amazing they are...

AThanks maisie. It's a bit of an ambitious cake for me. This is the photo I was using for inspiration.

[IMG ALT=""]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3209258/width/350/height/700[/IMG]

Not sure it will end up anything like that though but here's hoping. I just don't know how to get the whole mountain shape.

AIts fab sugarluva. Really really good.

ANatt will be the best one to advise you I think but I made a mountain cake, it was quite rubbish but I think the principle's sound so I'll tell you what I did. I used my pyrex dish for the mountain top and sanwich tins for the rest of it. The sides of my pyrex dish were the same size as my sandwich tins. I didn't make a very big one so just used sandwich tins but if u need it bigger u could do extra layers in increasingly larger tins, layer them then carve. Does that make sense?

AThanks Maisie, yes that makes sense. I was just concerned how to do the windy Road bit? I'm not very good at carving but I might just have to go for it! Would you then try and cover the whole thing in one big piece of fondant do you? Or break it up into smaller bits?

AWell sugarluva, it did raise a few laughs from what I gather, the two cakes took 3 pints of ganache and 46 kitkats.

AHmmm, I don't know Sugarluva, I didn't cover mine with fondant. Natt, where are you? Help! I didn't carve a road either, it was quite a rubbish mountain! [IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3209461/width/200/height/400[/IMG] It was the 6th cake I'd decorated, I was proud of it at the time, not so looking back!

AYes Maisie we can all look back and think, goodness did I really make that? And to be honest when I do that I can see just how much better I a now and I continue to improve, well I think I do anyhow.

AIf fact I think you should come to my house right now to make my messy cake cos I dont want to make it.

Nanny - I love the cakes, very humorous!

Sugarluva - OK I might be wrong but that cake looks like it's buttercream covered with fondant decorations. Like I said, might be wrong.

My cake was made by me lining every round tin I had (apart from my 14") so 12, 10, 9, 9, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 4, 4, . Looking at it, that is tonnes of tins... thinking about it I knew that cos it was 2 whole rainbows so 12 tins, I have an oven big enough to fit them all in so I just did it all in one go splitting the batter 6 ways so I had 6 different colours (not of equal amounts because of the tin sizes being so different). I then layered them all together with a board in between every 3 layers and having an idea of what I wanted it to look like I just attacked it with a knife.

There is a method of making a winding road that works really well where you cut the bottom wedge out and then put it on the top of the cake and it becomes the next part of the road, there is a really good tutorial out there somewhere and if I can find it I will post it for you.

As far as covering is concerned I covered in patched cos I wasn't about to try and do it in one go, I might try it now but even then I wanted the rough finish so I was covering it in royal icing anyway so it didn't matter. And like I said I just covered it in green royal icing to make it grassy which covered all of the cracks in the sugarpaste.

That was really long but I hope helpful?

AMorning all, quick question, I'm colouring buttercream a lovely bright red for cupcakes on Sunday, like I said in previous posts I do have a whitnerve, powder and liquid form, and I cant remember how I did it but do I add that to the cream then add the red colour? I have Very Red red colouring?

I know when you add a red to buttercream it goes pink cos the butters yellow to start with. Whats your thought on this guys? Also colouring one batch lilac too.

A*Whitner

AMorning Barbara, I never have used whitener. I just add the sugar flair Red Extra. Even for lilac I use their grapevine colour. :)

AHi Bashini, just checked my colour and thats exactly what I have too, the purple I have is the Rainbow Dust pro gel concentrated colour so guessing that should be ok too?

Hey Bash, did I tell you I'm going partime from next Monday, gonna lose abit money wise, but am struggling.

AThanks natt that helps a lot. I'll have a look out for the tutorial. I did consider not using fondant and just using buttercream but I'm not very good at getting my buttercream smooth. I think I would have to fondant in sections though and then cover up the patches with decorations. I'm on the hunt for that tutorial now...

Thanks again!

AHi Barbara, haven't used the rainbow dust. So not sure about.

Oh Barbara, no you didn't but Congratulations. You will miss your cake orders do you?

ASugarluva, maybe this would help you. :-)

http://cakecentral.com/b/tutorial/save-time-carving-a-spiral-cake

AOk I'm still really struggling to visualise this. I thinknim just being slow but I'm just not getting it. Going off this pic I found on pinterest I can kind of see how you line up the top tier with one side of the bottom tier then cut your road out from the bottom, flip it over onto the top etc. But this pic only has a 'road' going part way round so I'm still struggling on how you get a whole windy Road around the cake like the ones I've seen pictures of.

http://cakesdecor.com/cakes/10938

I'm sure it's one of those cakes that once you start carving it just happens but if I can't picture it beforehand I always struggle making it happen! I have lots of time before I have to make this yet I know but if I know how I'm going to do it I'll relax a bit more and can stop looking at alternative cake designs for when I mess this one up haha

AOmg bashini yes that's the type of tutorial I need that makes so much more sense than the other ones I've found! Do you think she just repeated that process a couple of times to get the height of her cake? And then lined the roads up as she stacked them?

Went to a lovely wedding at the weekend in Abergavenny.  I was excited to see the wedding cake as it was made by someone I follow on FB - very classy and imagine expensive.  It wasnt exciting to look like but had high hopes when it was sliced up for the evening  do.  It was horrible!!! Victoria sponge with an artificial taste. I was surprised how thick the sugarpaste was - 6mm, not much buttercream (thank god), a thin layer of jam but not really a luxury sponge - I would say it def hadnt have any syrup layer or alcohol. Honestly, if I had paid £300 odd for that you'd been better going to M&S!  My sponges are 10x better and if I was doing a plain sponge def has to be a rich vanilla sponge with a champagne/sugar syrup. I wondered if these sponges had been bought in?

I think that's what is termed as a "confidence booster".   Shame about the taste - maybe the sponge was baked a while back - I am never sure how long you can keep them in the freezer - I would use within a couple of weeks.  Perhaps it was "old".  Also - maybe the couple didn't want alcohol in the cake?  I usually put kirsch in mine - I say "usually" but that's a long time ago - I only recently got back into this cake making malarky!  I would love to know more about your champagne syrup - how do you make it?

Do you have any photos of the wedding cake?

Kathy

I'm terrible for critiquing cake while I'm eating it!! A similar thing happened to me where people I knew chose to go with someone else over me for cake (that's fine, as I was going another wedding that weekend for close friends) but the cake was horrible, it was dry and had dried blueberries in it that had all sunk but the baker clearly knew that they sunk because the cake was baked in individual layers and they were turned upside down before being put together so it looked like they were at the top instead of the bottom! haha

AAhh! I get the mountain carving thing now! :-D Not fussed on the cake in the tutorial tbh (I know I wouldn't be able to do it mind!), out of the three windy road cakes I've seen on here I like natt's best(and I'm honestly not just saying that!) I critisize cakes all the time! Not the decorating tho, just the taste, I'm not much good decorating but I know my cakes taste nice and are as fresh as they can be. Taste is the most important part I think, if I'm gonna eat all those calories it'd better be worth it!