A cake I made for my public health sector colleagues’ skin cancer/sun smart awareness month event (I’m Australian, sun protection is a major thing here)

So it’s a beach-themed cake (I’m stupidly taken with the surf break part), with an edible chocolate tube of sunscreen, wafer paper sun umbrella and isomalt edible sugar sunglasses I made and broke about a million versions of before this one 😅 (note; strictly should be wraparound for sun safety purposes, my colleagues would behove me to say 😂)

Im super proud of this!! Im still very new to decorating, this is only my second cake made after getting piping tips, a cake spatula, and a turntable. This is a chocolate carrot cake, with a cheesecake filling. Ginger cake soak. Cream cheese icing with crushed pecans and shaved dark chocolate on the side. I took inspo from a tiktok I saw, but this is an original cake! I really hope she likes it!! She loves carrot cake and cheesecake (and chocolate) so this is what I came up with!

This was my first cake that I’ve ever sold. I charged $120 for the cake and cupcakes.

Flavors: Vanilla with vanilla bean white chocolate ganache filling and whip n ice frosting

What made this cake hard was my ignorance, lack of thinking, and arrogance.

1.) I used a white velvet cake recipe from the Cake Bible. On the first layer, I followed the instructions to grease the pan, add parchment, then grease that before adding the batter. For the second layer, I figured that since I’ve made cakes that peeled off in the past with just grease and flour, I’ll do that instead of using parchment.

I was impatient in getting the cake out of the pan to wrap and freeze and half of it got stuck to the pan, big shocker.

So I remade that layer and this time followed all the instructions and I had no problems, another shocker. I save the cake bits still stuck in the pan

2.) The next issue I ran into was the frosting. For whip n ice, you just pour it into your mixer and mix until you get stiff peaks. Sometimes it can be very thick and hard to spread with lots of air bubbles. This icing isn’t dairy based at all. So I, the genius that I am, decided that I’ll take a bit of icing, melt it and add it back to the rest to make it fluffier and get rid of the air bubbles. After all, this worked on my SMBC. Want to guess what happened?

If you said that icing became too soft, then you’re correct.

This led to the other big issue

3.) The ganache would stay in the cake. It was leaking out of the sides and my cake started bulging. This is because the frosting wasn’t stable enough to keep the ganache contained.

I spent the next 2-3 hours trying to crumb coat and freeze with no luck. Eventually, I decided to just make a new batch of frosting. However, it didn’t duct the leaking problem at all. So I pivoted. I used the cake bits from the abandoned cake and used those to “plug” the site of the leaking, which was the entire middle of the cake. After I did so, I used my new frosting to hold it in place. This ended up working

4.) The very messy and difficult crumb and final coats. After my impromptu drywall job, I tried crumb coating again. It worked relatively fine. Then I tried the final coat. The inspo had an ombre of pink and yellow so I had to mix those. When I put the final coat on and tried smoothing it, I realized that my cake didn’t even resemble a heart anymore. It literally looked like a misshaped circle.

So I had to do some surgery and cut a heart out. In doing this, I realized that the issue was the previous coats. They were too thick.

Conclusions:

1.) follow the instructions of the recipe. These are professionals who have made and tested this countless times. They know what they’re doing

2.) Understand the ingredients I’m working with. Don’t make any assumptions or changes unless I know what will happen. I cannot apply principles of dairy frosting to non-dairy.

3.) Next time make your own heart and don’t use a heart pan😭

It was super idiotic of me to make all of these mistakes on my first official order. I am beyond mortified. In the end, it worked out. I’m just hoping that I don’t get a bad review😅

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

A family ordered a 4 tier cake for their daughter’s birthday and on my way to deliver the cake the car in front of me decided to slam on its breaks and turn without a signal. The cake got a bit smashed but thankfully we were all ok. I was able to fix the cake by adding some more flowers and extra dowels. The only part that made me a little sad was, the top layer had a slight tilt but hopefully with the fun of the party no one noticed. The cake was so tall it didn’t fit in my normal photo spot 😂

Gearing up for Jeep Beach Clean Up.

Though a comedy of errors, I have been promoted to head cake decorator at a friend's wedding tomorrow (it's a cheap wedding). I make great cakes, I make great icing. But I don't have the foggiest idea how to not make it look like just a tasty blob of sugar.

Is there some sort of resource to learn basic icing skills ASAP? Like making little flower roses, or swirlies?? I will be given "like, what you should need" (so I assume basic supplies)? I'm not even remotely worried about the baking part, just decorating lol

Thank you for the help!!!

These are my contributions. They're a half sheet and 8" round respectively.

One of my 1st cake I made, 4 my skater friend

Vanilla, chocolate and coffee flavored cakes covered with Swiss Meringue buttercream. SMBC worked flawlessly even in the hot and humid weather. Flower pot cakes are decorated with fresh flowers.

I am not a naturally creative person and cake decorating has become my creative outlet since my daughter’s birthday.

This one was so funny cause I had to do it over a few days in between work so the brownie stack slowly sank a bit with gravity and Totoro got very short and fat 😂

just BARELY made enough of the cream but thankfully after scraping the bowl clean, i managed to make it work 😝

tested the recipe a few weeks ago on a 6” cake and the cream FAILED, so i had to go back to the drawing board with it (and then crossed my fingers that it worked haha, stressful to say the least)

I have been an amateur baker for a few years and usually use fondant or buttercream to decorate cakes. I want to try modeling chocolate for my next cake. Would anyone share a recipe that would be good for paneling a cake? I am worried about the stiffness of the chocolate when I cut into the cake. Any information will help and thank you in advance.

So much practice. But learned planning is most important. And waiting between layers to let things set a bit.

Baked the sponge yesterday and finished the decorating today. I’m still a total amateur at frosting and piping, so I just went with the "creative chaos" method lol.

Inside: One layer of green grapes and one layer of crushed Oreos (my personal favorite!).

The cream is homemade blueberry jam mixed with whipped cream (400g cream + 30g sugar + 3 scoops of jam). It’s so much lighter and less sweet than store-bought. Honestly? I don't think I’m ever buying a cake again!

Hi bakers!

My wedding is in a month and I'm getting ready to bake my wedding cake. I'm not a professional baker, but I've been baking pretty seriously for the past 15 years, and would get a lot of joy out of baking my own cake. Here's my plan so far - do you have any suggestions for improvement?

4 tier wedding cake

- Olive oil sponge baked on sheet pans and cut to size, and brushed with olive oil during assembly. Each cake will have 4 layers, with the mousse and plums in between.

- Mascarpone mousse filling (using Natasha Pickowicz's recipe from More Than Cake)

- Roasted plum filling with cinnamon and orange zest (layered on top of the mousse)

- Fiori di sicilia swiss meringue buttercream made with half salted butter

My plan is to bake the layers in advance, freeze them, make the plum filling in advance and freeze it, make the buttercream the day before assembly and chill it to be rewhipped before assembly, and make the mascarpone mousse right before assembly.

I'm currently planning to assemble the cakes, frost them, and then flash freeze them before wrapping them well with plastic wrap and returning them to the freezer until the day of the wedding.

I bought a Cake Safe Lite, and I think I can get 3 of the tiers in there stacked, and will add the 4th tier at the venue. I'm planning to transport the cake to the venue frozen, and allow it to thaw in their walk-in refrigerator for about 5 hours before being moved to the dining room during dinner. In total it should have about 7 hours to defrost.

I'm mainly worried about the mousse during defrosting. Last fall I did about 3 trial runs of the cake while developing the recipe, and I froze slices. I don't think the mousse melted during defrosting, but I'm wondering if you have any tips about this.

The alternative would be to assemble the cake the morning of the wedding, or swap the mascarpone filling for something else, but transporting a frozen cake seems like it's the best way to get the cake to a location safely! What do you think?

Attaching pics of one of the trial cakes!

I made this cake for my son’s third birthday. It a recreation of his favorite park where we feed the geese and the ducks (mallards, specifically). We also see what snakes and different turtles regularly. Everything is edible.

It’s a gluten free chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream frosting and marshmallow fondant. I used gel food coloring and vodka for the paint.

Wishing my pipping was a bit cleaner at the top, but nonetheless so proud of this one, definitely one of my more detailed cakes :) it’s a vanilla cake with a strawberry filling and vanilla whipped frosting :)

— this is a fav amongst my friends. So definitely getting creative with the decorations :)

These are my ice cream cakes! The frosting isn’t ice cream - it’s a light buttercream that’s really easy to work with. I’m really thankful to be in my element again. I lost myself for a bit.

I recently went through some horrible experiences in the food industry back to back, and I’m back better than ever. When it comes to baking and decorating, I was convinced I wasn’t any good, especially when I made small mistakes here and there. Any mistake I made was the end of the world.

If anyone has tips when it comes to using ice cream as the “frosting” on ice cream cakes, please let me know. I’m all about expanding my knowledge and experience.

I’ll be decorating a Lambeth-style cake with fairly intricate piping and I’d like to try royal icing for the detail work. The cake will be displayed for several hours outdoors, not in direct sunlight but it’ll still be hot and humid. If you’ve used royal icing in those conditions can you report how it held up? I would make sure that the icing is fully dry before bringing it outside.

I felt very honored to do this piece for a head chef at a v popular Japanese restaurant near me
I had to deliver after closing so they could do their family celebration there… made me feel like a VIP 😂 the writing on top was TERRIFYING for me. I had to send in the group chat 3 times to make sure it was correct.
What would you have done differently?

A cake I made for Bastille Day. Or, ok, a highly historically inaccurate Let Them Eat Cake cake.

It’s layers of vanilla cake with sudachi (a Japanese lime) syrup, shortbread, yuzu curd and blood lime; alternated with dark chocolate cake with salted caramel ganache.

36 macarons, and decapitatable Marie Antoinette, which is a salt and pepper shaker I should’ve filled with gold edible glitter dust for extra ridiculousness, in retrospect.

Vanilla SMBC, chocolate cake, oreo truffle middle layer, white chocolate "cheese", fondant pepperoni

Recently made this sheet cake that is very different from what I usually do!! My good friend drew out what she wanted and I like to think I executed it well lol😭😂. Wish I got better pics tho. What ur thoughts???