Wednesday 16 May 2012

Shoes, Poppies and more

Hi all, sorry for the big gap since the last post. I'd like to say I've been really busy but, while I have been busy, I've also had plenty of opportunities to write a new post. And I haven't.

So anyway, sorry.

So I've had two more classes since I last wrote. One focused on shoes, and the other on poppies. I've also found that the longer the course goes on, the more expensive it seems to be getting, as we need to bring all our own equipment which seems to include all these things I've never even heard of, let alone own. Like flower tape, which is this strange stuff actually used by florists mostly I think (or maybe that was just the wire) but is used by cakey people too now apparently. The reason I say it is strange is because it's not sticky until you stretch it to activate the glue, and even then I can't feel any stickiness on it, but it seems to stick to itself OK, so there you go. I made the mistake in the poppy class of taking a length of tape and then cutting it from the roll and leaving it on the table to come back to when I needed it. The trouble with that is I then didn't know which was the sticky side!

But I digress; I meant to start with the shoes.

I quite enjoyed these actually. I didn't buy any shoe cutters, I borrowed the teacher's (seems so odd saying that, like I really am back at school) but I think I might go out and get some. Turns out you can also do a lot of them just with circle cutters, like these:

How cute is that?!

Little baby booties! It was just an oval for the sole, a semi circle for the back, a small circle for the front and a couple of strips for the laces, but it gives a great effect. Oh and I nearly forgot the strip around the edge of the sole to hide the join :)

We also covered flip flops, which needed proper shoe cutters:
I quite enjoyed these once I got the hang of them.

The straps are a little bit complicated, as you have to put the v-shaped bit of icing on backwards and then fold it over itself without it either breaking or coming unstuck, both of which mine kept doing plenty!

Then there were the heels:

Complete with a little clutch bag.

I struggled a bit with these as they were so fiddly, but I think I'd do better if they were bigger. Although I suppose the bigger they are, the better you have to do them as the mistakes would show more!

Everything together.

I should mention that I did all these with modelling paste. I've now found out the difference between sugar paste, modelling paste and flower paste. It is all to do with the amount of glue in the icing. Sugar paste is just your normal icing that you put over a cake, it's quite soft and pliable and tears easily. It also doesn't set very hard. Modelling paste has a little more glue in it and so sets harder and makes models stronger. Flower paste is best for flowers (obviously!) as it contains the most glue and sets really hard, so you can roll it out thinner for petals.

Flower paste came into play in this week's tutorial, which was poppies. And what a vast amount you need just for one poppy! Flower wire, flower tape, black cotton (I missed this off the list and had to borrow someone else's, d'oh!), flower paste, dusting colours and icing colours! All for one flower. And that doesn't include all the equipment either, like the rolling pin (I couldn't roll it out thin enough; flower paste is like pastry, you roll it out and it just seems to spring back into shape again), kitchen paper for the dusting colours (I forgot to bring this and all, had to borrow some from someone else), all the modelling tools, brushes, cornflour (I seem to get through a ton of this stuff. I was looking around at everyone else and they were moulding their flower paste easily with their bare hands - whenever I do that it just gets sticky and wet and I end up with paste all over my fingers like a chewing gum disaster! So lots of cornflour is required for me.)... anyway, eventually I managed to produce this:


Not bad for a first attempt, I reckon.

So there you go, this is what I've learnt.

Here's a few of the other things I've been up to recently:

More lemon cakes.

My first ever carrot cakes with cream cheese icing! I loved the carrot cakes (I've never had them before) and this recipe was from the Primrose Bakery (yes, them of the stodgy cupcakes of days past) which actually came out right this time. Soft and lovely. Shame about the icing though, I'm definitely not a fan of cream cheese icing.

Nothing like a plain old cake. I couldn't resist using the heart shaped tin though :-D

I thought I'd try a new recipe. This is spiced marmalade cake from "200 Cakes and Bakes", one of my favourite recipe books.

You've got to try rainbow cake!

This one came out a bit stodgy, but tasted good nonetheless!

Nom nom nom...