Cakes, parties and broken promises.. Confessions of a cake artist.

When I was twelve weeks pregnant and hormonal with my second baby, I almost cried when the sonographer announced that my estimated due date was one day before my daughter's second birthday. Feelings of guilt that my first born would not only have to share mummy and daddy was now overtaken by even more guilt that they might now even share a birthday. I swore to myself that day that I would never make them share a party and they would always have their own day to celebrate. 

As my EDD drew nearer and my daughter's second birthday approaching, I grew more anxious. "Come out soon baby boy, so that you're not born on the same day as your sister, " I pleaded with my growing bump. My obedient son did as he was asked and arrived four days earlier than expected. Also enough time for me to come back home from the hospital to celebrate his big sister's birthday. 

The next year flew by, and just as I had promised, we had two separate birthday parties, a very special first birthday party for our little man, and two weeks later, a third birthday party for our little princess. She even got to decorate the rainbow cake she had requested and sugar sculpt the matching cupcakes. So picture this: Put up decorations, take down decorations, put up different decorations. Cook up a storm, clean up after the storm, cook up another storm.  Same guests, different menus, different theme. Two cakes. Yes, we needed the two weeks. 

I would have really really wanted to tell you that I kept the promise I had made to myself, that I would never make them share a birthday party. But to be honest with you and true to myself, I was only able to keep that promise for one year. Although minutes and hours may tick by slowly, the year flew past and before we knew it, we were planning my daughter's fourth birthday and my son's second. Do we hold two separate parties again or let them share one amazing party? We didn't have to deliberate for too long. 

Fast forward yet another year and we come to present day. My daughter is already half a decade old and my son is now three. Being a daughter of cake people, our five year old only wants the latest cakes that are "on trend" and requested a drippy cake with ganache, macarons and meringue. My son gave us two options, Octonauts or superheroes. 

Even though I couldn't keep my promise to give them two separate parties, I will keep my new promise to give them two separate birthday cakes... for this year at least 😜. 

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Cake Artist?

A common request from followers of this blog, is for me to write about what happens behind the scenes. People seem to be interested in the design process and how we get to our finished product.  I've ummm-ed and ahhhh-ed about blogging about this as I am frankly quite embarrassed to show you what goes on, especially for a self-confessed perfectionist this is a bit difficult to digest... but for the sake of a bit of humour, I will swallow my pride!  Here it goes...

Some of the sketches we provided our client

I've mentioned in previous blogs that I'm no artist on pen and paper, and that I'm almost always hesitant to send a client a sketch of our cakes. I'll have beautiful visions and images in my head, but when I try to put pen to paper, it never comes out the way I intend.   

The recent Lego Superheroes cake... thankfully it turned out how we had pictured it in our heads and not what was on paper!!

We also enjoy having the freedom to make changes to the design of the cake whilst we are making it as we are often able to create an effect that we didn't think was possible, whilst designing it (for example Domo with one arm up and the other down, or the weight of the sun topper floating above the cake instead of sitting on it) or improving the overall look of the cake (displaying the Hello Kitty cake on a rectangular cake board instead of a round board as quoted).

I take pride in having real attention to detail, and at the same time, our cakes have clean lines, look fresh and have an uncluttered finish. But somehow my pictures always look like a scribbled mess and even I can't decipher what I've tried to transcribe from my head.  Even my eleven year old niece critiques my sketches and tells me that she'll have to teach me how to draw one day.

With cakes like Genevieve's Winter Wonderland themed cake, she was happy for us to design the cake whichever way we wanted, as long as it was not a "Frozen" cake.  So originally we had planned a more "busy" cake that was round and unsculpted. Having the flexibility in design meant that we were able to sculpt the cake into an actual iceberg, and then decide to keep the lines clean and uncluttered, and not over-complicate the cake with the igloo or polar bear up top.    

Having the liberty to change the design gives us the flexibility of making the cake look better than what we are confined to by our drawings

Quite often, clients get so excited about their cake, they ask to see a sketch of what to expect. I'm always happy to provide a sketch, but always pre-warn them so that they won't doubt our cake-making abilities.  

So here I am exposing my vulnerabilities to you all... please don't judge me!!!  

Admittedly we now have a new design studio which helps the sketches look slightly more acceptable.  But for a great laugh, and for the ultimate mind-blowingly embarrassing picture... here are two I drew when designing my kids' cakes.  Amazingly though, I showed them to my four year old and asked her what the sketches were of, she confidently exclaimed "Ohhhh that's my bucket cake, and that's Xav's digger cake!!".  So there you go, it can't be that bad? ;P

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