I'll Huff and I'll Puff......BAKEFEST 2014

Last weekend I entered my first ever competition, Bakefest 2014. This wonderful event was organised to raise much needed awareness and funds for ACT Meningitis. Below is a list of the category options but as it was my first competition I was automatically in the 'Novice Sugarcraft' section. The theme was 'Happy Birthday' which left it wide open to interpretation and after much consideration I decided to do a children's cake based upon the fairy tale of 'The 3 Little Pigs'.

First of all I began with the below cake dummies and there was many hours spent transitioning from before to after!!

The picture doesn't show it clearly but using my small letter cutters and some white petal paste (always better than sugarpaste for letters!) and wrote Happy Birthday Jack. Surprisingly, I was the only person who had writing on their entries for this category, below is a look at the competition!

There was some super demonstrations and prizes to be won at the event as well as lots of exhibitors supplying all sorts of equipment for decorating. I attended the Macaroon workshop which was in conjunction with Goodalls and was hosted my some of the stars of The Great Irish Bake Off and yes....this lead me to wanting macaroons for the whole rest of the weekend! So on Sunday afternoon I headed into Galway city and to the cutest little French bakery Le Petit Delice and treated myself to some of their fab offering:

Returning back to Salthill, I was THRILLED to be announced as winner of the category! Along with the cutest little trophy, I also got a voucher for Stuff 4 Cakes which is an absolute Aladdin's Cave of all things baking and cake related and I will definitely do a haul once I use it.

My Graduation Cake

As some of you may know I spent the last 3 years studying for a Commerce degree in NUI Galway and on the day of my graduation my Mam surprised me with this fabulous cake!

This masterpiece was a chocolate cake....with the compulsory chocolate fudge icing! To decorate sugarpaste  was used dyed into a variety of colours before being used. Covapaste sugar paste was used in creating this cake as it gives such a nice finish, it is available in Decobake who I have wrote about in previous blogs and who now have their website up and running (excitement!!). I think I have mentioned before that when using black it can be better to use black sugarpaste instead of dying white as quite a large quantity of dye will be required causing the consistency of the icing to change and make it more difficult to work with. If however you do decide to dye the traditional white sugarpaste Black Extra dye is a must!

 Scrolls and other delicate parts were left for a period to set over night to make sure they were secure for the car journey and to last the day until it was ate. A button cutter can be used to create flawless buttons but they can also be made by cutting out 2 perfectly round circles and then indenting them 4 times on each. A 'stitching wheel' is a must to get the effect on the dungarees and I think the one used was one produced by PME. 

Of course, no cake in our house is complete without a sprinkle of glitter and so some was put on his tongue as a finishing touch.

Happy Baking,
Laura

Keep calm and write a blog

My little blog has got very neglected over the last few weeks (well months to be honest). I promise that this year I will be keeping all of you posted of all my cake adventures more than ever! On recently looking back I have noticed that there are many cakes I never featured which really need to get a little mention here. Over the next few weeks I plan to feature the following so please stay tuned.....

Champagne Magnums with Bottles and ice

Minion Graduation Cake

Olaf from Frozen