Cake's Progress

I spend my whole life dealing with sugar. I've worked in a labs that deal with sugars for going on five years now and I make cookies and cupcakes out of polymer clay in my spare time. Everything I do revolves around sugar, cake or chocolate. I am Dr. Atkin's nemesis. One day I will make a model of him out of pasta.

To add to all this I'm currently - in my spare time with my other hand - making a wedding cake. I've made a fair few over the years, which is not bad for somebody who is entirely self-taught. This one is for a wedding in a few days time, but it had to be started months ago. It is a long and complicated process. My house is full of sugar flowers that match the bridal bouquet which are drying on wires hanging from everything. There is so much sugar in the air I'm getting hyperglycemic even breathing in and the hallway looks like I've murdered Frosty the snowman.

I feel like I owe you all an apology for being so wrapped up in this project that I have neglected my blog a bit. It had been my intention to create the mother-of-all work in progress walk throughs for the whole project - but I forgot to take photos at the right points and got covered in cake mix for most of it. So I'm just going to waffle for a bit before lapsing back into the normal trend. To be honest, you wouldn't believe me if I posted how I got here anyway as a lot of the tools I use wouldn't be out of place in the hands of a plasterer.

It was sugarcraft that lead me to playing with clay originally, as I found I could replicate flowers in clay before translating them to icing, making exact shapes out of clay to use as supports for drying the final products. I finished sugar flower below about two hours ago and it took three days to get that far. I haven't finished the back yet even though I know noone will see it, I can't leave it raw (you can see the wire wrapped around my hand). I feel like crying when people cut these cakes. I need to get out more.



Icing isn't an easy material to work with but it is where I learnt patience, a Zen-like calm and many words that I can't write on here. Despite the frustration I love sugarcraft. It appeals to my obsessive streak and I can get totally absorbed in it, spending hours and hours on single petals.

So this is the result of nearly five months of work...



Even though it's finished now, it has spawned another little project, which might take me a few weeks to complete, but I'll get there eventually. :)