Makin' cakes

Recently the house turned into a party venue for miss turning 13.
Officially a teenager now and no longer the much hated title of being a tween.

She had chosen a steampunk theme asking friends to dress smart casual with a steampunk twist. So there were aviator goggles, mini top hats, pocket watches and vests galore.

I decided to make a bronze cake with cogs and a pocket watch on it and of course headed into it with no cake decorating experience what so ever. I knew enough to know that I wouldn't get the look I wanted with frosting so googled a bit and learnt I needed something called sugar paste. A friend recommended I visit 'Cake Deco' in Port Phillip arcade in the city and my visit proved to be very fruitful.

Cake Deco for cake people is like Gj's patchwork section for patch people. Positively jam packed with cookie cutters, shape makers, boards, impression plates, piping, gels, colors, lustre's....the works.
The guy behind the counter was so helpful in showing me everything I needed to achieve my look.

So I headed home with my edible lustre, sugar paste and shape cutters, set for a cake making adventure.

Some of the cogs were made using a flower shape cutter and others just formed out of using the right size lids and glasses to get the size circles I wanted. I used Bronze, silver and gold edible lustre which is just dusted over the sugar paste shapes to get the color. Little screws were made using balls of paste flatted and pressing a knife on top to create the look of a screw top.
My pocket watch was a cake base covered in gold paste, with a circle of white on top, then ... can you believe it, edible texta to write the numbers on. The 13 was just cut out with a knife and miss Kizz made a little steam punk mouse to sit beside the cake.

Whilst it was fun to create in a totally new medium, it did take a while and was very messy,

or maybe it was just me being very messy...
I sorta thought using the paste would be like using clay, but nah. It was quite fragile and didn't really like being too thin, too thick or bent to much. So a bit of a learning curve.

But alls well, that ends well.

Apart from that I'd whipped up some name cards,

 filled balloons with helium and glitter,

 and collected fun metal bits and bobs from the local oppie to create a steampunkish table center to cover with tea lights.

A fun night was had by all and what can I say, you only turn 13 once. 
Jay x