Cake-decorating needn't be about frilly white icing and pastel-pink roses... Below are a few of my recent cake-decorating efforts.
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Since Owen used to write newspaper crosswords, I made him write this one for our birthday (2006) -- only a handful of clues, but they're all genuine. The cake decorating was the easy bit! |
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"When a librarian and a cake-decorator share a birthday, hilarious consequences ensue..." |
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My birthday coincided with the general election this year (2005) -- ready-made cake-decorating inspiration (and a very old joke). |
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So, the usual few panicked days before the event, I decided to make myself a birthday cake to take into work. Fortunately, the new job provided a fantastic idea for a cake -- the admin web pages have a nice simple template which is relatively easy to recreate in food-colouring, though the white text on blue background was a bit of a challenge. This cake has full cross-browser compatibility, but minor accessibility issues (not suitable for vegans). |
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For my quarter-century I made a cake which included as many of my interests as possible. See how many you can spot! |
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BADGER BADGER BADGER BADGER |
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For our housewarming party I decided to make a cake in the shape of our house. There were times during the construction of the cake when I regretted this decision... but all in all I think it worked out well, and it was certainly appreciated by the party guests! |
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My first ever commissioned cake! A co-worker who saw this website asked me if I would make a cake for his parents' Diamond Wedding Anniversary, and this was the result. The Lancaster roses are because they're both from Lancaster, and the oak leaves are because he was in the South Notts Hussars, which has oak leaves as part of its badge. The font I've used is FrenchScript bold. |
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This year's ProQuest Christmas cake was one of the most ambitious designs I've attempted so far. The figures are all moulded out of ready-to-roll icing, with the exception of the pear tree -- a cinnamon stick with rice-paper circles slotted onto it. Thanks to Sion for the idea! The music was the most time-consuming bit -- thanks to Portfolio Singers for letting me borrow Carols for Choirs from which to copy it. |
 | Just how much cake can 200-odd hungry bisexuals eat? Four 11"-square cakes seemed to go down (ahem) just fine at BiCon 2001, anyway. Don't even ask about the hassle of baking and decorating four double- and triple-quantity cakes (particularly given that I was on holiday for a week before BiCon) and transporting them to Coventry without damaging them... |
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This one was made for the Joint Birthday Party of Sion Arrowsmith, Matt Reid, and Huw Walters. It's a Joint Birthday Party because there's three of them. Honest. This website does not in any way, shape or form advocate the use of illegal drugs. This one, however, does. |
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This was the cake I made for my co-worker Hannah Dudley when she left ProQuest. She'd drawn this picture of herself on the computer for another co-worker's leaving card, and we decided it would make a cute image for her own leaving cake (and then had to resort to considerable subterfuge to get the image off her computer!). Her closest colleagues all signed the cake (with food-colouring pens) before presenting it to her. She was absolutely delighted and couldn't bear to eat the picture itself -- for all I know she's kept it to this day... |
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I was 23 on the 5th of the 5th. If this means nothing to you, neither will the pyramid. (See this site for a hint.) So instead I'll tell you that gingerbread is alarmingly unco-operative as a building material, particularly when your party guests are du to start arriving in 10 minutes and you still haven't drawn the Sacred Chao on 30 gingerbread biscuits. |
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This is the cake I made for my co-workers at ProQuest, for Christmas 2000 ... and we were still finishing it off in January! Everybody seemed to appreciate it, although I did get tired of giving the answer "carefully!" to the question "how did you do the writing?" Extra prizes for spotting what text I've used for it. The lion is the symbol of Literature Online, one of our main products. |
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A cake I made for Eleanor's birthday, featuring one of her favourite Manga characters, Ranma. |