Cake Note 61: "The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new -" Rajneesh

I haven't posted in a while, I have a very good reason for this. My beautiful daughter was due to become a mother on 21 July. Unfortunately, she didn't hang on that long and my beautiful Grandson was born 6 weeks prematurely. After a bit of a rocky start, necessitating a stay in Special Care, he pulled himself round and is now home with his Mum. He is such a wonderful little creature and I am SO proud of my daughter doing so well after such a scary time - she is making a great job of being a mother and adores her baby boy - and as the quote says - 'A mother is something absolutely new...' and my daughter is one such woman - all my love Angel XXX

The cakes I am posting are a pair of thank you cakes for the Special Care Baby Unit and the Delivery Unit, where she and my Grandson were so expertly cared for, Thank You being such a small word that says so much!

Technical details - one Luscious  lemon cake and one Death by Chocolate cake. The babies were made using First Impressions baby mould - thanks for looking :)

Cake Note 60: ""Love is not blind – It sees more and not less, but because it sees more it is willing to see less."

Hey, my 60th Cake Note.....and this weekend is the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - 60 years since she ascended to the throne - Congratulations Ma'am. There are loads of people celebrating this weekend, flags and bunting along the shops, and just across the street from me, they are having a street party!

Anyway, I'm not posting a 60th cake although I am sure Her Majesty would enjoy one of my cakes. This one is a 30th wedding anniversary, a pearl wedding. The idea for the cake isn't mine - I asked a fellow forum member if I could use her design and she kindly agreed. I've wanted to us a 'Latte' coloured paste for ages and thought this was a good time. The photos don't show the colour well, but it was a really lovely shade, mixed using white sugarpaste and chocolate paste, 32 grams to 1.3kg of white.  It's a 10 inch chocolate cake, with a scallop shell and pearls made out of pastillage - the shell was a bit fragile I can tell you and the pearls kept rolling round in the shell - I got there in the end though :)

Cake Note 59: "I have everything now I had twenty years ago except now it's all lower" Gipsey Rose Lee

A birthday cake to celebrate 80 Glorious Years! This cake was almost a cake wreck...in fact the original cake is sitting in a box, hoping someone will take pity on it and eat it!

The heat this week has been dreadful for covering cakes and this cake was no exception. After several hours of trying to cover and recover it, I ended up tearing bits of cake off with the sugarpaste that I had to remove. I gave up in the end and started afresh this morning - early start, got my fresh ingredients from the supermarket and by 09.30 the new cake was in! It's been just as hot today but the breeze has made it easier to work with the sugarpaste - so here is Mark II of the cake:) The cake is actually ivory but the sunlight was so strong, it looks almost peach. The 80 year old loves peach coloured roses, so that's what she got. Happy Birthday Mary

Cake Note 58: "Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years".

What a lovely sentiment.

 I am a member of the British Sugarcraft Guild and this weekend, the Guild is holding an exhibition. My Guild branch decided to have a display table at the exhibition to show the range of skills our branch is capable of :) The theme was wedding anniversaries, to tie in with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I chose the 12th anniversary, which is traditionally silk or linen and more modern, pearls.

I was a bridesmaid when I was a little girl, and wore one of those  old fashioned flower garland headdresses. I decided to re-create that garland using  flower (gum) paste  to make  Orange Blossoms, buds and small pulled flowers, to represent the marriage; and to represent the silk aspect of the anniversary, I covered an oval drum with 50/50 sugar/flower paste, rolled thinly and then rolled with a silk impression ceramic rolling pin and draped to look like fabric. I finished it off with pearl lustre spray.

I'm very pleased with it:)

the silk effect pin makes the paste look like silk fabric

This brighter photo doesn't show the silk effect as well as photo 1.

Close up of the blossoms

Cake Note 57: " It's important to have a twinkle in your wrinkle!" Unknown

 And at 90 years old this guy has loads of twinkles! he is my best friend's Dad who hit the grand old age of 90 at the weekend and I got the honour of making the cake. He goes to the pub every day, likes whisky and betting on the Gee Gees! So here's my interpretation of his great age and his hobbies!

Tech details - 10 inch square rich fruit cake - sugar pasted board and cake, model supported by 7 inch cake board.

Cake Note 56: "When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies"

And we all believe in fairies, right? It would be lovely wouldn't it! This cake is for a Grandma who wanted to buy a cake for her Grandson's baptism - she'd seen one of mine with the blocks and caterpillars and asked for something similar in a single tier cake - she asked for pastel blues and white (right up  my street) and this is what she got. I wish her Grandson a life full of love, health and happiness...now that's a fairy wish if anything is:)

Thanks for looking!

Technical details: 10 inch vanilla sponge with jam and vanilla buttercream, sugar paste (fondant) to the board and the cake - I like to imprint the board with patterns that match the theme. The blocks are made following Marion Frost (Patchwork Cutters) kit, the rabbit is courtesy of Debbie Brown's Baby Cakes Book (thank you ladies for the inspiration) and the caterpillars......they're mine! I liked this cake:)

Cake Note 55: "Babies are such a nice way to start people" Unknown

Oh here I go again - a short sweet post though as I have to be up for work in the morning. This cake is a gift for a friend at work who is starting her maternity leave this week. The colour of the cake will give away the sex of the baby! A girl of course.

The little Baby in a Bunny suit on top is one I made courtesy of Frances McNaughton's book, Modelling Fancy Dress Babies, the originator of the models  - they come in a range of cute animal suits! Thanks Francis:)

Here it is, 7 inch chocolate mud cake iced in...well, pink of course!