One hot Saturday....

Wow it's been hot hot hot today. Makes a change from all that rain we've been having. Today I delivered a huge cake to the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. It was one of my popular floral cakes and so I thought I'd tell the story of it's creation :)

The beginning of every cake journey has to start in the kitchen......and this cake was a whopper. Five tiers of chocolate mud cake and carrot cake. With a side cutting cake too. The cake needed to feed 300 guests so there was alot of baking to do.

Every cake is baked twice for extra height (by this I mean I bake 2 cakes!) , spliced, sliced, filled and levelled. Levelling a cake at this stage is sooooo important and as I tell all my students in class, take time to get this part right! I have a lovely yellow kitchen spirit level, a vital ingredient in cake construction. And a cake of this size needs to be level, or when it all gets stacked it could go horribly wrong.

When I do cakes with fresh flowers, unlike alot of cake makers, I do all the floristry myself.

I believe it is my job to leave the cake looking perfect and so I go to New Covent Garden myself to select the flowers.

I love getting up early on a summers morning to be greeted by the hustle and bustle of the market. Everything is so pretty and I inevitably come home with something I shouldn't! 

The colours are just fantastic and such an inspiration. However todays cake is going to be elegant and cream. The lovely Ken from Robert Allen florists always takes my order a few days in advance and has my flowers ready and waiting when I arrive. Sometimes if he's lucky I take him some cakey offcuts ;)

Today I picked up cream Avalanche roses, white Hydrangea and cream Akito roses. All five of the cakes were iced in a cream fondant icing, then I hand piped a side design using a no. 3 nozzle for a nice raised effect.

Once the design was piped on, I wanted it to have a pearly sheen so I painted carefully over the top of the piping with a pearl lustre dust. This gives a lovely shimmery effect, as well as dusting over the whole cake with my favourite sparkle dust 'Snowflake' by sugarflair.

Finally, after all 5 cakes were piped and shimmered, I could apply the flowers. I like to do the big roses before I leave for the venue and then the rest when I get there. This helps to avoid any wilting....and today was pretty hot!

Abigail also chose to have little gold ball details and some bits of greenery. I chose a dainty eucalyptus for a slightly Grecian look.

Today  Abigail and Jaspers Wedding was at the Painted Hall, part of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. I have always set up my cakes in the Painted Hall after the ceremony, but this cake went into the Queen Mary's Undercroft.....

After unloading all the boxes and buckets of flowers I got to work with the assembly. This cake is going to be tall :)

This is the eucalyptus going in amongst the roses..... then cake by cake I created a huge tower.

I attempted a photograph from the top looking down, but my chair was not quite high enough.

And here is the finished result!

I hope it tasted nice and congratulations to Abigail and Jasper.

The Story of Abney and Teal....in cake!

This is the story of Abney and Teal, they live on an island in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a park, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of a big city. Sounds like a lovely way to live don't you think?

Each year I have a lovely client order a cake for their gorgeous little girl Zadie.

The great thing about my job is I get to research lots of lovely things whilst deciding on a cake design. And this week I fell in love with the little organic and earthy characters of Abney, Teal, Neep.....who I believe is a parsnip and the Poc Pocs, funny little wooden things !

This year Zadie is two and this is her favourite programme.

So we started baking.....a lovely vanilla and raspberry cake and covered it in lashings and lashings of delicious buttercream.

Then we smoothed it all off in preparation to be covered in fondant.

In the meantime.....whilst the fondant was drying I watched a bit of CeeBeebies and did some research. Then I constructed the elements to make these cool little characters. The really nice thing about this cake is that the colours of the animation are quite 'dirty' so it was a real challenge to mix the colours, yet still make the cake fun and rich in colour. What I wanted to avoid was bright primary colours, but emulate the organic look of the programme at the same time.

Making the little Poc Pocs was a challenge because I wanted to make them look like wood! (I think they are supposed to be carved from wood in the programme) Once all the bits and bobs were made I stuck them into the positions I wanted them to be on the cake. So I propped them up on an old polystyrene dummy. And used a big pot of sugarflair to stop Abney from falling over!

You might be wondering why Teal has no shoes, well I plan for her to have her feet dipped in the lake :)

To go with the cake I also did a batch of lovely vanilla and raspberry cupcakes, yum. I wanted them to have a simple design so made half of them in a daisy design and half with 'Eat Me' cake pics. I'm a bit of a creative, so made all the cake picks myself with some lovely paper I found in the craft shop. Then I crafted some mini bunting to string across the cake providing my idea went to plan. As you can see I printed Zadie's name across the flags. Sometimes I think it's nice not to blast 'Happy Birthday' over everything but to do it in a different way.

The daisies I made using a simple daisy plunger cutter. But I like my daisys to dry in an irregular fasion and so I made some formers from tin-foil. Sometimes the best equipment can be found at home in the cupboard!

Then I popped all the elements on top of the cupcakes with a big yummy whirl of vanilla buttercream. Gosh, I do things like this everyday and I still want to eat cake. Surely working with cake is supposed to put you off wanting to eat it all the time. Hmmmmm.

Cute but simple. The idea is that the main cake will be displayed on a pedestal cake stand and all the little cupcakes will sit around the base. Zadie is very lucky to get so many cakes for her birthday.

Finally to the big cake, I know you all want to know what happened next.......well I built the lovely lake and I built the island that Abney and Teal live on and I grew the grass and flowers in the park for the Poc Pocs to play in......

Then I put the lovely Abney and Teal in the positions I had planned for them and it all came together! Teal dipped her feet in the lake whilst Abney strung up the bunting. Not forgetting 'Neep' who watched over them both :)

At first I thought Neep was like the British Gas flame.....now I know he is a parsnip. And he has to be a 'He' as girls are too pretty to be parsnips.

The final cake. I totally enjoyed making this one and I hope you enjoyed reading the  story.

Rachelxx

When I met Tandy....

A few weeks ago at an event at Chandos House in central London, I caught up with the lovely Tandy of Tandy and Kerry . We were both showcasing our services to potential Brides to be. Tandy's work really caught my eye and she took some amazing pictures of my work that day!

Tandy and Jackson

Tandy is a wonderful photographer, who I believe also has a passion for baking, maybe that is why she took a liking to Rachelle's! Tandy does all sorts of photography, including Weddings and Babies. It was her baby photography that really caught my eye.





Just gorgeous! 



I'm a bit of a sucker for the pictures with Daddies in! I do love a good black and white photo. And these beautiful pictures are so pure and wonderfully styled.

Some of Rachelle's cakes photographed by Tandy at the Chandos House Wedding event.

I like to dabble with my own photography and tend to photograph most of my own cakes, but wow, it really does make a difference when you let a pro do the job.

To see more of Tandy's  amazing photography, check out the website www.tandykerry.co.uk I'm sure she would be more than happy to capture some special moments for you.

I do love a bit of self promotion, I also love close-up photos with an out of focus foreground:)

It's so nice to meet such talented people in the Wedding Industry, especially when they are so passionate about their work. Chandos House did a lovely event that day, including continually topping up my glass with the finest champagne....

Until next time.......

Why a Wedding Planner?

Last week I caught up with the lovely Melanie Helen from Cranberry Blue Weddings and Events. I love meeting all the different people that work in wedding world. We last hooked up on a lovely photoshoot that Melanie styled and I had a little chat with her about why Wedding Planners are usefull when it comes to organising the 'Big Day'.

Melanie Helen

 How did you become a Wedding Planner?

I started my career working for the French designer Roland Mouret and worked on London Fashion Week which was amazing. It gave me my first taste of event planning.  I then moved into Fashion Buying, but during that time I became more and more involed in the event side of the business which was my true passion.  I was then asked to assist in planning a wedding and that's when the light bulb moment came for me as I realised this was what I was born to do!  I received a couple of referrals from that first wedding and through a lot of hard work and determination it developed from there.  I then set up my own company -
'Cranberry Blue Weddings' in 2009.

How does a Wedding Planner help?

Where would you like me to start?!  Firstly I would say that we have the knowledge and experience in how to successfully organise a wedding.  As the majority of couples won't have done this before, how would you know where to start, or what pitfalls to avoid?  I always say - do you want to look back on your wedding and be disappointed or say 'I wish we'd done that differently'? We can save you a lot of money - through our connections and tough negotiations we can help you stay within budget and secure some fantastic deals.

We can save you a lot of time - planning a wedding is a complex task and it's easy to under-estimate the time it actually takes. You can avoid spending hours trawling the internet and attending bridal fairs to try to find those perfect suppliers to fit your budget and taste.  You also have the confidence that all of the suppliers we work with are reliable and of a high calibre so will provide the best end result and won't let you down.

 We can also allieviate the stress involved, you can easily feel completely over-whelmed. We help to guide you through the process so that you can enjoy the planning stages.

What is the best part of your job?

Mmm that's a tough one, but I'd probably say creating the design concept and making it a reality.  I love the fact that every wedding is unique and never do the same thing twice.

Painted Hall, Greenwich

How do you deal with an indecisive Bride?

This is actually quite a common occurance but I work with her to discuss the different options and find out exactly what it is that she wants.  Sometimes people don't know initially, but it's helping them work through this process until they are happy.  I give my opinion as to what I think would work best for them, helping to give them confidence in making the right decision.

 How do you help when it comes to choosing a cake?

Cake by Rachelle's

Also one of the fun bits of planning a wedding (how can you not love a cake tasting?!)  I discuss my clients ideas with them in terms of style and flavours, some have a very clear idea about what they'd like but others aren't so sure.  In this instance I would make suggestions about the type of cake I can see working with the overall theme.  From here I then propose which cake designers would best fit their required style and also budget.  I tend to include a suggestion that may stretch them a bit as quite often they are surprised and end up choosing something a bit different.

Adrian and Ginger

What was the most fun Wedding you ever worked on?

Tricky one but probably a wedding in Austin, Texas a couple of years ago. The Bride was American but they both lived in London so wanted someone they could work closely with over here.  It was super to not have to worry about the weather as it was guaranteed to be boiling hot so everything was outside. The details were really fun, we served ice tea as one of the reception drinks, the bride arrived in a yellow taxi, the guests had a short dance lesson with the swing band and then at the end of the night the couple made their way to a horse drawn carriage through a line of sparklers.

Thanks Melanie!

It's great to have an association with such a wonderful Wedding Planner. Rachelle's are proud to be recommended cake suppliers for Cranberry Blue Weddings.

Did you know that a Cranberry Blue is a butterfly?! How cute is that.

 

 

 

Cake Cutting Nostalgia

I've been having a bit of a nostalgic week, looking back at my four years of cake making and looking forward to all the beautiful cakes to come. I can't wait to show you all the new creations I've got coming up, but for now, here are some of the many happy couples who cut my cakes from the last few years.

This was one of the first wedding cakes I ever made. Styles have changed quite a bit in the last few years, now it would seem anything is possible!

This gorgeous photo shows the lovely Hayley cutting 'The Birdcage' one of 2011's most popular cakes. Hayleys Wedding was at our favourite location Rivervale Barn in the summer. I do love a nice black and white photo.

Lucy and Chris married in November 2010. A year later they welcomed the gorgeous Jessica Lily to the family....must have been something in the cake ;)

Andy and Sarah tied the knot in an amazing marquee in the summer of 2010, I was lucky enough to be cake maker, florist and Maid of Honour at this Wedding! Andy is my brother and Sarah my Sister in Law. I will soon be welcoming a new Neice or Nephew......exciting...

Rebecca tied the knot in December 2009, I love this photograph, so romantic. They chose one of my more unusual designs, a chocolate covered cake with cream rose detail. Look closely and you will see Micky Mouse on the second tier. Such fun to incorporate a meaningful detail.

Anna and Robin married in August 2009, again in a beautifully decorated marquee. The cake was really tall and elegant, filled with vintage roses. Anna designs bridalware and even made her own dress. DamatoBridal

Claudia and Rupert chose an all time classic cake.

My most popular year round cake, tall, elegant and a timeless classic. 5 tiers of pearlised ivory cake layered with fresh cream avalanche roses and piped side detail. A great choice for a tall and impressive room such as those at The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Parliment Square.

I'll finish off my nostalgic trip with a picture of Elaine and Saiid. They wed in January 2010 and ordered a massive tower of Bollywood minicakes. I hear they now have a beautiful little boy called Leo who's birthday cake I have just made! Happy Birthday Leo.