I go to Cakecraft School

My parents came up trumps for my birthday this year and sent me back to school!  Only this time, it was sugarcraft school.  The location - Paul Bradford's Truly Scrumptious Cupcake Cafe Bar in Linlithgow.  See his website for the amazing pieces of art he creates with his very talented team!  http://www.designer-cakes.com I am in awe!!

We started with the basics before building up to creating the fabulous bow cake that we all got to take home with us.  Paul taught us how to cut the cake, ganache it so that we had a perfectly smooth base on which to place our sugarpaste - and which we then built up the cake from.  We iced the board (never been able to do that before!), created lovely little glittery stars on sticks to decorate the cake with and then put the bow in it's rightful place, slap bang in the middle of the cake, as a crowning glory!  I came home sticky with icing sugar, chocolate smeared and glittery with red hands from the food colouring - but I was very happy and grinning like a Cheshire cat!  Can't wait to go back and learn more.  I have the sugarcraft bug so watch this space as I start to produce my own creations1

I could go on for hours and hours about the wonders of my day - from the skills I learnt, to my great classmates but, I won't!  I'll let you see some of the pics I took.

My classmates' cakes.  How talented a bunch are we!! Mine is the pink one in the front row! :)

Bow and star detail from above.  (admire the very smooth surface!)

Pink glittery star and curled wire detail

Glitter works on everything you know! Sparkly ball detail around base of cake

I had to cut it, as painful as that was.  Would have been a waste of cake otherwise!   It's a lovely rich, moist chocolate cake with a hint of Baileys.  Yum!