Neen Has Left The Building

Well. Can you believe it? 6 months have passed since the 1st day I walked through the doors at Planet Cake to embark on the ride of a lifetime and what a journey it has been.


I have had my fair share of victories and, if I can be honest here, one or two dummy spits as well! I have seen many highs and the occasional low. I have met an enormous array of wonderful people, been involved in the odd celebrity cake and been a part of the upcoming TV series, Planet Cake, that is due to air on Foxtel’s Lifestyle Channel in November.

I can’t even begin to explain all of the new skills that I have learned in my time here and, although at times I yearned so desperately to be back at home with my family, I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.

With everything packed into my arsenal from cake design, business management, production management, facilitating, being a PC student and gaining every decorating tip in the world, I feel well and truly equipped to take on the world of cake decorating on my own ( knowing full well that I will always have the support of my amazing PC family a mere phone call away) and I am both nervous and excited about the entire prospect but intend to hit the ground running with all guns blazing.

Although I can’t wait to be back at home with my amazing family where I belong, it is with a heavy heart that I leave all of the amazing friends and colleagues that I have gained here in Sydney . They have all made my entire internship an absolute pleasure and have parted with not only their amazing skills but their kindness, generosity, empathy and support day in and day out.

If I could, I would like to thank some people here individually as a sign of my appreciation for them.



Antony,

Thank you with all of my heart for making me laugh week after week. Both your social and design skills will be with me forever. If I can become even half as good as you are at your job, I know that I will have the world in my hands. It was an absolute joy to have been part of your life over the past 6 months and I look forward to a continued friendship with you.



Cat,

The fact that you have been able to be such a wonderful support to me over the course of my time here as well as manage all of the work that keeps you here until crazy hours week after week says it all.

I will miss your cheery smile, bon bon’s and big pears. I know it will take a lifetime to do but someday I will find a sidekick as good as you. That is the day that I know my life will become easier than ever. You are truly amazing!



Ritzy,

What can I say Ritz? You have to be one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. Thank you for showing me so many your tricks of the trade. Your work never ceases to amaze me. Every time I hear “Do you know who I am?” I promise that I will think of you!



Neoko,

Sweet little Neoko. There was never a time when you were to busy for me. If I needed help, no matter what you were doing, you would drop everything without even a sigh to lend a hand. You have always shared all of your skills openly and I have enjoyed working with you very much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.



Jessica,

Always there to give me a hug, a smile and those ever awesome shoulder massages. When I needed an ear or a shoulder, I knew I could count on you to be there. Thank you “YES JESS” I will miss you.



Anna – Maria,

Well the clock has ticked over lovely lady and it is with a heavy heart that I bid you adieu my inspirational mentor. I will never be able to repay you for the things that you have taught me so well over the past 6 months. I could not have asked for a more skilful and competent teacher and I feel truly honored that I was able to partake in the opportunity of a lifetime learning under your amazing leadership. I will never forget my time with you and will always have you to thank for a huge part of my career. I hope that I will make you proud to say that you taught me almost everything I know. I can’t thank you enough Anna – Maria. Thank you, thank you, thank you!



Emma,

Sometimes I wonder how I would have managed to get through this without you here. You have always been my go to girl for whatever reason I needed you. Your capabilities amaze me and the way that you go through your days with a smile, no matter what happens, always makes me smile too. I will miss you VERY much.



Michelle,

My sister in arms. I am so blessed to have had an ‘equal’ as amazing as you to share the ride with. You always managed to help me see the positive side when things weren’t so rosy and always managed to give me a good laugh. I look forward to reading your future blogs on the remainder of your time here and look forward to catching up when you return to the motherland!



Lesley,

I could quite easily write an entire novel on how grateful I am to have had you as my eternal support here in Sydney. Words could never explain how much you mean to me and the amount of appreciation that I have for you. You took me under your wing and cared for me through thick and through thin until the very end. If nothing else had ever come from this experience, it would all have been worth it to walk away from here knowing that you will be my friend for life. You are truly one of the most kind, generous and loving people I have ever met. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being the greatest gift that Sydney could have given me.



Paris,

I promise you that I will strive each and every day to make you proud by putting all that you have taught me into practice when I return home. This was truly the opportunity of a lifetime and I have you and your amazing team to thank for not only being the decorator that I am today but for being a much more confident woman than I was 6 months ago when I walked through the Planet Cake door for the very first time.

Should I end up being half the business woman that you are, I will be more than happy with myself. You are someone that I am proud to call my role model and honored to have as my biggest support. Thank you for giving me my regular swift kicks up the backside and putting me back into line when it was necessary. Most of all, I would like to thank you for making me believe in myself. I will be forever grateful for the solid foundation that Planet Cake has forged for my career.





There are many others that have come and gone along the way that all made a huge impact on my life and I will carry their words of wisdom and kindness with me in my suitcase as I head back home to begin my next chapter.

Thank you all for following my journey here as an intern at Planet Cake. Sharing my stories has been a pleasure.



Finally, I couldn’t leave here without doing a huge cake so, when given the opportunity to design with the amazing Antony Bullimore and create a 7 tiered show stopper, I couldn’t say no. So I leave you all now with a photograph of my final piece made at Planet Cake as an intern.

 
Thank you all again! What a ride it has been.
 
This is Neen signing out for the final time.
 
xoxo

We Conquered Basics 108!

Our excitement rose inside us again as we pondered what lay ahead in our very next Planet Cake class. Basics 108 – The 3 tier, inverted, tapered squares. In this advanced class we were again able to design our own creation and as thoughts flew regarding art deco, animal prints and stripes… we were brought back down to basics to first shape and cover our cakes.

For this shape cake uniformity is particularly important. And by uniformity we are referring the tapered angle of the sides of the cake. If all four sides of all three teirs were not carved on the same angle … well then… the cake would look... odd. We were lucky again to have Anna Maria as our faithful lead as she gave us insight in how to achieve this perfect look. Not only were we given great pointers to help us shape the cake, we were also given a great, no stress way to cover the cake. This method gave all of those in the class a wonderful clean and seamless finish without us even needing to hold our breath!

Even though the excitement of learning and creating cake at Planet Cake is extremely AWESOME we just have to make a quick mention of one of our other favorite things about attending a Planet Cake class… the absolutely DELICIOUS lunches! I know it might be just a small detail of the day but WOW – they are just the yummiest food ever! Sorry about that… Just had to be said…
After a couple days of Cutting, shaping, ganaching and then some more cutting, shaping, ganaching…we moved onto covering and starting our individual designs. It’s actually really amazing to be in a class full of such talented decorators with literally TONS of great ideas that seem to bounce around the room and help guide people with there cake creations. Thanks for being such a great class guys! Anyway – back to the cake,

The other thing we would argue as the MOST important aspect of this cake is structure. Due to its inverted shape it is very top-heavy and insuring the dowels are inserter correctly is EXRTEMELY important. It's those little details that can be the difference between a beautiful tall cake and one that is that bit lopsided.

We would have to say that this class was one of the fun-est we have had the pleasure of being involved in. We got to spread our wings a little with our creations and were encouraged to bring out the designer within.

Thanks again to our Teacher Anna Maria and Facilitator Kylie Dumas for a great few days!







How to make an icing crown:


Hi all, it’s Shell here. During my few days doing basics 108 I made an icing crown to top my British inspired cake. I had a lot of people asking me about it, so here are a few steps to help you make one for yourself.

I started with a 5” polystyrene round and shaped it into a "chef's hat" shape. I wanted a slight angle on the side of my crown so a taped and glued a 4" board to the base of the round to act as a guide while I shaped it. Whilst rounding out the top of the polystyrene I also added in some deep indentations. I purposefully made these indentations quite pronounced as it will no doubt loose some depth when the icing is placed over it. I used polystyrene for my crown as I wanted to keep it, however, this could easily be replaced by a shaped cake.

I removed the base board once the crown was shaped and I created a hole through the centre of the crown with a skewer. I then painted the entire thing with piping gel to act at the gluing agent for my icing.

I then covered and smoothed the fondant onto the crown and added some slight red airbrushing into the creases.

Next I moved onto the side details. For this I cut out strips of acetate in my desired thickness and length. I made and stuck on some wire "prongs" for the base of each strip which I would later skewer into the side of polystyrene. I also found the position for a hole in the tops of the acetate that I would use later to secure the strips to a centre skewer in the top of the crown..

I covered my strips with white fondant (after brushing with piping gel to allow it to stick), and added some hand cut cross details to each one.

I then covered a round polystyrene ball with white fondant and hot glued it to a skewer in a perfect position for the top of my crown.

I then attached the strips and attached a horizontal stripe (again made with acetate and icing) around the base of the crown. I also hand cut some addition shapes as details for around the crown. I allowed everything to dry over night and tied a bit of ribbon around to help support the base strip.

With the basic shape complete I added some further details to the round ball and then I was onto the really fun part - bling! I tried to keep the design quite uniform but stay within my red and white theme. I added some silver cachous  to the sides and then some colored stones.

I also made a large cross to top my crown and added a rolled sausage to the very base edge to finish it off.

Ta - Da!

One crown fit for a Queen... or King

Can you believe that I only have 6 and a half weeks left here at PC?

As the time to leave looms closer, I am getting little pangs of sadness along with big pangs of desperation to fit in as much as I can in this short amount of time.

I have been planning to get myself organized for setting up shop at home but time has somehow escaped me so now I have to speed into 5th gear and get a move on! Where did that time go?

The past week at Planet Cake has been full of new tasks for me to tackle.

This week I had the opportunity to assign duties to others in the kitchen and had a taste of what it feels like to be the boss. I also had the chance to liaise with a client who, at late notice, wanted to incorporate a theme into an already established and half executed cake design. I loved the challenge of this one. I had to transform a girlie present box cake, with a bow and exploding stars, into a cake that was still pink and girlie but gave off a nautical theme. This was the end result and I hope the client loved it.

Along with this cake I had yet another gorgeous Tiffany box,

 a pretty floral cake ( thanks to my partner in crime, Shell, for making the gorgeous roses on this one! She is becoming quite the flower pro!) for a special lady

I also had another one of my fave finishes. A three tier royal icing finish wedding cake. Here is a snap of it not quite finished.

And to finish it off, a champagne bottle. Drink anyone?

All I can say is, with the assistance from both Kylie and Shell, combined with the obvious fact that my speed has increased by miles, I had these done cakes done slightly ahead of schedule which left me with a little free time on my hands.

Now, If we can think back to about April, I won the in house design competition for my wedding cake design

I had already attempted to make the prop cake version of this once but ended up a bit frustrated and unhappy with the final result.My head was not in the right place when I started it and I was also feeling less than 100%. Instead of losing my cool over the cake I did this instead...

I must admit, that felt pretty good and I sure didn't lose any sleep over it.

Now that I had some spare time on my hands and was feeling healthy and happy, I started the cake again and got it all done, without a hitch and in record time. This one sits proudly in the PC show room and not at the bottom of a dumpster!

And so ends another week at PC. I am still learning every single day and just fear that I won't have enough time to fit everything in that I want to.
I suppose that is the thing with a job like this one though. You never really stop learning and if the guys at Planet Cake think they are getting rid of me easily at the end of my internship, they have another thing coming. I intend to be back to bother them all as much as I can. Not just as a decorator though but as a friend to them all.

Neen x

Our first day of School

So what does it feel like when your off to Planet cake for your first day of class… well kind of like holding a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory. Although, we need to be clear about this - there are NO Umpa Lumpas working at Planet cake!
Walking the quaint, winding Beattie Street in Sydney’s Inner West suburb of Balmain, we pass a great looking pub, The Exchange Hotel, on the way to class. Mental note…dinner and drinks after class perhaps?
Our attention quickly shifts to the famous pink and chocolate awning that is now in plain view. The pearly gates!!! We have arrived at the mecca that is Planet Cake to begin 8 days of serious cake decorating and intend to walk out the door as the super, huge, mega cake rock stars! OK. So we are getting carried away a little but we are here to improve the skill set after all and a girl is allowed to dream!

Day one:
All systems go. We were ready and rearing to make the fabulous vase cake in Planet Cake’s Basics 107 class, and with PC’s most seasoned teacher, Anna Maria at the helm, we felt nothing but confident…until we looked at the class notes that was!
The vase starts off the same as any extended cake – trim, split, syrup, ganach and stack onto centre pole. First challenge complete.
Our second challenge was to shape the cake. From the photo’s it may be hard to tell but the vase cake is tapered, inverted and angled. Keep in mind that before this we thought the square was a difficult shape and that has only straight sides! Should this shape really be Basics 107…
A few hours into the class and the cake seem to be shaping up – quite literally… until
Da da daaaaa

One cake hit the deck! And unfortunately it was one of ours. But Paris always says if there is anytime you want a cake to fail it’s in a Plant Cake course because you will have the undivided attention of the ever experience teacher to help guide you through the cause and solution to your cake problem. For this particular cake the “issue” was the centre pole and a soft cracked base cake. Because this cake starts from smallest cake at the bottom and moving to the largest cake at the top, if you mix I unsecured centre pole with a less than idea foundation you may just end up getting a cake looking like the leaning tower of pisa… and that is exactly what we had.
But not to worry, Super Anna Maria (who, by the way, should now wear her underwear on the outside) literally yanked the cake off the base board put it to one side and started the “re-build”. In no time at all the cake was back standing straight (well, angled, but in the right places). Yay!!!
After the traumatic experience of getting the cakes ganached and looking as they should we were rewarded with a delicious lunch and of course some cake on the side for dessert. Yum.
After we had calmed down and our tummies were full we moved onto intensive flower making. Petal, after petal, after petal, after pe…. You get the idea. A few hours later and we had made it to the end of day one.

Day Two:
Challenge: Cover cake
We are still, quite literally, speechless regarding covering this cake. The difficulty in placing the icing over the obscure angles of the cake even had Anna Maria saying a small prayer before she demonstrated the technique. Please consider yourselves warned; covering this cake is a 2 - 3 person job. But cover we did, and after some petal dusting we had the opportunity to airbrush our cakes.
Airbrushing is one of those decorating tools that can really change the look of your cake, be it in subtle or more dramatic way. But it’s also a skill that needs practice to perfect otherwise its effect on your cake can be, well, less than desired. Please refer to exhibit A.

Once applied, airbrushing can be difficult to change/fix. But some subtle over spraying and a coat of shimmer spray later and the cake colour looked more toned down.

Day Three:
Time to decorate. After two days of preparation, stress and praying to god, we had reached the day of pure fun and imagination. Yay. At this level of the basics series students are given the freedom to design their cake. For us, we wanted to do something really different and because this cake shape had not been taught before, the options were endless.
Along with the fun and excitement of choosing your own design comes the pressure of fulfilling your initial vision the way that you had planned.
Although each and every design was unique, we were lucky to have the extensive skills of Anna Maria at our disposal, and, with each tip and trick that she demonstrated to not only ourselves but our class mates, we learned and were inspired by a myriad of new techniques.

So, as the day came to a close and we had all finished our cakes, it was time for the customary group photo. We all smiled proudly in front of our works of art as the flashes triggered. Ahh yes, we were rock stars!

A special thank you must be given to our amazing teacher, Anna Maria and our facilitator for the day, Kylie Dumas for an awesome 3 days.

Happy Caking,

Neen and Shell xx

A Long Overdue Update From Neen

I don’t even know where to begin with this blog as so much has happened in the time since my last blog was posted.

The end of May was possibly my most challenging since my internship began. This time, it had nothing to do with the cakes though. I was going through quite a huge burst of homesickness and was having to deal with a few personal problems happening at home. The problem was, of course, was that I am living in Sydney and my family are in Melbourne.
I was completely on edge and, quite honestly, had so much trouble focusing on my work.

Everything came to a head on the night that I was leaving Sydney to spend a full 10 days in Melbourne with my family for a mid internship break.
I had been assigned and amazing 3 tier wedding cake with an extended and quilted base tier, a technique that I had never attempted and completed successfully! Next was another extended tier covered in bling with a big black bow at the base. The top tier was another extended that was to be hand painted with a chandelier and adorned with a few small splashes of bling.
My 1st attempt on the top tier was a major fail. I covered the cake and the whole thing just looked warped and off. I stripped the cake to re ganache and realised that the cake itself was extremely soft and unstable. I added stability by placing another board between the two extended tiers of the cake and proceeded to re ganache the cake and leave it to set.

It was important to me to have this cake finished before I left work that evening to head to Melbourne so I had scheduled my time line accordingly and was on track to have it done.

I finally covered the top tier and prepared to hand paint the chandelier on. I was a little nervous about this as I would usually leave the cake overnight prior to painting but it had to be done after only a couple of hours drying.

With a steady hand and a great deal of patience, I finished the painting and was so proud of my efforts. The last things to do were to place the top tier on the cake and cover the board.

With about a half an hour until I was due to leave work, I placed the top tier onto the cake. With this, the entire cake cracked right down the center and there was no salvaging it. I literally burst into tears. There was absolutely nothing I could do about it and I HAD to get to the airport.

All I can say is thank God for Neoko and her calmness and generous spirit. She took my order, got a new cake out and ganached it with lightning speed as per usual. She told me to go home to my family, relax and just have a lovely time.




It was a bittersweet moment. I so desperately wanted to see the cake through from beginning to end as I had worked so hard on it however, I just felt so lucky to have the support of my team to make things right. I took the now sad and sorry looking top tier and hurled it into the rubbish bin which seemed to alleviate my tension somewhat!



The 10 days back at home with my family was exactly what I needed and not only gave me time with my amazing children and husband but also gave me the chance to start getting my business into order with a new name, logo and web site all sorted.



Just as I was almost ready to head back to Sydney and get back into work, some volcano had to go and erupt and leave a ginormous and potentially deadly ash cloud over Melbourne which ended up delaying my return to Planet Cake by 4 days. Just in time to begin Basics 107, the vase cake, with Anna Maria.



I am completely refreshed and calm after my break and feel ready to tackle the remaining 2 and a half months with gusto!



So, that is about where I am up to at this point. I have decided to delay writing the details about my 107 class as I am set to do 108 and 109 this week with my intern sister Michelle. Our next blog will be a joint one about our experience of being the student rather than the intern.



I cant wait to share it all with you.



Happy caking



Neen x


P.S. They haven't all been so disasterous! Some of the other cakes I have done recently...

Another update from Shell

I am about to embark on 3 weeks of SERIOUS CAKE CLASS MADNESS! Starting at Basics 107 and working through to Masters, but before I get there let me give you a run down of what I've been up to more recently.

Now - I need to be honest here... I'm a tried and true Melbourne girl, so when I was asked to make a rugby ball cake... well... I just didn't quite get the point. Why didn't the birthday boy want an AFL footy? And who exactly are the Crusaders? Regardless of all that, a Rugby ball seemed like such a straight forward design but I have to admit that it did take me quite some time to get it looking uniform. I also actually fretted a little with the prospect of covering the shape but due to the seam running down the centre of the ball it was easy enough to just pinch and cut away the excess icing at the join point. And although the point of the cake was lost on me I think it turned out pretty great.

So... it seems as though the classic "shooting stars" is exceptionally popular. In fact - I had two on the cards to make in a couple days! Kylie pretty much set up the girly one and I just gave her a hand to put on the finishing touches. The boy one was all me, and I think I could get it done with my eyes closed this time! They are such a great design and I would highly recommend those newbie cake decorators to give it a go... or of course you could sign up for the ever popular and AWESOME Planet Cake Basics 101 course and we could show you the tricks of the trade first hand... if you are SUPER keen and from the beautiful Melbourne you may even have an opportunity to get it taught to you by me one day! That is if you’re really lucky... (I'll keep you posted).

Back onto novelty cakes and I did a couple last week that made it to my favorites list. Firstly a cute lady bird cake and secondly a Penfolds red wine bottle. Although they were both 3D novelty cakes they were both set up slightly differently. Both cakes were torted and ganached as per normal. For the Lady bird I created a template out of cardboard for the cake to be built on. Once shaped I then covered it and then transferred it onto my covered base board. For the wine bottle, I actually set it up, shaped and covered it straight onto the base board. The reasons for this is the cake design, particularly the fragile neck of the bottle. If I had set it up and covered it on a template and tried to transfer it over to the base board, it would have been very difficult for me to do so without ruining the smooth finish.

Don't you think the bottle looks really life like? Well, to get that effect it was actually covered in a deep red icing colour and airbrushed with green and brown. Ritzy gave me a great demo of airbrushing and one of the key things to this shape is making sure you airbrush more heavily around the base of the cake and areas in the bottle where the "glass" is "bended" i.e. where the body of the bottle moves into the neck and the very bottom of the bottle. It is actually a little difficult to see in the picture, but in real life you can see the red icing showing through the air bushing a little. How very clever! Although I do wonder how many of you out there would be happier with a giant size bottle of wine in place of this chocolate mud cake one?

Last but not least, I had the pleasure of working on a cute pink christening cake. The design speaks for itself (and I have to admit it was awesome to work on a basic round for a change) but it did give me an opportunity to work on a figurine bear (my first at PC). I know it probably doesn't quite look like it is supposed to but it made me smile, so what more could you want? And before you start thinking of adding those cute cubes with the letters on them to your next cake design let me just give you a word of warning... they will literally suck the time out of your day and look super small for all your efforts. But by all means give it a go if you can spare the time and I'll admit it is a cute way to add in the special cake recipients initials.

So that's it for me in the production kitchen for a couple weeks. I'll keep you up to date with my progress through the courses...

Happy Caking,

Shell xx

Shell's weekly tip: GLOSS GLOSS GLOSS

When applying a glossy finish to your cakes I would recommend using a large, flat sided, soft bristle brush. At Planet Cake we use crystalline and apply the gloss in long even strokes. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should avoid physically touching the glossed surface onceit is applied as you will end up with finger print marks - not a good look! So keep this in mind and try to make glossing your cake one of you very last steps. And one more thing - If you plan on airbrushing your cake try glossing first and then add the airbrushing colour on top. This will prevent any colour streaking and still get a great finish.

Update from Shell

Already another two weeks have passed and I'm left wondering how time flies so quickly.
On our last week of filming Neen and I were hit with the task of managing all the online orders so the other team members could be made abailable to work on some other crazy complex cakes. Lucky for us, we employed the help of Kylie to take on the role of the interns-intern. She was more than willing to help as we spent the first day of the week ganaching our hearts out.


Although I had a number of cakes to work on, My biggest challenge assigned was to create a 3D snoopy cake. Not having worked on many (or really any) 3D cartoon cakes, I knew this would test my skills. I started by meticulously measuring up my reference picture and shapping the cake. At the end of the day when I stood back and looked at the cake I knew something was wrong... The length- right, the height- right, the basic shape - right, but as a whole it was definetely not right. I went home in the hope that in the morning I would be in a better place to figure out what was going wrong.

I have to say, one thing I've noticed about making great cakes is that there comes a time in you planned schedule that you have to make a decision. Do you continue with the cake you currently have got that perhaps isn't perfect but you have already invested a few hours in and you know will still end up looking really good, or do you decide to abandon said plan and take the time to redo what has been done and blow out your time schedule and accept what you know will result in a few late evenings of decorating. For me my snoopy cake I opted for plan B and after taking the time to re-look at it with some fresh eyes and then requesting some advice from our resident Queen of all things 3D - Margie, I finally found out what was wrong was my cake. It was flat. So I ended up re-shaping it again to round out the edges of the cake. After that I was happy and could move onto the covering.
For covering this type of cake I knew I would end up with ALOT of extra icing. I could have slowly worked the folds down around the cake but I had a think about my design and thought about where I could create some folds in the icing for me to cut away and then ultimatly cover the join lines with other details. For me and snoopy, these areas were under snoopy's ears and arms. This method meant covering Snoopy was as less stressful as possible.
Throughout the whoile process of making this cake I refered back to my reference picture and measurements as often as possible to make sure all the elements on the cake were in proportion and correct. I think in the end I think he turned out great... even when looking through red tired eyes...

With the cameras and filming finally behind us, I was happy to start the week with a strange, but very much welcomed calmness in the air, and for the first time since starting at planet cakes almost 2 months ago I was only assigned two cakes to work on. Although the number was low, Paris was keen to test my attention to detail with designs that relied on very sharp and straight finishes to achieve great results.

The 3 tier wedding cake actually proved challenging due to both the difficulty in covering the extended height (particularly the top tier) and the placement of the ribbon. I must admit right here and now that I made the assumption that I could wrap the ribbon around the cake in no time at all. The reality, and trust me I'm not over exaggerating, but almost 2 hours after starting I employed the help of Neoko to help me finish the job because it was driving me coco banana's! Yep, that's right, over 2 hours! My advice- don't design a round cake with ribbon wrapping around it, leave it to the square cakes. Round cakes really don't lend themselves to having geometric lines wrapped around them, especially when you need to achieve straight lines so if doesn't end up looking like you were drunk while placing them.

My other cake assigned was the ever popular cube. Unlike the unforeseen challenges in the wedding cake I knew the square was a particularly time consuming design and in fact a design that I was most nervous about creating. To begin with I needed to prepare support for a double stacked 8" cake, and although I didn't realise it at first, I needed to set up a centre poll and also have a second cake board in the middle if the cake to ensure it would stay secure.

After ganaching and measuring every side to ensure a perfect square I have to say covering the undercoat was remarkable easy. I stated by covering the two side panels separately and then the last three panels with one long sheet of icing. By cutting off the excess at the joins you end up with quite a straight finish.

Next, I needed to create the pale blue coloured frame around the edge of the block. For this to look great I knew the lines needed to be perfectly straight. I know there are a numbers of was people do this but for me I worked on one section of the frame at a time starting with the top 4 lengths, then moving onto the four side lengths and finishing with the bottom found lengths.

This method is probably a little more time consuming, but it worked for me. I actually used this method to also cover the little blocks, which took up almost half a day to make. Like I said, this cake is deceivingly very time consuming, but my most proud accomplishment to date.

Shell's weekly tip: STOP, LOOK and LISTEN

If you know that things are just not going right and your groove is MIA, just STOP! Sometimes when you start getting frustrated you can start making things worse than they already are. Re-LOOK at what you are trying to achieve. Perhaps re measure your cake or refer to some new references. If you've re-looked at things and it still dosent seem to be quite there, then use your life line and phone a friend. If you don't have someone close by then jump on the planet cake tea party forum and get some advice and LISTEN to what other people have experienced in the past, their advice is priceless!

http://www.planetcaketeaparty.com.au/

By the way - To find out more about the other MEGA cakes that were made by the rest of the team in the last few weeks you will unfortunatly need to wait for the TV series to come out later in the year. Trust me, the wait is definitely worth it!

Happy caking,

Shell xx