3D Chocolate Owl Cake

This 3D owl is such a cute little cake and it's perfect for a birthday or christening. It's pretty in pink for  a girl but the decorations work just as well in blue or any other colour that you might choose.

I made this cake on a course at Pretty Witty Cakes which is located in Crowborough, East Sussex. Pretty Witty Cakes offer a great range of courses with something for everyone from beginner to advanced. They also attract a number of international tutors. I was particularly keen to attend this owl course as it was a great opportunity to learn about 3D cakes as the 3D aspect really adds something extra special to a cake!

At the beginning of the day this owl started life as a stack of sqaure chocolate cakes which were ganached together and then carved into the shape of the owl. At one point the whole thing did look a bit like a transformer with bits of the carving stuck on at other points to give the shape...however, the tutor did warn us in advance and as predicted the finished carving eventually morphed into the owl...although my owl ears are a little too pointy!! :-)

Once carved the cake was covered in two thick layers of ganache before being covered in sugar paste, the covering was a little tricky as it was tough to lay it over the cake without tearing it on the ears. With the hard work done it was down to the decorating using a template for the wings and some cutters for the eyes, flowers and hearts. You may also just be able to make out the stitching outline on the wings above which was made with a stitching wheel.

The course tutor was Michelle Rea of Inspired by Michelle Cakes. Michelle is from Australia which is where she runs her business, but her classes are in demand internationally so she's currently in the UK for a few weeks, teaching a number of classes including this 3D owl cake. As the techniques for creating the owl were learnt on a course I can't go into too much detail about how to make the cake...but if you'd like to learn I'd definitely recommend attending a course with Michelle or at Pretty Witty Cakes.

How about Painting on your Cakes...

Fed up of fiddling with flowerpaste or wrestling with piping bags? The solution...painting your designs directly onto your iced cake!

I recently attended my first class at Pretty Witty Cakes in East Sussex, it was a cake painting class taught by Natasha Collins. You may well have visited her blog Amelie's House and seen her amazing work. She's very talented and paints the most amazing cakes. She also runs Nevie-Pie Cakes where you can buy one of her works of art.

It was a really interesting day as I haven't really painted on cakes much, although I did give it a go a few weeks ago with my Russian Doll Cakes. However, the Russian dolls were more a case of filling in blocks of colour and didn't really require much artistic talent.

On the day of the class Natasha took us through step by step, showing us how to create our flowery cakes. We mainly concentrated on painting dog roses and daisies. To make up the 'paint' is quite simple, it's just boiled water and paste colouring, we used sugarflair colours which are really the best available. Previously when I've mixed up colours I've used alcohol dipping solution which also works well.

The secret to creating effective designs is to add depth by using lighter and darker shades. The good news is, you can also erase mistakes by adding water to the area with your brush.

We started the day by painting some cupcake toppers, which were little circles of paste dried overnight leaving them ready to paint on the next day. These were for practise before we moved onto our big dummy cake. The first thing was to mark out the rough area where our flowers would go in order to make sure they were properly spaced.

To start with painting can be a little frustrating and we were all rather critical of our work but when you step back and look at the finished article as a whole it really does look effective. I didn't quite master the depth of colour but it wasn't a bad start.

Natasha uses a variety of sources for her inspiration, however one of which was a book called The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady which you can on amazon for £2.49 or you can buy it used for 1p plus postage! I may well order a copy so I can get practising my painting skills.

As I mentioned this was my first time at Pretty Witty Cakes, the classes are run by Suzi and they're hosted in her home in the 'Pretty Witty Workshop'. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming and there's even a little shop...I can never resist a few sneaky purchases! I think in the future I'd definitely consider another of the Pretty Witty courses...there are plenty to choose from.

I learnt a lot on the day and will find an opportunity in the future to use my new found skills. I would say that it obviously does help if you're artistic, which I'm not particularly, but either way you'll come away with a cake to be proud of!