Thassa, God of the Sea

All my bakery is a bit nerdy, but this one takes the cake. Although arguably it's not my fault - I don't even play Magic: The Gathering, although I do secretly quite enjoy the artwork. I just picked the prettiest card to try and replicate -- she's a cool David Bowie-looking mermaid, which I obviously like. Here's the original card:

My interpretation is a bit more pastelly, in part because the cake-odds were stacked against me. I only had purple and pink food colouring to work with, and had to improvise other colours from leftover tinted marzipan, melted dark chocolate and coffee grounds. Sigh. I do actually quite like the 3D look the cake came out with as a result though.

A mise-en-scene also starring my favourite rabbit mug and my beautiful new Tala icing syringe -- it's exactly like my Grandma's one that she bought in the 1950s, and which I started to feel guilty about using, in case I was damaging it. The only difference is that my new one comes in a nice sturdy tin instead of a battered, yellow sellotape-coated cardboard box.

  Aand there's Thassa's disembodied head, thinking up ways to wreak divine vengeance for indignities suffered. I might not know much about Magic, but apparently I scored some accidental fan-points for ensuring she had her signature two-pronged bident with which to do spells -- not the more conventional trident upstart newer versions of the card have tried to impose.

Cassette Tape Cake

This was a commission/birthday cake for Lone Omi -- a handy bit of multipurposing! After a bit of Photoshop primping it'll be the cover for his joint EP. For now, it's sitting partially dismembered in the kitchen, after a mammoth photography session.

I was extra proud of the way the window came out -- it's made of glacier mints melted down -- but it's not very camera friendly. But getting the writing done was the really hard bit, because I wanted it to look as much like Sharpie on paper as possible, not like raised icing, and had to make sure it would come across in the photos. Really specific commissions like this are so satisfying to do because it means I can skip the agonising and deliberating stage and get on with baking, icing and piping -- more please!

Christmas cake - Puss in Boots

A bit less high brow than last year's effort, here's Puss in Boots in full 18th century garb (this is the Perrault version dahling) on stage in a grand panto.  The curtains and edges are 3D, but the stage scene is just painted straight onto royal icing. I sometimes wonder whether decorating the fruit cake is actually my favourite bit of Christmas!

Aand a side view...

Three Sisters resin dioramas

Brooch #2 in the tiny plays series... I've tried to cram as much detail as I can, and even got a bit conceptual -- the golden buildings are meant to be Moscow, seen through the trees. Also included -- text accurate(ish) costumes, a tiny samovar, a birthday cake, and a very boring book (history of the local school, since you asked) in Olga's hands. On Etsy here...

Jerusalem resin dioramas

I've been trying to do tiny scenes in resin for a while -- it's been half fun, half frustrating trying to work out how to make all the tiny parts (some are only a few millimetres high) and to put them into in a coherent scene. These are inspired by my memories of seeing Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem a few years back.

I've tried out a few different designs. They've all got the caravan, but beyond that it's a mixed bag of chickens, tortoise, union jack, beer bottles, drums, litter in each one.

When they're blown up as photos, you see all kinds of imperfections you miss in real life, since they're less than two inches wide. Still, I've worked out that the reason I'm getting microscopic bubbles in the resin is because I'm working in a (very) cold room, so the next batch should have better clarity.

I'm listing them on Etsy even though they're not perfect, because it would be nice for them to have a life in the sun. Now into extensive preparations for the next ones in the series: Three Sisters and Waiting for Godot...

The witching hour

This is a bit silly, but so much fun... a haphazard chocolate cauldron on Flake logs, with sugar glass flames, green potion goo, tentacles, bones, eyeballs....

I was more than usually reliant on cornershop goodies -- part of the fun of Hallowe'en is coming up with novel ways to consume sugar -- so things are made of jam, malteasers, and chocolate fingers. The potion had to look as wet as possible so I used honey with green food colouring on top of buttercream to make a perma-sticky mess.  

Mermaid Brooches

The Poems Underwater project, already responsible for two mermaid cakes, tempted me into making some new brooches for its zine and craft fair in Deptford today. They were just pure fun to work on -- I'm planning to do some more, with slightly less classic looking mermaids/more narrative schemes. Originally, these were meant to be mermaids raiding shipwrecks, hence the nets made from thread and matchstick timber, but the skulls I bought to litter the sand with turned out to be too big, and I was on a deadline...next time.

They are the size of conventional badges, and about half an inch thick in clear resin, with embedded drawings, paint, beads, and couscous impersonating sand. Getting the shine/clarity in photos is none too easy, especially on dark evenings, but they're pretty sparkly.

Then I realised, as I went through the battered biscuit tin that houses years worth of resin experiments, that I've actually got quite a big sea creature inventory. This is a sea monster from a 13th century illumination...

Here's a mermaid cribbed from a medieval bestiary, in ring form.

This is a flying fish -- based on an 18th century naturalist's engraving, so apparently, unlike everything else here, it's real, though frankly I have my doubts.

These things can be got through my Etsy shop -- just message me if they're not listed -- or hopefully at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern Christmas Fayre in December.