Pat reports on the exciting creative cake making event that Sheddington accomlished.
"There was an unexpected cake project for Sheddington that appeared just before Christmas, and needed to be completed before the New Year, so there wasn't the luxury of much time to plan and experiment with it, it was all hands on deck.
The brief was that it must be a rich fruit cake, 12 inches square, and have icing on. So that was quite a piece of work, finding a cake tin big enough, as well as time to make it at the busiest time of the year.
But then the further challenge came with the theme for the decoration. It was to commemorate 100 years of the York House Society, and must portray the famous Twickenham 'Naked Ladies' water feature in York House Gardens !
Man of many talents Mark, baked it and covered it in marzipan and icing, and I made the figures using icing.
I am an artist, and I used to sculpt with clay, but I've never used icing before so I was not at all sure that this would work out. I was also initially daunted by the subject matter. I got the idea for a bolder, more heraldic image that didn't copy the statues, but that, I hoped, symbolised them.
It did prove tricky, with the icing tending to crack, and we had some anxious moments when we were positioning the figures. Then I needed to model shapes directly onto the cake to cover the gaps between the figures.
I built up a shape reminiscent of a scallop shell, and then the 'pearl' and scroll came to mind, and I engraved the information on those. Mark finished it off by piping the decoration along the edges and attaching ribbon.
Any resemblance to Wedgwood pottery was unintentional !
The cake went down very well at the York House celebration. It looked unusual, and tasted great."
We think at Sheddington that it looks marvellous, don't you?
14:29, 22 Jan 2024
by Mark Aston