Archive | February 2012

“Rubik’s” Cube Birthday Cake

Young teen son announced that he would rather like a Rubik’c cube cake for his birthday last month.  I took this in the spirit in which is was given – a challenge.  Work began on the morning of his birthday after shuffling him off to school.

The cake began life as a 12 inch square Madeira cake, baked for approx 55 mins at 160 degrees Celsius, then cut into four equal squares, of which only three were used for the final cake.  I wrapped the tin with newspaper to prevent the cake from browning too much on the top during cooking.

The 12 inch square cake

Three four inch square cakes, stacked to form a cubeThe cake stack was then covered in a layer of Asda Banoffee spread, and the icing begins, by covering two opposite sides with Fondant Icing.

Cake covered in spread and iced on two sides

 

Cake now covered on five faces with icing

This was followed by a strip of fondant icing laid across the remaining part of the cube.  Edges were neatened and the surface smoothed out, ready to add the colour.

Coloured squares cut from icing to form the cubes

 

 

 

 

 

Ready-coloured fondant icing was used to make the squares of colour to represent the smaller cubes of the Rubik’s cube.  I had made a conscious decision to use white as the background because of the slightly bitter taste of heavily coloured fondant.  Therefore black was used in the smaller squares to provide a sort of negative image.  The small squares with ‘glued’ to the cake with water and a soft paintbrush.

The finished cake, standing alongside the real rubik's cube, used as the model

 

 

 

This picture shows the finished cake, complete with the original cube, used to ensure than I had a good representation of the spread of colours.  I thought that it would be better to show a random pattern of colour, than the completed cube pattern.

 

The cake has the first slice cut and plated, ready for the birthday boy

Et Voila!  It didn’t last long of course – these things never do, but at least my son was happy with his cake.

Graphic Design – my best effort

At last… I can reveal what I have been working on for about six months now… my Magnum Opus.

My dear friend Sarah-Jane, is launching a brand new Dance-Fitness system in March. It’s called Fantari® and was inspired throughout her time as a professional dancer and dance teacher of more than thirty years. Sarah has the most amazing energy in her dance. I don’t mean the jumpy-jiggy sort of energy (although there is plenty of that too), but that energy which is far deeper and brings out the emotion of the language of dance. Sarah has the ability to make her audience connect with her dance, just as the dancers do.

I digress; however, for dancing is not what I have been doing… rather, I have been designing and creating the Fantari® website and publicity materials. This has been a labour of love, passion and indeed, at times, frustration. I am not a graphic designer. Nor am I an internet whiz. I have learned so much in the six months that Sarah and I have been working together on this project, I amaze myself.

We began with just the word Fantari® which was the result of a brainstorming session between Sarah and her husband. We looked at various silhouettes of dancers to use as a possible logo, but nothing we could find felt quite right. I began playing around with some software that I had downloaded free versions of – the Serif suite of applications including WebPlus, PagePlus and DrawPlus. Inspiration suddenly came by the bucketful and after designing a logo and sending it off to the Intellectual Property Office for Registration, we began working on a poster. The resulting image was re-worked many times until it was refined enough for Sarah’s, and Fantari’s needs. Those posters are now being put up all over the Tendring area.

From the poster, and again using the Serif software (although now upgraded to the latest X5 versions thereof), I took the elements such as the background and general colour scheme, the silhouette and strap-line, to form the basis of the website. I added elements such as a Photo Gallery and Videos hosted at YouTube, GoogleMaps to show the location of each of the venues, and a contact form. The site and Fantari® classes are now also registered with other web resources such as ‘Netmums’ and danceweb.co.uk. The results can be seen at www.fantari.com

Sarah launches Fantari® on March 12th at the Clacton Coastal Academy on Pathfields Road, Clacton on Sea at 7pm. I know that anyone heading to that class will have a fabulous evening, so if you are in the area, please do go along and see what’s happening. If you are not in the area, take a peep at the website and keep tabs on how things progress.

I’m taking a break from graphic design for a few weeks now, to prepare for No.1 Daughter’s wedding. I have a wedding dress and a three tier cake to create!