The Shoe Cake

A friend at work asked me to do a birthday cake for one of the guys that she works with. He’s notorious for complaining about his feet, so she asked me to do a shoe, specifically a red Converse high top. Not done one before, so was a bit nervous. Started off with the lemon cake that I use for fondant fancy and baked a square cake, then using a paper template, carved the basic shape.

I used one of my high tops to use as a basis of the actual carving of the general shape.

It was then a case of the decorating, only slightly daunting!! I used the Renshaw sugar-paste, because I wanted a proper red. I’d made rough paper templates from one of my shoes, and then used those to cut the general shapes that I needed. Because I was only working with small pieces of sugar-paste, it was actually a lot easier than I thought it’d be. I started by putting the tongue on and made sure that there was some overhang at the top. I then went on to put each of the sides on. Because the templates were rough, I had to do a little trimming. Then came the white toe piece, which took a little while to get the shape correct. Then the strip at the back that covers the area where the two side pieces meet.

I then had to tackle the rubber area at the bottom. I used a Wilton strip cutter to do most of it, and that worked great, but the extruder that I bought to do the black strips, that was a problem as my hands weren’t strong enough to get the sugar-paste through, so I just cut those by hand with a craft knife. I did some of the detail with a sugar-paste tool.

The laces were cut with the Wilton strip cutter. I couldn’t find a texture sheet that was cheap enough for the lace fabric, so I made the markings by hand with a sugar-paste tool. I cut out the eyelets using plain circle piping nozzle and put them onto the shoe and painted them with edible silver paint. I then cut the laces into strips and copied the lace pattern on my shoe. This section was far easier than I thought it’d be and looked really quite effective!! The part that I was most worried about doing was next, the piping of the logo! I cut the circle out, and then using a paper print out, I marked what I needed to pipe. I used some Tesco writing icing as a cheap and it was a weekday so I didn’t have that much time. The colours weren’t right, but done was better than good at this stage! As the shoes tend to turn up a bit at the front, I used some black sugar-paste (again Renshaw) to add a small section at the front to give the illusion that the toe was turned up.

I was really very happy with the way it turned out, and everyone at work was really delighted. The cake was ‘unveiled’ at about 9:30, but they refused to cut into it until about 1 because no one wanted to be responsible for cutting into it. Had a few random people come up to me asking if it was me that made the cake and said how amazing it was.

Hello and welcome

Hi, I’m Hayley and I’ve been baking for a few years now, mainly for my own enjoyment, but I’ve recently been getting people asking me if I’ll do a cake for their birthday or event.  As I’ve become more advanced with baking and decorating, I’ve found myself looking at other people’s blogs for hints and tips on certain techniques, and found them incredibly helpful.  So I thought I’d start my own blog and see if it can help or inspire someone else.  Also thought it’d be nice to have a collection of everything I do, just so I can see if/when I improve.

Because baking was a bit high pressure in the sense that it has to be done in a certain timeframe before things go off and once you've started, you can't just leave it, I started looking for a hobby that I could do in the evenings, and that I could start, and then leave for a few days if I was feeling poorly (explained below).  My dad's side of the family were apparently tailors and dressmakers, so I thought I'd see if I had an inherited talent for it, booked myself on a starter course and really took to it. So I got myself a sewing machine, set up my spare room as a sewing room, and I've been trying new things when I can.

A bit about me, I have a genetic condition called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which basically means that my body doesn’t produce collagen correctly, and as a result, my joints are very flexible and dislocate (along with other issues that I won’t bore you with).  That’s really how I found baking.  I used to spend a lot of my time tinkering with cars, but then when I got diagnosed and fell really ill, I wasn’t able to tinker anymore and I was really bored and quite fed up.  I started fiddling around in the kitchen and discovered that I hate cooking, but then I discovered that baking really relaxes me.  I’d never thought I was any good at baking, my first attempt at a Victoria sponge when I was a kid would’ve been better suited to being a car tyre.  And for years after that I never bothered, thankfully I picked it up again in my late 20’s and here I am now.

Will try to post when I can, and hope that you will find some of this useful, and maybe even entertaining.