Last Friday I visited the ‘Cake International’ show at the Excel Centre in London. Until now the show has only been held in Birmingham so it was a first visit for me. I went with my mum, who was organised enough to book us into a couple of the demonstrations. These were really well organised and I took a lot of information and ideas out of both them. The first one that we attended was ‘Edible painting on cake’ by Kelvin Chua. Kelvin is from Malaysia and produces some mindblowingly intricate cakes with piping and painted details. As I mentioned in my robot stamp cookies post I have been wanting to try painting with food colours for a while. Two of the best tips I took from his demonstration were to use yellow as a base before painting over with the main colour and also, if you’re painting flowers, paint with the shape of the petals or leaves because they do not grow in a straight line. You can see the design he produced during the demonstration below and a picture of Kelvin answering questions. He was so helpful and encouraging – you can see some of his incredible cakes here.
Edible painting on cake with Kelvin Chua
In the afternoon we saw Cassie Brown talk through ‘Airbrushing for Beginners’. I didn’t get any pictures of this but Cassie was a brilliant demonstrator who showed us a lot of great techniques. As a result of this my mum ended up taking an airbrush home with her, so I’m hoping she might let me try it too.
I was so impressed by all of the work that had gone into the competition cakes and there were so many creative ideas. Here are some LOTS of photos of my favourites….
Gremlins cake - in the two tier wedding cake category
Never feed it after midnight!
Give us a kiss
I could never eat this amazing elephant cake
Marty the zebra
Crouching tiger hidden dragon cake
Toowit toowoo - amazing attention to detail
I love the colours of this iguana cake
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me
Did you know Oscar was orange in the first series?
So much detail in this incredible caste cake
A very tall Super Mario cake
A very very tall warrior cake
Black Swan cake
There were also lots of stands selling all of the cake decorating products you could possibly desire. The accessory du jour was a pull along trolley into order to transport all of your purchases. My only disappointment was that there were no stands selling cake you could actually eat. I think if anyone does this next year they will have hoards of cake deprived women (me included) throwing themselves at the cake. Or am I just greedy? Other than this the show totally exceeded my expectations and I’m definitely planning to go back again next year.
We did finally get to eat some cake at Beas of Bloomsbury the next day – I’d definitely recommend visiting one of Bea’s cafes if you’re ever in London, it’s the best cake I’ve ever eaten.
Raspberry chocolate and sticky toffee layer cakes
13 Comments
Amazing cakes, so inspiring. Thanks for sharing! :)¨
Thank you for your lovely comment on my blog!
No problem Helena, you have a beautiful blog.
Those cakes are absolutely incredible! Can’t quite believe there’s no cake to eat at Cake International though…definitely something they need to rectify!
Glad it’s not just me then. Maybe I’ll have to take my own supply next year, just in case.
Wow! Makes you wonder how on earth they are made, certainly look too good to eat!
I know, they must take hours and hours to make.
They actually freak me out:)
I can understand that Tina.
Wow, those are A-mazing cakes. I can barely ice your basic rectangular type cake and these people are creating sculptures. I’m blown away.
They certainly are, I was so impressed by the talent and imagination that had gone into so many of the cakes.
Fabulous cakes! I went too and blogged about it although you have got closer up to some of the stuff that was taped off for judging at the time I was there. Like you I’d not managed to go to the Birmingham show but I think I’d make the effort now!
They were incredible cakes weren’t they. I was surprised they removed the tape as there was still 2 days left of the show. If I’d made one of those cakes I’d be pretty nervous about it getting damaged. In fact, there was a hot air balloon one where the balloon had fallen over, I hope it happened after the judging. I think I’d go to the Birmingham one now as well.
Joe loves this post. He keeps pointing out Cookie Monster, etc. And I don’t think he realizes these are CAKES. If he only knew …