Cake Queen 4E - Jenny from The Little Cake Fairy Dublin

Hello! Cake Queen Jenny (Canning) here, aka The Little Cake Fairy Dublin.

When Niamh first asked if anyone would be interested in taking part in an edible art collaboration, I jumped at the chance. Having seen a similar collaboration earlier in the year by another team of 50 bakers, who re-created Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting, I knew this was something I definitely wanted to be part of :-)

We went through the process of choosing a painting to re-create (we wanted it to be Dublin-themed to fit with it being the Dublin night of Culture) and soon settled on the fantastic painting "From Croke Park to Aviva" by Simone Walsh. From there, it was just a matter of waiting to see what piece we would all be allocated!

When my piece finally arrived, I was thrilled. I had initially hoped for a piece with water on it, but when I saw the vibrant colours of my section, I was even more excited to think about what I could do with it! It sat on my mantelpiece for a long while, but I kept taking it down to look at it, and mulled over all the different ways I could re-create it. Having been very inspired by the "Starry Night" project, I knew I wanted to use a mixture of techniques, and I wanted the piece to have texture and depth.

I started by cutting a piece of white florist paste to the same size as my section, scored on the outline of all the houses etc, and gathered together lots of different colour sugarpaste.

Initially, I cut pieces of coloured sugarpaste out to match the shape of the houses, but I later took those off and switched to dusting white pieces with brightly coloured lustre dusts, as I felt that gave a deeper and more vibrant colour.

When all the house pieces were in place, I added a layer of coloured piping gel to give the houses a glazed/stained glass look. I tried to smooth the piping gel as best I could, but the palette knife was leaving ridges, and I actually really liked the way that looked, so I kept adding the piping gel in individual layers to accentuate the effect.

After that, I added the roofs, the windows and doors. I used some marbled sugarpaste for certain parts, and added some extra colours to others using lustre dusts. I then went over these with more piping gel. I also added some gold and bronze onto the roofs and side of the yellow house, directly into the piping gel, as I liked the stippled effect and the shine it gave.

Once the houses were done, I got onto the part that I was reeeaally looking forward to - making ruffles for the grass! I did this by making multiple shades of sugarpaste (as closely matched to my piece as possible), cutting long thin strips, and ruffling the edges with a cocktail stick. I then wet the surface of my florist paste topper, and began adding the ruffles in sections, looping and opening the ruffles with another cocktail stick.

I had planned to use a different technique for the ground in my section, but I liked the ruffles so much, I decided to use that for the ground too! After all the ruffles were in place, I added twists for the fence along the bottom corner of my piece, and some little balls of coloured paste to pick out the colour flecks. All that was left then was to add the gold highlights! I initially piped these using royal icing, but (most likely due to my impatience and painting them too soon!) it all cracked on me. So, I took it all off, and decided to re-do them using sugarpaste and my extruder gun, before carefully painting over them with sugarflair "Antique Gold". I was very glad I did too, as I think it actually looked far better than the royal icing (piping is not my strong point!!) and I really loved the way it turned out :-)

A chocolate biscuit cake was then made to go under it (hope those edges aren't too wonky for you Niamh! lol) and handed it over. Have seen a few sneaky peeks of other's pieces now, and I absolutely cannot wait to see it all put together on Friday!