Some ideas for making cakes

Some of my friends are real artisans when it comes to miniature baking, especially Carolyn and Natasha. I don't have the ability or inclination or the skills with polymer clay that they do but occasionally it's nice to be able to quickly make a little cake to put in a scene. So here are some ideas that you might like to try.

From cork:

All you need is a cork, a blade, some spackle and (optional beads, glass stain, bunka for decoration)

I use a scraper blade (available at Dollarama and Canadian Tire).

Use a straight blade to slice a piece of cork about 5/8" thick. You can cut a 'slice' from it if you like.

The first cake was iced with spackle then topped with very tiny beads mixed with red glass stain. The 'cake edges' of the second cake were painted with brown paint and the rest iced with spackle.

TIP: If you push a push pin into the bottom of the cake. It makes a good handle while you're icing and decorating the cake.

Here I've taken the cherry topped cake and put it on a pop bottle cap liner and push pin that had been painted with red glass stain. The pin from the push pin goes through the liner and into the cake to hold it all together.

Other options:

Plastic pop bottle caps can also be iced with spackle for a quick cake.

You can mix a bit of acrylic paint in with the spackle for coloured icing.

Fine-grained crafting Styrofoam can be cut into rectangles for slab cakes or circles for round cakes.

¼” balsa or basswood can be cut to size for slab cakes.

Wood dowelling of various sizes can be used for round cakes also – just cut slices for the dowel to the thickness you want.

This cake was made with three slices of dowelling in three sizes. The larger two formed the bottom two layers and the smaller one for the top layer. They were all iced with a smooth layer of spackle. The trim on the layers is strips of white bunka laid into the spackle. I think for the top trim on the bottom layer I unravelled the bunka before putting it in place. Pieces of round toothpick were used to separate the top and bottom layers. When everything was completely dry and in place, I painted the entire cake with white acrylic paint.