Cake-maker learns new tricks

Nothing is impossible it seems for cake creator Annette Dudley of Annette's Cake Design.

After some mentoring from international cake designer Verusca Walker, Annette has now mastered creating decorative cakes, including a motorbike and a cake mixer.

Annette was taught how to make the designs attending a course run by Make Pretty Cakes in Auckland. "The guest speaker was Verusca Walker, which was so exciting as she is a real inspiration to me." Verusca is based in Australia and travels around Australia and New Zealand teaching classes on cake making and decorating.

Annette says that each of the 3D cakes was made from scratch and took a whole day to complete.

She found the course taught her lot about structure and how to make sure the cake sits together and doesn't fall apart.

Annette found it useful to be in a course with others. "I learnt tips and tricks off the other students as well as the tutors, it's very interesting to see how many different ways you can do something to achieve the result."

It was customer requests that saw Annette sign up to learn some new designs.

"I have been asked before to create a motorbike cake and I always had to turn it down because I didn't want to do it wrong."

She is confident that she can now create either of the two designs again, "although I think I would take more time and not rush, the intricate details take some patience".

The cake mixer is a particularly useful design as Annette says that the basic model can be adjusted to create a sewing machine as well.