Month: July 2013

Huge congratulations to my friend and colleague Kerry Vincent and to Dan Lepard  on the success of Great Australian Bakeoff. 1.1 million people watched along wth me. Looking forward to seeing how the series develops and to all of the creations. Great to see baking on prime time Australian TV.

I was recently a finalist, top ten internationally, in the Dracula in Dior Wedding Cake Design Competition.

I have always wanted to make a Vampire inspired Wedding Cake.

I jumped at the opportunity to get creative and just a little bit Goth.

This wedding cake has a double barrel stacked 12 inch base cake and then supported 6 to 6 ½ inch 4 stacked top tier which has been sculpted off at an angle to accommodate a spiraling staircase, slightly hollowed out toward the centre to accommodate a black royal icing lace paneled crypt locked shut with a golden locket. The interior of the crypt being the colour luster royal purple. The baseboard represents a bed of red velvet rose petals, a bed Dracula has prepared for his future bride.

The unsuspecting bride alighting the stairs feels the presence of something evil, hence looking back over her shoulder to  the dark side and the shadow spirit of the vampire sensing her presence in his abode and eerily creeping up behind her using the silhouette technique to give a sense of a shadow spirit. As you wind up the stairs the very next tier cake is covered by one third in red velvet ombre ruffled roses tightly packed and referencing blood, the crypt surrounded by gothic architecture and a gargoyle keeping watch from  vaulted pillars in grey marble with bats flying out of the belfry an approximately one half of this cake swathed in a draped red velvet curtain excluding the sunlight which Dracula hides  his face from in his castle dark and sultry, a creature of the night and darkness.

Atop of this cake as the staircase winds its way up even further you see staircase balustrades piped in black royal icing, lacy and fine and becoming more wild and deathly as they encircle upwards, a black pastillage scroll becomes the pinnacle holding alight a black chandelier, it is here where you see The Count Dracula carrying his bride upwards to his crypt. I am hesitant to call this a match made in heaven, however they do live happily ever after in their world of darkness evermore… Dracula in Dior,

Drawing below…

This is my new website. I will be posting here regularly about all of my creative work. I hope to start to interact with people from across Australia and internationally about all of the culinary arts that I am involved in. Bon appetit! 

Shayne