Amazing cakes sweet success for mum Jade
A WELSH mum has wowed people with her stunningly lifelike cakes.
Mum-of-two Jade Phillips, from Bridgend, has made a series of Halloweenthemed creations that have left her friends and family amazed – and eager to try a slice.
What makes her baking achievements even more impressive, however, is that she only started making these cakes five weeks ago – a fact which is hard to believe given the professionalism of the finished products.
A keen home baker, Jade, 30, had previously avoided using fondant icing on her cakes, but was motivated to try it after watching Channel 4 series Extreme Cake Makers on Netflix.
“I make a lot of drip cakes with buttercream, but I was never ever a fan of fondant,” she explained. “I wouldn’t go near it. But having a six-month-old daughter meant I’ve been up quite a lot in the night, and I think I’ve now watched every single episode of that show five times over.
“I love baking, it’s a bit of an escape from looking after my kids really. In the evenings I can just sit at my dining room table and work on my creations, it’s great. But seeing what they did on that show was what inspired me to give it a go, so I picked it up from there and it’s been wild ever since.”
So far, Jade’s amazing cake designs have included a Halloween cauldron, a Harry Potter “sorting hat”, a pumpkin and an incredibly realistic dinosaur. Not only have these designs wowed her friends and family on Facebook, they have also been a big hit with her two-year-old daughter.
“When she comes into the kitchen in the morning, you see her light up when she sees this magnificent cake on the table,” said Jade. “She loves it. When I made the dinosaur cake, I went to cut it and she started crying because she loved it so much.”
Despite her daughter’s attachment to the cakes, however, Jade insists her family can’t eat them all and is looking to donate some to various charities.
“These cakes can feed almost 50 people,” she said. “So I can’t keep giving my family cake all the time – we’d be eating it for breakfast, lunch and tea.
“I didn’t want to start selling them either as I thought making it a business would take all of the love out of it. So I came up with the idea of giving them to charity.”
Jade’s next project is a cake featuring Groot from the film Guardians of the Galaxy, which will be donated to homelessness charity Llamau – but she is keen to find many more charities to donate her future bakes to.
“I’m hoping to help bigger charities and do big fundraisers so we can raise even more money,” she said. “I’m hoping to do two cakes a month and they will get bigger and better and more extravagant. Hopefully we’ll be able to raise a lot of money for these charities and I’ll be getting lots of fun out of it too. It’s a win-win for everyone.”