Louis Vuitton Handbag (June 2, 2009)

As you can probably guess this was not a cake for one of our kids, although my daughter did love it, and I can see us having to make a replica one day. This cake was a surprise for one of my wife's favourite cousin' 30th birthday party, and I can honestly say that it was a complete pleasure to make from concept to delivery - to be fair, no-one puts this much effort into a cake unless it is a very special occasion or it's for someone they like (both in this case).

As with all of the previous cakes, this is a vanilla sponge mix, with buttercream filling, but was, without a doubt, the most intricate that we had ever done, or have done since. With previous cakes, an element of artistic license was allowed, and blemishes could be covered by adding or removing elements - this one was completely unforgiving. The Louis Vuitton brand is so strong, and the design so well-known that any mistakes would have been very apparent to almost anyone with an eye for a handbag (at least 50% of the population by my estimate). Planning was everything with this one, and it meant that my usual "make it up as we go along" approach was never going to work - my wife's more meticulous approach was key to a good execution (it also helped that she is, quite firmly, in the 50% and knew what this needed to look like before we started).

So how did we go about building this?

• The cakes: Two cakes were cooked, using our standard sponge mix (found here), cooked in a 12 inch square tin. These were then cut in half and three of the pieces were stacked, using buttercream filing to hold it all together;
• The shape: The cakes were carved using a long bread knife. There was no template used - it was all done by eye;
• The decoration: This was all built in layers, which was why the planning was so important. We needed to know the order in which the layers went on, and at what point to add the additional details (like the padlock and the zip teeth).

OK, so saying that the decoration "was all built in layers" sounds easy, and to be honest it is a bit of an understatement. There were at least 10 different components to take into account, all of which were created before we started to build the cake:

• The burgundy icing for the bottom and side sections: This was coloured by hand to ensure that we got the right shade, and although you cannot see it in the picture, a texture was added to make it look like the material that is actually used for the handbag. This was done by rolling the icing into flat sheets and then placing a piece of kitchen roll on the top and rolling lightly over it to add the texture - never be scared to use anything and everything that is around you;
• The handles: These were formed using pieces of the same burgundy icing as the side and bottom sections, but were free from any texture. The icing was wrapped around kitchen paper to form the shapes, and then left to harden and dry overnight. The use of the kitchen roll added the shape tot he handles, without adding a lot of weight (which additional icing would have done). The handles were attached directly to the handbag, and the additional detail (such as the rings and the panels that are normally stitched to the bag) was added later;
  
• The gold piping, the golden rings between the handbag and the handles, the zip and the padlock: These were all formed with brown icing which was then shaped and sprayed with a gold food spray; The logo in the padlock (not that you can see it from the picture) was formed using a cocktail stick;
  
• The cherries: These were hand-cut from rolled sheets of coloured icing (no great surprise there); which leaves us with the final, and most complex element
• The brown icing with the Louis Vuitton branding: The base was easy - a sheet of rolled, hand coloured, brown icing. The real time was taken in adding the branding to the sheet. This was done using four hand-cut cardboard stencils, which were then used as masks to add the logos. We had initially tried spraying the logos, but discovered that the flow was too strong and that too much liquid was deposited, meaning that the shapes lost definition and smudged when the stencils were lifted. The solution came by accident (as is often the case) and we ended up spraying a piece of kitchen roll and then using this to dab the paint onto the icing, through the stencil (almost like stippling a stencil design onto a wall). Each logo was done individually, and the entire process took several hours to complete.

As an exercise in cake making, this was very testing, and pushed us to our limits. It's still the best cake we made, and remains only one of three created for an adult audience (rather than our usual child-based audience).

Did we have fun doing it? Yes
Did people like it? Yes
Would we do it again? Hmmm, not sure - ask me nicely and we will see...

Time taken to make this cake: 14 hours

One final note: If you are ever going to attempt something like this, with the intention of leaving it alone for any length of time, leave a big sign next to it that reads "this is a cake" - this one nearly didn't make it to the party when one of the caterers tried to pick it up by the handle having mistaken it for a handbag, rather than a very good replica.