Jubilee baking competition with 'Homemade by Fleur'

I follow @cakeboule on Twitter who posted last week that she was going to enter the Homemade by Fleur, Blogging Jubilee Baking Competition.

Homemade by Fleur Jubilee Baking Competition

As we have three parties to go to this weekend, there were always going to be jubilee cakes to be designed and created, but I wanted to give the competition a bit more thought. There's £100 amazon vouchers up for grabs thanks to the competition sponsor Appliances Online so a simple red buttercream rose just wasn't going to cut it.

So, taking inspiration from the article in the latest Marks & Spencer magazine, which looks at Her Majesty's fashion through the decades, I thought I would celebrate events from the past six decades. I think that the jubilee should be about The Queen's entire reign, not just one weekend, so I got my thinking cap on.

I started with 1952 and the coronation, pretty obviously - although when I looked into the coronation a little bit closer, I discovered that it actually took place in 1953 so I can't really understand why we're celebrating this year but that's by the by. I used red buttercream, piped with my brand new rose tip, finished off with red sprinkles and a gold crown crafted using my new crown mould and gold lustre dust.

Jubilee Cupcake - The Coronation

Originally my 1960s cake was going to be all about the swinging sixties, but as there is also an international footballing competition starting next week I though the 1966 world cup would be more appropriate. I used green rolled out icing with white piping icing for the pitch and white rolled out icing for the ball.

Jubilee Cupcake - 1966 - England win the World Cup

I didn't have a clue what happened in the 1970s, having been born at the end of the decade, so Google came to the rescue declaring that decimalisation was introduced in 1971. I used the same buttercream but iced into a swirl rather than a rose and topped it with a £5 note and £1 coin.

Jubilee Cupcake - Decimalisation

Apparently, also according to Google via Wikipedia, the world wide web was invented in 1989, and that's about all that happened in the eighties. I tried to make a computer out of modelling icing and was delighted when baby puddle duck came home from nursery and said she wanted to eat the cake with the computer on - if she can tell what it is then I reckon it will be OK. I also used my new alphabet stencil to imprint the 'www'. I'm definitely going to need more practice with these.

Jubilee Cupcake - Invention of the world wide web

The 1990s were a pretty horrific decade. Google suggested some highly significant historic events, but neither the 9/11 terrorist attack nor Princess Diana's death were topics I would like to depict on a cupcake topping! So instead, I opted for the opening of the channel tunnel. Not my favourite subject for a cake but I was really struggling for a suitable theme by this point! I used blue icing as the background to depict the sea and created the Euro Tunnel logo and French flag out of modelling icing rolled out flat.

Jubilee Cupcakes - Euro Tunnel opens

The year 2000 was much more celebratory, and I wish that I'd bought a champagne glass or bottle mould when I bought the crown one as my attempts at modelling these out of icing were futile! I thought the millennium dome would scream '2000' so I plumped for that.

Jubilee Cupcakes - Millenium Dome

Finally I did some 'typical' jubilee cupcakes to represent 2012, and these are the ones I'm going to take to the party tomorrow. 

Jubilee Cupcakes

Jubilee Cupcakes - 1950 - 2012 - The Queen's reign through the decades

I hope Fleur likes the idea, even if the inspiration was more successful than the execution. I definitely need a bit more practice and lot more time to dedicate to crafting my cakes. Having my hair cut and coloured, feeding a nine week old baby three times and picking up a three year old from nursery meant these cakes actually took nine hours!