Sharon Egen - Kiwi Cake Decorator

Todays Kiwi Cake Decorator spotlight is on Sharon Egen from Auckland. (Kiwi Cake Decorators is a bi-monthly 10 question interview with a Kiwi Cake Decorator, if you'd like to feature here, please email me sandra@kiwicakes.co.nz)

What is your business called? Sweet Tooth Cake Design, my Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweet-Tooth-Cake-Design/186315211004

How long have you been decorating? For as long as I can remember, I used to help Mum decorate Birthday/Christmas cakes and from around 12 years old used to make birthday cakes for my friends little sister. I’ve been decorating for family/friends for around 15 years and for other clients for around 7 years.

What is your favourite thing to bake & decorate – why? I love working with fondant and sculpting 3D kid’s cakes, the looks on their faces when they see their favourite character as a lifelike cake is a huge reward. I also love creating wedding cakes.

What got you started in baking/decorating? My sweet tooth predominantly and an interest inherited from my Mum.

What are your top 5 decorating tools you cannot live without? My Kitchenaid mixer, wooden cake smoothers, wooden rolling pin, knitting needle (perfect for testing cakes and handy for other little icing jobs) and my icing tips.

What do you do when you’re not decorating? Act as a taxi service for my children and spend time with family, I am a bit addicted to Zumba and online shopping too.

What are some of your favourite creations? Storm Trooper Helmet – This cake was made for my sons 6th birthday who was Star Wars mad at the time. His face was priceless when he saw it.

Cowboy cake – Made for a special wee man turning 1, the cake was a perfect fit for his cowboy themed birthday complete with hay bales, cowboy hats and horse rides. Woody and bullseye were made out of fondant and I loved how they turned out.

Mickey Mouse cake – I love this one as it was a bit of a challenge to capture the look of Mickey Mouse.

Baby cupcakes – I had always wanted to give these baby cupcakes a go, luckily I was given ‘free reign’ for a baby shower so created these.

What is you favourite Cake, cookie, or cupcake flavour? I’m a simple girl at heart and I love vanilla cupcakes, with lashings of whipped lemon buttercream.

If you could have someone make a cake for you, what would it be like? I’d love to have a topsy turvy cake made using one of those complex cake construction systems so that I could deconstruct it to get ideas and keep the tools!

I’ve come to realise that as a cake decorator I usually miss out on birthday cakes as people think I need perfection, however for my last birthday my children (helped by Nana) made me a butterfly cake iced in buttercream – I LOVED IT!!!

You currently have a beautiful cake as your facebook profile picture, tell us a little bit about this cake? This cake was created for my best friends wedding. It was very much a work of love. There were four flavours in the three tiers - Chocolate mudcake, Fruit, Banana and Lemon/Coconut and Gin. The cake was iced in white chocolate ganache and covered in fondant and then stacked. The sugar pearls were individually applied and took just over 8 hours for that job alone. The flower was a silk one that I hand coloured to the correct colour.