From curled up cats to wallowing elephants, there’s nothing this Lake District baker can’t transform into cake.
Dayne Joseph Ramos-Woodhouse, 37, of Ambleside, is a hyper-realistic cake maker, who specialises in making cakes that look so real, it’s almost a shame to eat them.
Under his business Dayne Joseph Cake Art, he makes his cakes for all occasions, and has made everything from hamsters to dinosaurs to cartoon and TV show characters.
But it all started as a need for a creative outlet during the Covid-19 lockdown.
He said: “I was made furloughed from a job and I was trying to think of ways to keep busy and something I could get stuck into,
“My kids love cake and one morning I woke up and said to my oldest son, right let’s create something with cake.
“We’d spent a long time watching Extreme Cake Makers and people like The Bake King, so my inspiration has come from them really.
“Originally I was just doing round cakes, but I kept looking at them and thinking this needs to change shape at least.
“My first real sculpting commission was a Tigger cake, which was the lightbulb moment which really made me want to try new ideas and themes.
“But I just love it, I think about it all the time, it doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, if I see something in the street, I think that might look good as cake.”
Dayne originally trained as pastry chef and after being furloughed in the pandemic, now runs his cake business part time, while also working as a window cleaner.
He added that over the years, he has learnt new skills and tricks to add to the realism of with every cake he has made.
Dayne said: “I’ve basically learned as I go, you’ve got to keep trying and it’s always a learning curve, I wing it on every cake I do! But you just go with the flow and let your hands do the work.
“But I usually have a plan, so I would have a reference, print that out and then draw my structure on that to look at how it will be and sit. I then also use the same piece of reference on carboard so I can fold it up and see how it will work.
“There’s so many things involved in this type of cake making, you have to be both an architect and a baker and a bit of a jack of all trades really.
“It’s still early days and it’s just a small thing for me right now, but I do want to turn it into a full time venture because I absolutely love it, I would love to be able to do it every day and every hour.
“I’m actually also a type one diabetic, I was diagnosed at 12, so I don’t actually eat that much cake myself! But I do enjoy watching other people eat it.”
Dayne said his cakes can take over a day to make and depending on size and detail level, can cost over £200, and to get his cakes so detailed, Dayne uses different kinds of modelling icing and chocolate.
He also uses different methods to paint each cake, based on what kind of overall final look he wants the cake to have.
Dayne added: “I do use modelling chocolate, more so for things that have more details, so facial features and stuff like that, but other than that I use sugar paste.
“But depending on details and size and how many cake sponges are in it, you can spend around 10 to 12 hours on each one. A lot of hours and a lot of love go into them!
“I do airbrush some but I also hand paint with edible colours and colour the modelling chocolate or fondant if needs be.”
Dayne said his favourite cake creation so far has been his curled up cat cake.
He said: “Even I was gobsmacked when I finished my cat, everyone said how real it looked and that they didn’t realise it was a cake, so that’s definitely my top one.
“My penguin one is probably my second favourite, but other than that, it’s hard to choose because I’m always happy with the end result.
“I’ve also recently done one for tattoo artist Luke Sawyer, based on a Simpsons character he drew of himself.”
Dayne has made all kinds of weird and wonderful cakes – but said there was one in particular that stands out from the crowd.
He said: “It totally caught me off guard, but somebody asked me for an alpaca, just asked for head, got to building and was almost finished and they said can you make a Tardis from Doctor Who come out of its head?
“So I did it and they were super happy with it, they’d been to walk alpacas locally, and had sent me pictures of the ones they walked and being a big doctor who fan they just wanted it incorporated.”
While Dayne said he loves the process of creating every cake he makes, he said the best part of his job is handing the final result to a client.
He added: “It’s always nerve-wracking when you deliver one, but when you see their reaction, it is really nice. I often get photos send from when it’s been unboxed and when children get to see it for the first time and their little faces light up, it’s just great.
“Someone contacted me to do a Spongebob cake a few years ago, but they told me they still talk about it to this day and that really warms my heart.”
Dayne is aiming to keep growing his business in the future and is planning to do some charity work for organisations like Cakes for Heroes, who make cakes for children living with serious illnesses.
He is also hoping to take part in decorating competition Cake International next October in Birmingham.
