It looks exactly like Joe Wick's famous chicken pie... but it's actually cake. Baker Dawn Butler has wowed a string of celebrities - and even royalty - with her incredible lifelike creations conjured up out of sponge, buttercream and ganache. Brian May, the Hoff, Prince William, the Queen, Les Dennis, Leslie Joseph, and now the Body Coach himself have been blown away by her realistic creations.
Mum-of-two Dawn, of Cotgrave, recreated Joe Wick's filo pastry topped chicken pie, along with a water bottle and scales for the launch party of his new book Feel Good Food. The book was also created in cake form for the event at a private members' club in London.
The 44-year-old, who lives in Cotgrave, said: "They left the design to me and I think they were expecting the book. I thought we could do a little bit more than that. Joe's chicken pie has been in his all his books so how could I not make this pie? I wanted to blow people's minds really."
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The water bottle was made out of biscuit, "like tiffin, but better than that", said Dawn. The scales tasted of death by chocolate and salted caramel, a cheesecake was actually red velvet cake and chocolate truffle ganache, the book was lemon drizzle and the chicken pie was vanilla sponge with Lotus biscoff ganache.
Dawn said: "When I melted the ganache down it looked just like the sauce of the pie so it worked really well. I have made food cakes before but it was the first time I have made anything like that with that sense of realism. The thought process behind it and design took several days.
"It took three full days to make. I started on the Monday - you can't start too far in advance because it's cake. The cake was going out Thursday morning. I did eight-hour day on Monday, a 14-hour day Tuesday and 18-hour day on Wednesday. He was absolutely astounded by it.
"I have never known anybody get that excited about cake and he instantly went live on Instagram to 4.1m people which was pretty impressive. It's done my Instagram page a wealth of good. He was blown away by the bottle of water on the table that was a cake that you could pour water out of, so we actually poured him a glass of water out of it into a sugar glass."
Joe, the nation's favourite fitness coach, described the edible objects as incredible. He told Nottinghamshire Live: "Dawn's cake was the most delicious and fantastic thing I’ve ever seen. It was totally demolished by everyone at my party and not a single crumb was left at the end."
After quitting her police job Dawn launched her cake company Dinkydoodle Designs, in 2010, starting with bespoke novelty cakes for the general public - the strangest 12 years on remains a toilet. Her first celebrity bakes were a guitar for world-famous American blues musician Joe Bonamassa and a crocodile to celebrate the panto Peter Pan at Nottingham's Theatre Royal, starring David 'the Hoff' Hasselhoff.
After being named Cake Artist of the Year in 2016, Dawn went from strength to strength. A flying helicopter cake for the opening of a new air ambulance building, in Cambridgeshire, wowed the Queen and Prince William, who was an air ambulance pilot at the time. Nottingham's pantomimes before Covid have kicked off with a celebratory cake, where Dawn met a string of stars including Les Dennis, Joe Pasquale, Lesley Joseph, and Gareth Gates.
"Lesley Joseph has become a regular client. She got a cake for Mel Brooks on his opening night of Young Frankenstein in the West End," said Dawn. Queen's Brian May ordered a guitar cake for his birthday party but sadly the pandemic meant he never got to eat it. We made it anyway and gave it to him virtually. You could pick it up and wear like a real guitar."
Dawn, who has always enjoyed pushing the boundaries, went on to run courses and demonstrations across the world. The amazing results are achieved by airbrushing, a technique which allows blending and shading, and Dawn went on to develop her own kit and paints.
When Covid put paid to her face-to-face teaching she took an overnight job at Asda and ran free online airbrushing classes for children who were unable to go to school during the pandemic. The entertaining lessons were spotted by Paralympic archer Danielle Brown, who included it in the book she was curating - Sir Tom Moore's One Hundred Reasons to Hope, celebrating unsung heroes' inspirational stories during lockdown.
The first Dawn knew of her inclusion was when she had an invitation to the book launch party, and of course, she couldn't let it pass without making a spectacular book cake, which opened to reveal a mini figure of NHS fund-raising champion Captain Tom inside. Again the creativity stunned guests.
See more of Dawn's work in this gallery:
Because she was unable to travel abroad to teach Dawn has set up her own academy where she runs online classes to thousands of people across the globe. She said she'll never tire of baking - and eating - cake. "I just love making cake. The most obscure is still the toilet. I don't think anyone can beat that. That was definitely something.
"At Halloween, I get customers wanting something gory, like a severed foot or a hand. I made a pair of boobs for someone who'd had a boob job. Quite often you get people who have recovered from breast cancer surgery and they want to celebrate in that kind of way.
"Now I have found a niche for novelty cakes like the handbag cakes that you can pick up and carry like a real handbag and the bottles you can pour things from. You'd think I'd be fed up of eating cake but when I go to take a slice out of it, I say that's actually really good. My kids are certainly bored of cake but my husband Paul will never tire of cake, he's quite happy."
