Thinking of Christmas..…cake

I am currently planning my first ever Christmas cake. I have never really made any kind of fruit cake before as I don’t like it, but if any occasion requires a fruit cake, it’s Christmas! I know I need to get cracking and start soaking my fruit, I’m sure I’m probably way behind the experienced baker's schedule for Christmas, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.The trouble is I get so lost in the creative side, deciding how the cake will look and be decorated that I keep forgetting that I need to make the cake first!!

I decided quite early on that I didn’t want to make just an ordinary Christmas cake decorated with holly or bells, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I like to give myself a challenge!!

I was out shopping the other day and I came across some miniature house moulds, they are really sweet and it suddenly came to me, I am going to make (or at least attempt) a Christmas Village!

There will be a main house in the middle which I’m thinking will be fruit cake with a roof made of chocolate cake and the mini houses around the outside will be vanilla sponge. That way there is a bit of something for everyone! I am most excited about putting all the little details together like making some snow men and Christmas trees to decorate the village with.  If I’m honest I think I’m using this opportunity to play houses with cake! I’m not sure that the finished project will even resemble the masterpiece I have created in my head but I’ll have fun trying! J

A Very Rocky Road...........

A good friend of mine was coming round to visit and I’m so pleased she now has her own little bundle of joy (who is gorgeous) and they can hang out with us whilst on maternity leave; I thought this was definitely an occasion where a cake was required. Now we’ve known each other a long time and she’s eaten many of my cakes and vice versa and since she shares my appreciation for cake, I thought something a little bit different was called for. So I asked my daughter if she had any ideas and her reply was “umm I think a cake with marshmallows would be a good idea", so I thought that sounded like a plan and suggested we make some rocky road cakes.  

Anyway, I got slightly carried away and made a few improvements on our first plan and here it is: a giant rocky road cupcake with a chocolate ganache filling, chocolate cheesecake icing, inside a chocolate case....plus coordinating extras of course!!  Perfect for celebrating with one of my favourite people!! J xx

Cupcakes to say goodbye

I’m currently on maternity leave but my boss was leaving so I thought I’d make the effort to go in to work (though I actually live on the same road as the charity I work for…so not exactly much effort!) and any excuse to make some cakes and I’m happy! So I enlisted the help of my 3yr old daughter and we set about making a couple of dozen cupcakes. My daughter loves baking and she’s actually very useful too, she pretty much knows all the ingredients we use, so if I ask her to get the baking powder or vanilla extract out of the cupboard for example she will very happily oblige and get it right.

We opted for coffee cupcakes topped with a mocha buttercream and vanilla cupcakes with an almond buttercream. I tried a new recipe for the coffee cupcakes from the primrose bakery book and was very pleased with results even though we changed it a bit according to the ingredients we had available to us.

Anyway, they were chuffed at work and even though the prospect of having to face the end of my maternity leave suddenly seemed very real, it was nice to see everyone......plus I was very happy for the excuse to buy some larger cupcake boxes!! haha

Fairy Toadstool Cake

For my daughter’s third birthday this year I let her look through all my cake books and choose which cake she would like. I wasn’t sure how well this would work out as she wasn’t even three yet; could I really expect her to pick a cake without her changing her mind a hundred times?? But after spending a long time studying all the pictures (and I didn’t even interfere by making helpful suggestions!!) she proudly announced she would like a fairy toadstool cake for her birthday! I then checked a couple of times a week that she still wanted the same cake and even though looking through my cake books had become her new favourite activity, the answer was always the same.

Ok, so now I only had to make the thing!! This was to be my second ever fondant cake…eek! I didn’t want to let my girl down so the hours of internet research began!! I spent considerable time googling images and watching you tube videos. After reading various techniques to construct the basic shape I decided on the bottom section of a giant cupcake mould turned upside down and trimmed for the house and a one litre Pyrex bowl for the roof. I was most nervous about the cake collapsing so rather than hollow out the roof I decided to support it on dowels instead! Then I had an idea that made my life so much easier. My daughter was having two parties, one for the family on her actual birthday and then another with her little friends. Seeing as this cake was going to take some time to make I didn’t really want to have to make another cake for the second party, so instead I made a second roof. So my family didn’t miss out and as soon as the roof had been eaten it was replaced by another one and voila good to go for the next party!!

Not much else to say really apart from my daughter was thrilled and after all the celebrating was over I let her play ‘fairy houses’ with the cake which she loved just as much as eating it!! Oh and we made cupcakes to coordinate with the cake too!! J

Giant Halloween Cupcake!

So I know Halloween has been and gone but it still feels like we’re not quite over it in our house yet; we’re still eating the sweets that were intended for the trick or treaters that never came, my eldest daughter is still very much into “balloween” crafts and I’m quite pleased with all the bargains that are in the shops that I can put away for next year…...and probably forget about until after the event!

Anyway here’s the cake we made for our Halloween party, it’s a giant chocolate cupcake filled with a chocolate orange ganache and topped with orange flavoured buttercream! It didn’t last long (my family are beasts!) but I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way, if they’d left any I would wonder what was wrong with it!!

Where it began...............

I have always loved cakes, to look at, to make and especially to eat. There’s nothing worse than a really fabulous looking cake that tastes nothing like it looks (not worth wasting the calories on in my opinion) but when it does it’s magical! I especially love to eat cake for breakfast, I know this isn’t the most nutritious start to the day but I figure that it’s got to be better than eating it in the evening and then sleeping on all that sugar!! Though if I’m honest I do that too!! When my eldest daughter replies that for breakfast she “would like cake please mummy” I have to remember that I’m a parent and say no, then explain why it’s not the best food for breakfast! Though secretly that’s what I want too and sometimes when she’s happily tucking into her porridge, I sneak into the kitchen and eat a guilty slice!!!
My Mum recently gave me my favourite childhood book (Maisie Middleton) to read to my girls and it was when I re-read this for the first time that it came flooding back to me; the story of a little girl whose parents were too tired to get up in the morning and make her breakfast so she decided that she would make her own, a fabulous breakfast of all the sweet stuff you can imagine; cakes, jelly, banana splits, ice cream, chocolate etc. So maybe it all began with that book and I didn’t even realise!