Hearts and Roses Wedding Cake

I got married last week and because it was such a small intimate wedding wanted to do as much as possible myself (with a lot of help from my Mum of course!!) and when it came to the cake I didn’t really know what I wanted but was excited by the challenge!

I decided that I would make a round 3 tiered cake even though there were only 12 guests, but I thought a quarter of a cake per person was probably about right for my family of beasts!! I think technically the cake could have served 90 but I wasn’t going to let a technical detail like that put me off!!

I opted for three different flavoured sponges; the bottom layer was an orange cake with a lemon buttercream, the middle layer a chocolate sponge with a pistachio buttercream and the top layer a coffee cake with coffee buttercream.

The theme for our wedding was sweethearts and roses because my eldest daughter is known to us as ‘my mummy’s sweetheart’ and my youngest daughter as ‘our little rose’ and we wanted everything to have a bit of a vintage look as well.

So a few days before the wedding, my Mum looked after the girls for me so I could bake in peace and slowly but surely the vision for the cake came together. After numerous hours googling wedding cakes I had merged all of the things I’d seen and liked into our cake. A huge factor in the design was that I had to get the cake all the way to Brighton, so decided that it would probably travel best in separate tiers and then be assembled on site. This meant that I had to be super organised with repair kits and spare parts in case anything broke en route, but to my amazement and despite a few hairy roundabouts the cake arrived completely intact!

We had a wonderful wedding day and in fact even my family couldn’t quite get through 3 tiers!!

Beads and Roses Cake

This cake was for a friend’s Mum who was celebrating her 80th birthday! My brief, to make a birthday cake with no reference to 80, her favourite colour is lilac and she likes flowers.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this one, especially the research (looking at lots of pretty, vintage inspired cakes whilst sipping tea!). I have learnt lots on the way too, some of which might have been useful before I made this cake; such as that there are such things as pearl moulds, so I needn’t have rolled each bead individually!!

I think my daughter was most disappointed that this wasn't a cake she would be getting a slice of; she took one look at it and said "wow, we must be having a really big party with that cake!!"

Auntie Bob's Coffee Cake

December was also the month for Auntie Bob’s birthday. Bob is not her real name, but the name she has been affectionately given by my daughter and now sometimes, I can’t actually remember her real name!

Auntie Bob got her request in early for a “coffee cake incorporating white chocolate in some way”. So, I decided that following on from the giant rocky road cupcake, I would repeat the chocolate case but in white chocolate, fill it with a coffee cupcake with coffee buttercream icing and a white chocolate ganache filling.

I actually remembered to take pictures a long the way this time too!

Christmas village cake

Happy New Year!! I hope you’ve all had a fabulous time and overindulged as much as I have!!

So I thought I should let you know how the Christmas Village cake turned out. Well, the fruit cake actually turned out quite nicely seeing as I had no idea what I was doing really and even I quite liked it. My daughter kept insisting that the fruit I was soaking to make it should be thrown away, as it “had a big smell”!! I tried to explain that it was supposed to smell like that, but it is just for grown-ups, however she was most concerned about whether Father Christmas would like it, “but does Father Christmas like alcohol???”…………………

Anyway, once it was a bit closer to Christmas I made a chocolate cake and a gingerbread cake as well and began to build my cake houses. The original plan was to have a main house (fruit cake) and then some mini sponge houses (which I had a special mini house mould for) around the outside; however once I’d stacked up the fruit cake house, iced it and given it a roof, I still had a lot of cake left. So rather than scrap it (which really means eat it all!!!) and make more for mini houses I decided to construct another big house.

This cake was also the first time I have attempted making figures myself, so be kind and don’t laugh too much!!!  I must admit that by about midnight on Christmas Eve when I was still decorating it, I was cursing myself for not at least buying the tree!! Oh well, by the early hours of the morning it was done and although not quite how I’d imagined it; I’d really enjoyed making it and got to try out lots of new things for the first time, so it was most definitely one to learn from!!

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