A very special cake

I had said I'd try and post on here more frequently but sadly that hasn't happened as there are lots of changes happening here at the moment, more about that in a different post.

Due to everything going on I haven't actually done much baking except as the title suggests one very special birthday cake.

The cake was for my lovely Niece who turned 21 back in August, When I first started messing around with cake decorating Ella asked be if I would make her 21st birthday cake the following year, I agreed and then promptly forgot about it until a month or so before her birthday.

We started discussing cake ideas, numbers, flavours etc and eventually Ella decided she liked a two tier cake I'd helped a friend make, the cake in question was a two tier navy and white cake topped with feathers and a diamante number, she however didn't like the colour so I suggested she went away and came up with a final list for me.
Here is what she came up with, purple icing, chocolate cake, flowers, horseshoes, feathers, sparkle and diamante number.
At this point I started to panic, it was sounding a bit like something you might see on that gypsy wedding programme, but after lots of planning and browsing the internet I came up with a design I was happy that Ella would love and that I was happy to make.

As the time approached to make the cake I discovered the party was going to be in a national trust park over 200 miles from where I live, so more panic, how was I going to transport a stacked cake all that distance, in the middle of august without it collapsing or the temperature in the car killing the cake?

Thank goodness for the people at the craft company http://www.craftcompany.co.uk/ not only did they talk to me and reassure me that it would all be fine they also advised  me on the best way to stack a cake and the best products to use to do that, so I ordered everything I needed and started to relax until I discovered that I didn't have enough of the purple icing I needed so again I phoned the craft company in a panic and they arranged to ship out the extra icing that I  needed that day even though it was after there cut off point for sending out orders.

My Purple icing arrived the very next day, anyone who wants a lovely purple icing try this http://www.craftcompany.co.uk/ingredients/ready-to-roll-icing/m-b-ready-to-roll-luxury-sugarpaste-amethyst-500g.html I find that it is a little harder to work with than the regal ice but the colours are worth the extra effort.

So after all that did the cake make it all that way in one piece? yes it did despite myself and my husband having a few words of disagreement along the way about the quality of his driving and a very near miss when someone kindly cut us up on the motorway we made it, not 100% unscathed as one of the decorative flowers broke, which messed up my colour scheme but luckily I had a spare in a diiferent colour.

All in all I was really pleased with the cake but couldn't have done it without the fantastic products and advice from the lovely people at the craft company.

Most important of all though was that the birthday girl loved it.

It's been a while.......

I've just been making a birthday cake for my Father in law,(although actually it was more an excuse to try out some new attachments for my KitchenAid mixer) and I realised I haven't written a bog post in a while.

There has been so much going on that the last month or so has flown by, so here is a little peek at what I've been doing.

Firstly back to the kitchen, I have done a fair bit of baking but because we are luckily enough down here to have had some lovely warm weather I have resorted to easy things!

Top of my list to try was Blonde Rocky Road, I'd seen this posted on facebook by Liana who is a fabulous Nottingham based baker, who I've followed on twitter and faceboook for a while and who made my hubbies 40th birthday cake.
 I struggled a little to find a recipe I liked so I adapted one from this great blog
http://shaunasever.com/2011/02/blonde-rocky-road.html

  I have to say that this was one of the easiest things I've ever made but was extremely popular and made a lovely leaving gift for my counsellor, and birthday present for my sisters partner.



I mentioned the lovely Liana before and again she is responsible for the next thing I had ago at making, white chocolate 'funfetti' fudge.

Here is the link to Liana's blog but be warned she posts about lots of lovely things that you may not be able to resist trying! http://starbakery.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/fudgey-fudge-fudge.html

There isn't much to be said about this fudge it is very sweet and very pretty a bit like a giant jazzie. I messed about slightly with the recipe as I'm not very good with cup measures so I think if I made this again I would add less chocolate and leave out the vanilla. The other thing I would say is that as this is slightly different in texture to traditional fudge it is definitely better straight from the fridge.

Time to move away from baking for a while although only as far as cake decorating. One of the things I'm really glad I did last year was to sign up to a short sugar craft course, I actually didn't really enjoy the course as the content wasn't what I was expecting I mean who knew you could make a snowman out of a walnut whip and a malteser? 

Anyway the one reason I really enjoyed the course was because I met Emily and we have stayed friends since and meet up regularly to try our hand at making lots of different cakey things, Emily makes the most amazing cupcakes and is much more talented than I am especially when it comes to piping cupcakes but the one thing she says she is rubbish at (she isn't) is making sugarpaste models, so when she asked for my help to make some models for a cake that was to be a gift for a brownie leader I jumped at the chance to have ago.

I don't know if it's all the years I spent working with children or just that I'm a child at heart but I love working with sugarpaste in this way as its just like edible plasticine or playdough.

So that's a snippet of what the last couple of months have held, hopefully I'll get round to blogging a bit more frequently but until then happy baking!

Why do I say yes when I mean no?

I don't know about you but I often find myself agreeing to something and then regretting it later, I have no idea why I find saying no to things so difficult but I do.

The latest request that I agreed to despite my better judgement was a request from my friend to make a cake for her partners parents wedding anniversary, the cake was to be a replica of their transit van which they have converted into a camper complete with custom paint job.

Now you might be wondering why I regretted agreeing to this, it's got nothing to do with who it was for or what it was, it was more that I have a complete lack of confidence in my ability to create beautiful cakes especially something that needed to look very specific. 

So I made the cake with the understanding that if they hated it, they didn't have to take it, fortunately they all loved it especially the recipients who commented on the level of matching detail and who were apparently so thrilled with it they didn't want to cut it.

I wasn't overly pleased with it because it wasn't 100% perfect but that s why I keep saying yes when I should be saying no, as practice makes perfect!

Apologies for the poor pictures I realised at the last minute that I hadn't taken any.

The element of surprise

I finally got back in my Kitchen this week after an enforced ban due to having a window refitted and then the kitchen redecorated. I was really surprised to discover how much I missed being able to cook and I also had a bit of a light bulb moment when I realised that I use baking as a coping mechanism, I'll explain; when I'm having a day where my situation is getting me down or I need a distraction from the pain I would usually head to the kitchen to create something or just make an old favorite, but not having that option over the last couple of weeks has meant more tears and the odd disagreement in our house.

So the first thing I've baked is this huge chocolate sponge cake filled with a chocolate fudge butter icing, it was the basis for a surprise 30th Birthday cake for my friends sister.


When her mum sent me the picture of want she wanted I was a little bit concerned as I thought the cake was a little beyond me and also it wasn't the sort of thing I liked doing, still I agreed to do it and here it is

There are over two hundred flowers and although it looks relatively simple it took hours and hours of work.although it will all be worth it if the Birthday girl loves it.


and I'm happy because relative harmony has returned to our house.

Karma

Today has been a lesson in Karma, Let me explain; Those of you that have known me any length of time will know that I love all things VW well okay not everything but certainly the camper and the beetle, but you may not know that when I was told  I may never walk again one of the things that upset me most was the thought of not being able to drive my lovely beetle, luckily after a long time and a lot of tears I was able to drive again and now there is nothing I love more than popping the roof down and taking my car for a drive, funny what we take for granted isn't it?

Anyway I digress a few months ago I was looking on the net for a Birthday cake for a fellow VW fan and came across a camper by a professional cake maker, my first impression was that it looked terrible and when I saw they wanted £250 for it I was horrified and have to admit to taking the mickey out their cakes, well there was my error! I decided today that I would try making a camper cake as a friend has asked whether I'd be able to do one for them. It all started well I baked the cake, cut the rough shape and iced it no problems and then started added all the details, you know door handles wing mirrors etc just as I was finishing off I knocked the cake off my turntable! luckily it landed on the worktop and not the floor but it certainly lost it's wing mirrors and has a fairly major dent in the roof.

I have to admit to being disappointed because up until that point it was looking pretty good for a first effiort, still I have learnt my lesson and will not take the p*** out of other peoples cakes again.

Here is a picture for you to have a chuckle at just remember that is what got me into this mess in the first place.

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Between then and now

 I made the Pat cake in August 2011 some 8 months ago, So I thought I'd do a post to bring you up to date with my Journey.

After doing the Pat cake I really was fascinated by all things cake and really wanted to learn  more about cake decorating and sugarcraft so I signed up to an evening course. This was a pretty massive step for me as it was the first time since I'd been ill that I'd done anything on my own. I took myself off to the course every week and although the course wasn't what I was expecting I really enjoyed the social aspect and have made some really good friends which if I'm honest I didn't expect at all.

I decided not to continue with the advanced part of the course because the style of teaching didn't suit me and also because i was struggling with the pain that it would leave me in for days after.

Here are a couple of the cakes I did during the time on the course they were mostly gifts for other people either from myself or my sister.

Doing these cakes made me realise I really liked doing the models and decided that's what I would focus on.

What I hadn't even taken on board was the current fascination with cupcakes, now don't get me wrong I love a cupcake as much as the next person but they weren't something I ever really bothered making as I wasn't very skilled in the whole piping thing. All of a sudden though I started getting requests from friends and family to make them cupcakes so I decided to have a play with different piping tips and decorating techniques 

as you can probably tell I ended up making more cupcakes than anything else but I still need to practice my piping!


lastly before you all nod off, I'll leave with my two most recent and probably my favorite cakes a Cath Kidston inspired cake for my Dad's boss and my Sisters birthday cake.

So it started with a cake......

Some of you may be aware that recently my life has been overtaken by all things cake, this blog is a place to share some of the cakes I've been working on and to document my journey into the world of cake.

My cake obsession started with the approaching 40th birthday of a friend of mine, he is a postman and it is fair to say he loves his job and so I wanted to get him a postman Pat cake. I contacted a number of cake makers and was either told they couldn't do what I wanted or they wanted £75 upwards for the cake. This was out of my budget so I decided to do some research to see if I could make one myself. This led me to buy  a book from Ebay that showed you how to make a Postman Pat cake.

Once the book arrived and I read the instructions I quickly regretted my haste in dismissing the cake makers and was almost reduced to tears when reading the instructions, it was as if they were written in a foreign language. Luckily a friend of my Mums makes cakes and all sugar flowers so I enlisted her help, it made me feel slightly better when she also admitted to feeling slightly overwhelmed by the challenge. Undeterred we set a date, I ordered all the bits we needed and baked the cake, Here is the outcome

I was thrilled with the way the cake turned out and although there were lots of bits that weren't perfect I can't help but be a little proud of the results, the recipient was also pretty chuffed so all in all a success.

What I didn't realise was how much of an addiction this was to become.