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!