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Sorry to everyone for not having blogged in a while.. its been a very busy couple of months.

This weekend I went to a family BBQ and my Mum tasked me with the cake!  I wanted to do something very simple and delicious so I went with a lemon cake with lemon buttercream and a carrot cake with white chocolate buttercream.  The next decision was how to decorate them....One of my favourite blogs is by Sweetapolita.  She makes some absolutely delicious looking cakes which look stunning without having lots of fussy detail.  I was looking through the blog on Friday and I came across a post called Pastel Swirl Cake and I thought it would be a great way to decorate the two cakes for the BBQ. 

Here are my two cakes!

The first is a carrot, orange and ginger cake topped with white chocolate buttercream.  The recipe is one of Sweetapolita's which can be found in her Zingy Orange Ginger Carrot Cake blog post.  It was delicious!! a very moist carrot cake and the buttercream was divine.  I struggled to stop myself eating it all before I covered the cake.. 

To achieve this effect you mix up some buttercream and split it into three and then colour each of the batches.  I went with 2 different shades of lilac topped with a creamy white.  If you want to give this a go I recommend you have a look at Sweetapolita's blog post which includes a video tutorial explaining it very simply.  I made a few hydrangea flowers out of fondant to decorate!

My next cake was a lemon sponge with lemon buttercream.  It was supposed to be a lemon and blueberry sponge but someone forgot to add the blueberries (ummm that would be me).  Lemon cake has to be my absolute favourite cake to eat and to make.  I love the smell of fresh lemons and you get to use lots of those when making this cake.  I used my favourite lemon sponge recipe of all time by the Primrose Bakery from their book called Cupcakes.  I haven't found a lemon cake recipe to beat it yet.  The recipe can be found in one of my previous blog posts, Lemon Easter Cake.

Here are my cakes on the kitchen table at my Mum's house.  I love this cake stand and unfortunately my photo doesn't do it justice.. I bought it in a little gift shop called Alligator Pear near my Mum and Dad's in Tadworth, Surrey. 

Here are a few other cakes I have made recently..

Vintage ruffles and pink fabric flowers wedding cake made for Marion and Toby.

Parr's Priory Rowing club cake which I took to a reunion lunch with all my old rowing club friends.  The shield on the top is an edible image.

Teddy Bear cake for Laaibah age 1.

Damask ivory wedding cake for Maria and her Husband.

Mickey mouse clubhouse cake for Eesaa age 1.

Iggle Piggle cake for Morgan age 2.

Steiff teddy bear cake for my Sister Rachel.

I was also very lucky to have my Sweet 16 cake featured in Cake Central's magazine.. such an honour..

Happy baking everyone :-)

What a fantastic weekend I am having celebrating the Queens Diamond Jubilee! I have had the pleasure over the last few weeks of being involved in two different Diamond Jubilee cake projects, one for the Ideal Home Show and another for Coca-Cola's employee Jubilee celebration lunch.  The designs were very similar to the cake I did for my friend Steve's birthday when we had a Great British BBQ.

Here is my Ideal Home Show cake..

I love the next picture and I am very pleased Prince Charles is smiling!

(Photo of Prince Charles by Theo Cohen Photography)

and here is my cake for Coca-Cola..

The Union Jack design on the cakes is hand painted.  I use edible paints by Squires Kitchen.  I draw the design on to baking paper and then etch over the design onto (using something like a tooth pick) the cake so that I have something to guide me when painting.  You need quite a steady hand or you could use a stencil.  I wanted it to look like I had done it free style as I wasn't aiming for it to look too neat.

This weekends celebrations started yesterday when I had the pleasure of attending a BBQ at my friends Steve and Jen's house.  Jen has a biscuit company and made some fantastic biscuits for us to enjoy.  They were decorated to perfection!

You can find Jen's creations on her website www.bisforbiscuit.com or Facebook.

I hope you are all having a great weekend and enjoying the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Happy Baking!

I would like to say a huge congratulations to Kate and Andy Langridge who got married yesterday, an amazing day was had by all.  The venue was lovely, the weather was fantastic and Kate looked stunning! Andy looked very nice too :-)

Here are the beautiful happy couple! 

I had the privilege of making the wedding cake.  Kate and Andy asked for a cupcake tower with a top cake.  Kate wanted to go with simple and elegant.  Here is the cake!

I am really pleased with how the cake turned out.  The top cake is a two tier layer cake with a 6 inch base and a 4 inch top.  The flowers are all hand made out of gumpaste and in the centre of some of the flowers I added an edible diamond. The cupcake tower is a new addition to my cake stand collection and one of the best yet.  It is the 7 tier maypole made by Classikool. Highly recommend!

I haven't had a chance to post anything for ages and I wanted to share with you a great tutorial by Design me a cake on how to make roses out of gumpaste.  This is one of the easiest to follow tutorials I have found so far.  Here is a link to the website - Design me a Cake

Here are a few more cakes that I have created over the past month...

For my friend Tracy's daughter Georgia I made a similar cake to the bridal shower cake I did recently. Really pleased with this version and quite like the pink dress as oppose to white.

My next cake was for a lovely couple who love tennis.  After doing a few different sketches they decided that they would like a couple sitting on top of a large tennis ball.

I made this Shrek cake for a little boy called Oliver who turned 3.  He loves the Shrek family. 

30th Birthday cake for Andy (the groom from above).

And here is my final cake for the month made for 2 little boys called Harvey and Kenny for them to give to their Mum on her birthday.  Very sweet.

I am writing this blog post from Beynac-et-Cazenac in France.  We are staying in a beautiful property with absolutely stunning views. While relaxing in front of the log fire I thought it would be a great opportunity to write a blog post about some of my recent cakes.  I few people have asked for me to write some tutorials on how I make my figures and to all those of you that have asked I promise I will start writing them soon.

The first cake I would like to share with you is a cake I made for a joint birthday party for six babies turning one.  Names, Holly, Maya, Kishan, Indiana, Nina and Isabella.

Here are my Easter cakes

This is the cake I took when visiting the nieces and nephews.  It is a three layer lemon cake covered in lemon buttercream.

And this one was for my Mum and Dad.  A three layer carrot cake covered in cream cheese buttercream.

The final cake I want to share with you is my most recent creation.  I made this cake for my boyfriends Sister Kate's Hen Party.  I had creative freedom so I went with girly and elegant just like Kate.

The base of the cake is an eight inch three layer vanilla cake filled with buttercream and jam and the skirt of the wedding dress is made from 3 layers of sponge.  2 of the layers are standard round 6 inch sponges.  The third layer is made using half of a ball shaped cake pan which gives a lovely curve.  Once you have sandwiched them together cover them in buttercream and refrigerate for a while before you carve to shape.  Once carved I covered the cake in a layer of sugarpaste and put on top of the base cake before draping over the sugarpaste skirt.  You will find that the skirt folds quite naturally without having to play about with it too much.

I inserted a dowel into the centre of the skirt and left about 5cm sticking out of the top to support the body.  For the body I used black sugarpaste and molded it into the shape of a female torso and left it to harden for a couple of days.  I then placed it on top of the skirt and added the white top.  I covered the join between the skirt and top with a bow.

An easier way of doing the top part of my cake is to buy a princess doll cake pan and a doll torso/ head which are specifically designed for cake decorating.  You could pull off the head and arms and cover it in black sugarpaste.  Some cake decorating shops let you borrow/ hire cake pans from them which saves you buying it.

That's all from me for now but I will be back soon with some tutorials and more recent cakes!

Happy baking everyone.

This week I have been creating a cake for a Photo Shoot at the Ideal Home Show in Earls Court.  I was asked to recreate a cake I did previously where I used a set of Emma Bridgewater cake tins as inspiration.  I made a couple of very small adjustments.

When I delivered the cake I got to see the Ideal Home Show being constructed and it looked like it was going to be a good show! All I knew before I delivered the cake was that it was going to form part of a national picture story.  I later found out it is going to be part of a photo story with their VIP guest Prince Charles.. I was absolutely speechless and very proud to have been asked to make the cake.  Here is a link to a photo of Prince Charles with my Diamond Jubilee Celebration Cake, Daily Mail Online.

Here are a couple of pictures I took:

Here are a couple of photo's I took of the cake at the Ideal Home Show in the kitchen of the Prince Charles Arts and Crafts House:

Me and my cake :-)

I haven't blogged for a while so here are a few other cakes I have done recently:

For my friend Helen I made a simple elegant daisy cake.

For a little boy called Alex I made a bumblebee cake.  His favourite toy is a bumblebee so I recreated it as a cake topper.

And for a little girl called Emily I was asked to make a fish themed Christening cake.  Emily loves aquariums!

It's been a great month of baking...

Happy Baking Everyone!

Today was my work colleague Elina's 40th birthday and I must say she is looking very fabulous at 40..

Elina has lived in New York and often talks about the fond memories she has of the place and it is also where Elina and her husband went this year to celebrate her birthday.  So the team at work all decided that New York would be the perfect theme for her present and cake.  So I started thinking about ideas and I decided to incorporate the New York skyline and flag colours.  Here is a picture of the finished cake.

I attempted to get a bit artistic when taking the picture and used Elina's New York calendar as a back drop.. not bad considering my photo taking skills are pretty limited!

The cake is a vanilla sponge filled with marshmallow fluff butter icing and strawberry jam.  This is the first time I have used marshmallow fluff in butter icing and it tasted delicious. I had been given a jar from my Boyfriends brother who visited Florida recently and I have been waiting for the appropriate time to use it, and what better time than a New York themed cake! The base is a 3 layer 6 inch and the top is a 2 layer 4".

Here is the marshmallow fluff butter icing recipe I used:

Ingredients:

• 1 ¹⁄₃; cups unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups marshmallow fluff (7 oz tub)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 -1 ½ teaspoon milk
• 2 ²⁄₃; cups powdered sugar

This weekend I made a Winnie the Pooh and friends picnic cake for a little girl called Jessica's 3rd birthday.  It was a lot of fun to make the characters.

Here are some pictures:

Two of my closest friends Jennifer and Steve (now Mr and Mrs Cobb) got married this weekend at a small ceremony in Suffolk.  I had the pleasure of making the cake for their special day.  Jennifer's only request was that I add a Lego bride and groom to the top, so as Jen is a fan of Lego and Steve likes anything historical I thought I would incorporate a Castle!  First, here is a picture of the happy couple :-)

And the happy couple cutting their wedding cake..

and finally a cake close up...