Some friends got married this week and were having a simple service with “no fuss”. I wanted to make a fuss so I made them this small wedding cake. It’s a basic vanilla / strawberry jam on the inside with vanilla buttercream too.
I used Wilton Whitest White to get the icing colour right, and sprayed a pearl spray on at the end to give it the shiny finish.
The flowers were just artificial ones to finish it off.
For my birthday last year, I was given a photo box thing to take photos in, but I’m lazy and so had rarely used it. I decided to use it for some shots of this cake.
Another bake this month was this “Mini” cake for my Grandma’s 80th Birthday. We made a hamper for her full of nice things, and the cake was a small addition.
It’s just vanilla cake, with jam and vanilla buttercream. The daffodils are fake.
I had big intentions to get some Christmas baking done this year. I’d bought loads of Christmas sprinkles and cake toppers, but ended up with very little time due to other commitments (parties, meeting friends, more baking!)
I did however manage to bake and decorate some Sugar Cookies which I brought to work for colleagues.
I love the autumn. One of the reasons I love going to visit the USA in “fall” is because of the amount of pumpkin flavoured foods I can get. Whenever I can, I try to make things at home too that have been inspired by my love of the USA.
Today, this inspiration let to me making mini pumpkin cakes.
I started by making my basic cake mix and adding in tinned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices. I baked these in my mini bundt pan:
I trimmed the cakes to make them shorter, and then stacked them. I sandwiched the layers with a cream cheese icing.
The next step was coating the cakes in orange buttercream
I shaped the cakes using a yogurt pot to smooth the edges and add ridges too. The final stage was to add a stalk made from tootsie roll:
I wanted them to look a little more professional, but they didn’t turn out too bad overall.
I feel really into Halloween this year. I’ve got plans to carve two bulldog pumpkins (One for work and one for home) and I’ve just spent today decorating mini pumpkin cakes made from mini bundt cakes.
Yesterday, we went to our friends’ house for a Halloween gathering.
Although we went Day of the Dead style (thanks to some half price outfits purchased last year), they had a “mad science” theme so I decided to have a go at making a brain cake.
I started earlier in the week by baking some vanilla cake layers and dyed them with red food dye. I had ran out of gel colour though and had to resort to liquid – this resulted in pink cakes and not red. I covered in a buttercream coating, and shaped it as best as I could work out freehand…
I used fondant (dyed ivory and pink) to make the “brain tissue”. I then just attached it in swirly patterns to make my brain.
After completing the first half of the cake, I continued the “twizzling” with the other side of the cake until it was fully covered.
To finish the cake, I covered it in a seedless strawberry jam which gave it a shiny, bloody glaze:
Everyone told me that it turned out well – I was really impressed with it as it was quite a low effort cake!
I love New York. It’s one of my favourite places I’ve been on my travels and I’ll happily go there again (I’ve been there four times and counting). There’s jut something about the place that makes me smile.
Earlier this year I got asked to make a fortieth birthday cake for my friend. The spec was “red velvet, and maybe USA themed”. I used it as an excuse to make this New York themed cake.
I used some sugar paper cut outs for NY themed decorations (Big Apple, Statue of Liberty, I <3 NY, etc). I then topped the cake with USA Candy to finish it off.
This post was originally on my old website, but figured it was another good one to share on here….
In November, my parents’ friends were let down by their cake maker and I got asked around a week before if I’d be able to make something for them. I could do anything – their theme was poppies as they were getting married on Remembrance Day. This was the results of my labour:
I spent most of the evenings in the run up to their wedding making things for the cake. Due to the last minute request, I had no time left to book any leave from work. I ended up making over 100 cupcakes (red were vanilla and white were lemon). I made the poppy toppers by hand cutting out and shaping fondant, and topping with glitter.
The top of the cake tower was a three layer vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream. It was not quite as neat as I would have liked, but the fondant tore three times when I was trying to decorate it, and this was the best I could manage at 10pm the night before their wedding!
It didn’t turn out too bad though – and the bride and groom were very happy with the result:
We have a big garden and last year my husband started to grow our own vegetables. This year it seems that the courgettes are taking over & growing into giants so I have been trying to find recipes to use them all up.
Last year, I used a recipe from Shugary Sweets for a Chocolate Courgette Cake. I decided to do this again this year to use up one of the behemoth vegetables!
As I was making the cake, I realised I didn’t have the full amount of cocoa powder in my store cupboards (I ALWAYS have this in so no idea how that escaped me). I tried to make do with some ginger chocolate morsels from Hotel Chocolat, but it wasn’t quite right so was slightly less chocolaty than the last time I made this.
Also, I should have let it cool in the pan a bit more. Due to the moistness of the cake, it didn’t hold shape when I turned it out.
I had spare batter too, so I made some cupcake sized cakes too