A place to show off the things I have baked
It was my eldest Niece’s 8th Birthday last week, and my Sister-in-law suggested Minecraft as the theme.
The icing was a tad gritty – I’m not sure what went wrong there, but overall it went well.
The toppers were all made from fondant, and took FOREVER to do (it took me 90 minutes to do the TNT and pig!!)
She enjoyed it though, which is all that counts in the end!
The final cake post today was a cake I did for my friends’ daughter’s first birthday. A “Hey Bear” themed cake…
I had never heard of Hey Bear, but looking it seems to be Sensory videos for babies of cute looking fruits & veg dancing to music. Queue the idea of making some of these from fondant to adorn a basic cake.
Simple in idea, but the execution was a tad more difficult due to the intricacies of the detail on each. That said, I was happy with how they turned out!
The cake went down well too – I was sent a pic of the very little cake left:
We lost our good friend to cancer a few years back. It was when the pandemic was still rife and we couldn’t have many at his funeral/ wake.
Today would have been his 44th birthday, and we were able to have a big celebration charity fundraising event last night. It was Las Vegas themed as that was his favourite place where he visited at least once a year… Sometimes even more.
I didn’t organise the event, but I did get asked of I would make the birthday cake so that’s exactly what I did …
The event was amazing – raising nearly £5,500 for Macmillan. We drank cocktails, gambled, bid on things at the auction, and celebrated a truly amazing man.
My Niece, Amber, Wanted a ballerina cake for her sixth birthday. I got it in my head that pink ruffles would be the way to do this… how much did I regret trying these when the icing kept dropping off the cake?
I suppose the plus side is that when I am not a professional and I am not getting paid, I don’t have to worry too much when things go wrong.
Another birthday treat was some chocolate cupcakes made for my sister in law’s birthday:
Nothing overly exciting for these – chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. I chucked some Cadbury Miniature Heroes on top and some blue sprinkles to bring some colour.
Back in January, i made a unicorn cake for my eldest niece. When I posted a picture of it on the socials, a friend (jokingly) commented when her birthday was. I noted to make her a unicorn cake for her birthday which I dropped off at her house as a surprise.
It was only after I dropped it off and looked at the pictures did I realise that I had forgotten to make some ears for the unicorn. Oh well! She liked it anyways.
The cake was made with red-velvet Baileys so the pink colour actually came from using the Baileys.
Luckily for me, there was spare cake at the end from trimming the top layers, so I made some mini cakes for me & my Husband:
At the start of July, my niece turned 3. She’s really into diggers, so I decided it would be easy enough to make a digger themed cake.
It was just a generic vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam, but I used some crushed up oreos and Toy diggers to make the cake digger themed.
As well as cake, we also had a bouncy castle in the garden, which I am sure was far more fun for me than for the nieces!
One of the girls who I used to play Roller Derby with got in touch with me earlier in the summer to ask if I’d be willing to make her son’s first birthday cake as she had always loved my cakes (what a nice compliment!). I can be fussy when it comes to making cakes as I don’t usually like using fondant – at least not to cover cakes.
She asked for chocolate cake, with something jungle themed. went for this:
The cupcakes were made to have little animal cake toppers on, which were a tad easier than icing a full cake in fondant. I was happy with this one, although I couldn’t get the buttercream quite perfect. I need to buy a new cake scraper to see if a metal one works better than plastic.
It was my birthday this week. As the world is still on lock-down I decided I wanted to make my own cake.
I have some small cake tins so I made 2 small rounds the weekend before that I froze to keep for decorating this week. I wasn’t 100% sure what my plan was – at first it involved Jammy Dodgers and Party Rings, but ended up only using the latter.
I wasn’t feeling adventurous on flavour, so I went with the good-old Vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam combo. I smeared some random pink colours around, and used a white chocolate drip. The gin was just as it was colour co-ordinated and made the cake more grown-up!
The top of the cake was decorated with some of the pink buttercream and Party Ring biscuits.
Finally, when I baked the cake layers, there was a bit too much cake mix. I didn’t want to over-fill the cake pans so I decided to make 2 x cupcakes with the remaining mix. I decorated these to match the cake:
Even with a smaller cake, there’s still 2 Party Rings worth left even though I also gave some to friends on Monday! I miss being in work where I could force cake upon my workmates… I love making it, but there’s only so much I can eat myself.
Well before social distancing and UK lock-down, I agreed to make a birthday cake for a family friend. I was adamant that I was still making the cake – and thankfully I had everything in the house that I needed to get it done.
The cake was made using a recipe from Chelsweets which I made the week before and kept in the freezer until I was ready to decorate. I made enough mix to make multiple layers, as well as some cupcakes and smaller bite-size cakes to decorate.
The cake was decorated with Cream Cheese forsting (what else?) and a dark chocolate ganache drip.
I didn’t actually have any cream in to use to make the ganache, so I used a method involving milk and butter instead – it worked great! I used this method and had no issues whatsoever.
Another new thing I tried was making icing roses – again, these turned out well for my first go. I didn’t have a cake nail, so I improvised by using some baking paper on my cake turntable. It just about did the job!
I can always find fault with a cake I’ve made, but overall I was happy with how this one ended up. Even more so as I didn’t have to venture to the supermarket for any supplies!
It’s my niece’s birthday on the 4th January and she sent me a video in December asking me to please make a “Unicorn Cake with all the colours” because “I love unicorns”.
I hadn’t been asked to make a unicorn in well over a year, but it seems 5 year olds still like them.
The inside was 5 coloured layers to make it rainbow-esque and these turned out a bit brighter than I thought they would be.
