A christening cake

Nearly a year ago my best friend asked me to be god parent to her second son! I was and still am delighted to have been asked and of course said yes. Then before i could stop myself i had offered to make a cake for the event and then started panicking as I'm not really that good! But thought what the heck!
The day was lovely and everyone had a great time. I read the children's book Guess how much i love you by Sam Mcbratney it is such a sweet story about little nutbrown hare and big nutbrown hare telling each other how much they love the other one. It had my friend in tears which was a result as we were always trying to make each other cry so I won that round!

Back to the cake! I wanted it to be a traditional christening cake but an easy one so I used the easy Christmas cake from Baking made easy by Lorraine Pascale and true to its word it was easy and didn't need weeks to mature. I'm also not the most gifted or have enough patience when it comes to decorating cakes, I have the ideas but half the time they turn out `weird`. Over the fruit cake I used marzipan and the cheated by buying ready made icing and cunningly draped it over to make it look like a blanket! The bear was made in a cake decorating course that I started but only managed to go to the first lesson it was so long ago that I can't remember why I couldn't go to the other sessions now, but I did enjoy making the bear however I haven't tried it again.....yet. Round the edge there are bought daisy flowers and the flowers and ribbon were ones found to fill the gap. For a first attempt I was very pleased and it tasted delicious and moist. Will make it again for my Godsons 21st ha ha ha!

Courgette & Walnut cupcakes

So.. here is the start to one of the posts that I didn't blog ....

We had a Pirate day at work recently (as you do) and I made some courgette and walnut cupcakes. They were from the new Hummingbird bakery cookbook. I have wanted to make this cake for a while and just needed an excuse so this was perfect! it is supposed to be a triple layer cake but I made them into cupcakes. They were similar to the delicious carrot cake and very moist. I don't think they worked as well as cupcakes as they would have been as a giant cake but they all seemed to be eaten....
Not a very good photo....

How long????

Well... seems I haven't posted for a while!!! in fact it has been over 2 years! my how time has flown! Lots has happened as you would expect it to in 2 years... in no particular order.... But starting with my lovely cats.. Rex has been rehomed to Cardiff and sadly lovely Elvis has died but his ashes are in the boot of my car and have been for over a year... just need to find a nice spot for him!I have moved to Leamington Spa and live with my lovely boyfriend, I've had a baby girl who is 5 months already ... think that is it... I have a lot of cakes to upload too... so watch this space....

Olive Penguins

I'm always looking for something fun to take to parties and whilst looking for an idea for snack food for a Xmas party I came across these penguins and aren't they cute! All they are made of is Olives, cream cheese and carrots complete with a cocktail stick to keep them together - the only fiddly bit was getting the cheese in but using piping bags worked... The only downside is that I can't stand olives! But I was assured they tasted good.

Gingerbread biscuits

I love to give food as presents - it gives me a reason to experiment in the kitchen again! I tend to use my friends as guinea pigs and I don't think any of them mind! So for a friends birthday I decided to use my biscuit cutters that I have never used. Biscuits seem to be the latest 'send in the post' craze or maybe I just happen to stumble across these websites more than any others. My favourite is biscuiteers and I have sent a couple of biscuit cards to people - normally when I have forgotten their birthdays! So I decided to have a go.... I don't think Biscuiteers should be worried about losing business from me for a while! Not the most beautiful looking ones but for a first attempt I was happy with them and so was my friend.. that is she sounded pleased to get them and has 2 boys who would certainly eat them!

Carrot Cake

I haven't updated in a while so these may not be in the correct order - not that anyone will notice!
This recipe is from the Hummingbird bakery cookbook which I have had for a while but haven't had the opportunity to use, mainly because I live on my own and can't really justify making a big cake as I would just want to eat it all!

I was going to a friends for August Bank Holiday and I knew that there would be a few people there so excellent excuse for this bad boy!!
I haven't made a cake with 3 tins before and thought that it would be a bit fiddly but it was surprisingly easy, I decided to follow the recipe to the letter as I have a habbit of substituting whatever I have to hand and didn't want to get this one wrong. Normally I would use low fat cream cheese for the frosting in an attempt to make it a bit healthy (who am I kidding when there is all that butter and icing sugar in it!) so went for the full fat version! Grating the carrots was a bit time consuming and I was losing the will to live at one point but thought that lumps of carrot wouldn't be that appeasing so battled on and got carrot all over the kitchen by the time I had finised! I am not the tidiest of cooks at the best of times!
There looks like lots of frosting when you make it but there are 2 layers to fill as well as all over the cake - for the decoration I just happened to have a marzipan cat! (I love cats... my Elvis and Rex will feature at some point in this blog.. there is probably a little bit of their fur in things that I make... oh that doesn't sound nice!)
The cake was a success and everyone seemed to love it and I definately will make it again !

I was looking through some photographs the other day and came across the Owl cakes that I made for Bonfire night ! I made these thinking that they would be really easy and wouldn't take long to make at all - how wrong I was!!! They took ages to decorate and by the end of it all I was losing the will to live ! And I made too many of them (is that a bad thing??) Unfortunately they also suffered a little smoke damage as they were outside with the bonfire but my friends I made them for thought they were lovely and that is all that matters