Christmas!!!

My Christmas 2011
Ok so I may be pennyless and it will probably take me until february to pay off my overdraft but nevermind. I had a really nice Christmas time. My family came to visit me in early december so I got to see my Mum, my little brother Connor and my sister Catherine. I loved buying all the presents and wrapping them all in my lush wrap. My friend Simon got a taste for my baking after he polished off the leftovers from Halloween so for his present this year I decided to make him some Christmas cupcakes.
Theres nothing more Christmassy than booze so I decided to make him my tried and tested Amaretto cupcakes. They are super tasty and are made with amaretto (obv) and almonds.
After that I iced them in with rich red butter icing using a piping bag and decorated with white flowers. I then wrapped them in Christmas tissue paper and placed them in a box that I'd kept from last year. i finished it off with a few ribbons and it was a present fit for a king!
So proud. And Simon loved them!

Ally's Birthday!

It was my friend Ally's birthday on Bonfire night and her boyfriend Mark was organising a bit of a bash for her at the local pub so I of course offered to make the cake. Here is what I came up with and some photos of from the fantastic night we had as well.

So here's the mess in my kitchen when I was working on the decotating.

Little flowers made of ready roll icing.

And here's what I came up with. I made a plain almond sponge with two layers of jam and pink butter cream in the middle. I then covers the cake in a thin layer of butter cream to help the marzipan stick, marzipan which I painted with Vodka and then Ready Roll Icing on top coloured purple. I then made some flowers using ready roll icing in different colour and used cuts and stuck them on top of each other with butter cream.
It was lush!

Here's Ally blowinbg out the candles



Here's Ally and I having had a few hehe!

Halloween - Trick or Treats!!

My Halloween 2011
I love Halloween always have, my Birthday is on the 20th so growing up I always had birthday/Halloween parties so it's always been a big deal for me and it's alyways been special. This is my second Halloween since I moved out and since I live in a converted chapel, I had no excuse not to do something to my porch. Last year I made a load of cupcakes so I decided to do the same again this year but better. Prep this year took me ages but it was well worth it.
Here are some photos of me making my Halloween cupcakes.

So I started off piping the orange butter cream into spirals and patterns on the cupcakes.

Here's me in my kitchen .
Here's the piping finished off with the black. Turning butter cream black took a LOT of icing sugar and a lot of black food colouring.
And then I just finished off the cupcakes with some little skulls I made out of fondent icing. I just squished little balls of fondent into a skull shape and used modeling tools to make the face.
(some little black flowers as extra accesories)
Then I just added some sweets wrapped into bunches onto the cake stand and I was ready to take on my trick or treaters!
Here are the pics of my porch.
It's a good job I was so well prepared really because with a front porch like mine I've got no excuse not to go a bit mad at Halloween so as I'm sure you can imagine, it atracted a lot of attention.

Alices Birthday - Rose Cake.

My good friend Alice's 19th birthday. Her and Kitty and I went out for a meal in Evesham, went for an Indian so I decided to make her a cake! Decided to give the sugar roses a go after seeing a "how to" video. They were fairly simple, came together really well, I think it's one of those things where the more I do the better they'll be.
So I just made a simple cake and hand painted the writing and scroll on it. Was really quite proud of it actually. Kitty is allergic to Gluton so she couldn't eat the cake but she did enjoy a sugar rose.





Alice with her cake.
This was made on 9/8/11 - whilst all of the riots in major cities were going on. I would just like to say to everyone who rioted: yes there are lots of problems with goverment cuts at the moment, lots of problems with this country, and things are really hard right now. But for Gods sake, this is the time to pull together, not turn on your own community on the people on your street. You still have the right to free education, be smart, do something constructive.

Megans 7th Birthday,

Eugh! This cake was a flippin' disaster. Had NO time to do it whatsoever or the resources. Went out and bought all the stuff for the cake but the supermarket didn't have much interesting in as far as decorative bits go. Apart from that I'd totally forgotten that my piping bag had broken so I had no piping bag.
Also I only had the day to do it so the cake was far to fresh to carve. The whole top layer just crumbled. It looked such a mess!!
None the less I just overly decorated it to try to distract from the mess. Without a piping back it was a bit of a job. Got covered in icing and my quilted effect didn't really work. know what to do for next time. But this one just looked crap.
Meg and Jo liked it though. And all the kids at the party were impressed though.






I did however get to paint an awesome mould at the Honeybourne Pottery. In amongst the kids painting away. I chose a pirate, it was meant to be a boy but I wasn't having that! I painted her to be a girl! Isn't she awesome?!

Ideas for My Little Pony Cake

It's Megans 7th Bithday next week and I've said I'll do the cake. She has told me she wants a My Little Pont cake but I think thats only because I know she has a cook book with a cake in. Sadly, I find that trying to follow instructions on how to make a cake very hard to follow, I find it a lot easier to have an idea for a cake and be creative with it. That way it will look good anyway, because you'll have nothing to compare it to.
So anyway, I've been looking online and found some photos for ideas:

This is the kind of thing I think I'll go for if I do the My Little Pont cake, I've not done a simple tier cake before, and I'm just wondering if it is simple..Otherwise there is this idea, which looks simpler, it'd involve a tray bake and some icing fun. Could go very wrong though.
But as I've said, I think Megs only wants a Pony one because of her book, I think I may do something completely different. She is 7 and she's getting into older things now, Jo is buying her a tatty teddy bedroom set so I'm thinking Pony is maybe a bit young for her now.
She is into hello kitty....But I might just try doing a layered cake and having fun with effects I haven't tried.
Either way I'll have a nice long think about it and will definately post a blog when it's done. My sister Catherine is coming over that weekend so hopefully if we get a chance between all the partying, we can get started on the cake together, so I'll have some help. I find it best to do it in stages as well coz there is such thing as a cake thats too fresh.

My Birthday

Here are some photos of my fantastic Birthday cake from my mum. I helped make them but it was her idea. Cupcakes on a stand decorated beautifully, complete with Disney Princesses



I had to be the one to have Ariel!

My family all took me out for Dinner at an Italian Restraunt on the pier in Bangor, it was a tiny little place but the food was beautiful. Everyone in my family was there and I had a great night.
Here are just some photos of the night.

No my sister is not getting my nephew drunk, Daniel just has the habit of wanting everything of everyone elses. Hehe!
Me and wonderful sibling, (l to r) Nicola, Me, Catherine and Connor.... of and my uncle Martin ruining the photo there!
My stunning Nephew Daniel JamesAnd heres my whole family tucking into some proper Italian quisine! Niiiiiice!
There, there was Amy, Martin, Scott, Catherine, Lee, Me Nicky, Daniel, My Mum Vikki, Connor, My Nan Gloria, Uncle Ron, Becky, Nick and Joe.
Thanks to all for a lovely Birthday.