Hello Kitty Mini Tiered Cakes!

So it was a friend of mines daughters birthday so she asked me to decorated a cake for her. We toyed with some ideas and went back and forth and finally after seeing some very qute pictures of "mini-tiered cakes" I just had to give it a try! Her dughter loves Hello Kitty, but is also a dancer and loves ballet... so after much deliberation it was Hello Kitty that won. So These are small! So they were very difficult to make! Soo much detail needed. I learnt so much and definately want to make more mini cakes! It was definatly the first 5 tiered cake I have ever made! By the time I had finished the main cake I realised I had 4 more to do with only like 5 hours till the birthday party! But I somehow I pulled it off! Now excuse the quality of photos as it was late in the evening and there was definately no natural light to go by :-). Flash all the way!

New faces of IKEA?

Perhaps not....
But we were walking around ikea yesterday when we saw that there was a lot of comotion! We saw that there was a photosession going on. Asked what it was and they were doing free photosessions for a personalised IKEA catalogue! So we placed ourselves at the back of the line (which was surprisingly short)! We only had to wait 5 min for our free copy! It was GREAT!

Harry Potter Cake (Very original title I know..)

Harry Potters syllabus!

Ok so maybe not the entire syllabus, but we have "a history of magic" and a potions book.. 

a good friend of mine wanted my help with her sons birthday cake, so she made the sponges and I ended up decorating it. She was going to have her whole family over to celebrate her sons birthday so she had plenty on her mind and hands anyway. I was happy I was able to help! I excuse the quality of the photos as I wanted natural light and not to use the flash.. but because I did, they are a little smudged. 

Enjoy!!!

 It was quite a big cake. More impressive in stature in real life. I could not have done it had it not been for my trusted helper Carrie(Birthday-boys son)! She thought I was just helping her with the cake... I have a bit of a problem... I tend to take over when it comes to cakes... I just LOVE making them :-)! So I hope she can forgive me for going a bit overboard! I am guessing she can since she had quite a lot else to do to prepare for his birthday.

 What Harry Potter cake is complete without a snitch?!?! Not this one! My edible Gold paint did the trick again!

 So If you manage to find all these things then you will be able to make Polyjuice potion! Use it responsibly ;-)!

 Can you spot the fault?!?! It says "I Solemly swear I am up to JUST good!"

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE!

 I love it how the corners come off slightly (I was working hard for this not to happen as I was having problems getting the sugarpaste to stick to the bottom of the cake). The reason I now like it is because it kinda makes it look like one of those old soft leather journals. I feel like I could have improved on the tassels on the scarf. but time didn't allow for perfection!

 Hope you can see that this is supposed to be Gryffindors emblem :-)... as in a Lion! Since I got that edible gold paint for the weddingcake I have just itched to use it again!

I really do like how the pages turned out. The key is inconsistency! as I am sticking the strings of sugarpaste on I pull and bunch them to make the pages uneven. In an old book the pages would never evenly come out. They will get worn and ripped (specially a kids schoolbook like this one).

xx

Jo

Happy Halloween... COOKIES!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN.... COOKIES!!!

I made some Halloween cookies last year and I remember spending 2 full days on them! This time I made these in an evening! I must say i have come a far way(as in I know a bit more of what I'm doing)! Even though looking back I think that last years were a lot more detailed this years look a lot more uniformed and cohesive. It was also the first time I tried using cream of tartar as a raising agent! It made the cookies a little chewy which I really liked! The other first was the sugar rim. I iced the whole cookie in either white, orange or black then  used the same colour and made the outlines when the first layer had dried. I then(as fast as possible) poured sugar over the wet icing. for the pumpik ones I made orange sugar for extra effect! I would love to put the recipe on here, but not sure of the copyrights etc. Does anyone know? If I make sure to mention where I got the recipe from am I ok to post it on here?

A very happy pumkin!

A very sceptical Bat!

Scary Ghost?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

My First Ebay Post!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/230685876726?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Angry Birds Individual Cakes!

 So My Wonderful Mother-in-law has her birthday in 2 hours!

She absolutely LOVES angry birds so naturally i make her an angry birds cake for her birthday :-).

Each of the birds is an individual cake. The cake sponge itself is crumbled and mixed with enough frosting until it JUST comes together(otherwise the cake wont hold it's shape). You can choose whatever sponge you want. When I make a cake I usually save the carved off bits and freeze them. then I'll use them for cake pops etc. perfect! Then I brush them with desired moist cream(jam, chocolate spread, peanut butter etc..) and cover with the rolled icing. 

We literally ate some of it 10 mins ago and it is Yummy( I had a pig)! Truffled cake :-)! If any of you have every made Cake pops before it's kinda like that!

 

I think this is my favourite Piggy :-)!

My First Weddingcake!!!

  So here is my first weddingcake! I only decorated it as the actual cake was ordered from Marks&Spencers. It was great as I could concentrate completely on decorations.

As I was saying in my previous post last week was busy! We were able to go to Jersey just outside of the coast of France for the wonderful wedding of Nicks best friend and his now wife :-)! They basically gave me free reign except the colours hich they wanted Burgondy and Gold. I Had finished the stripes and put the whole cake together(with dowling this time.. I learnt my lesson from last time).. when I realised they didn't have a cake topper.. so I quickly had to think of something to put on top of the cake. The Ringbearer who is the Grooms son, carried the rings on this bookmark inside a book (basically like the book on the cake). This was because the whole wedding had a bit of a Litterary theme. The Tables weren't numbered, they had the names of Authors... I was lucky enough to sit at the Austen table(she just happens to be one of my favourite Authors). So I thought that a book on top of the cake would fit in perfectly! It did!

After I had finished the book and the rings I still felt there was something missing. I had been planning on doing Roses anyway, but didn't think I would have the time... I had next to NO time to decorate this cake. Not incomparison to the time I would normally have wanted to take. So when I found out I still had an hour to go I threw together the roses! They couldn't have been more fitting. I am very happy with the result! I hope there will be more weddingcakes to come! I loved doing it!

 This was the extra cake, just incase there wouldn't be enough from the main cake. It wasn't even supposed to be on the table. I piped some decorations on it aftre I sprayed it in Gold and put the beading on. But my plan was to paint the piping with gold paint.. but time quite simply ran out.. But it doesn't look too bad. They decided to put it on the table anyway, so it couldn't have looked tooo bad!

 Me and my First Weddingcake :-)!!!

 Some of the Gorgeous decorations!

My Table!

Pete and Alex!

Do Dentists and Cupcakes go well together?!?!

So Last week was insane!!!
I don't know how I managed it but I filled 2 cake orders and still had time to go on holiday! Mind, one of the cakes was actually made on my holiday.. but still! I'll tell you about that cake in my next post..

On to the title of my post....

My husband works as a Chiropractor out of a very Nice Private Dental Clinic called Douglas Lee Associates. They recently had one of their long term Dental Nurses go on to greener pastures :-), and it was also the Owner of the Clinics Birthday! So I made them some cupcakes.. So can you answer the question? Do Dentists and cupcakes go well together?! Well.. In this case yes! They seemed to LOVE them :-)! YAY!!!

 

Remember to Brush your TEETH!!!!

Future Missionary!

So my Husband is the Young Mens President for our ward(Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in Blackburn England and they have been putting extra focus on the importance of going on a mission.  One of the Young Men turned 18 and as they have now lowered the age for Young men to be able to go on their mission from 19 to 18 he is determined to get his papers in ASAP. So his wonderful mother commisioned a cake of me with a missionary theme. We decided it needed some humour as well and well... once you see the picture you will see there was definately some humour! He collapsed in laughter when he sa it, so I think our job is done! I asked his mom to print off the picture for me, laminate it and put it on a stick.
And the result is.....

 

I learnt a lot from this cake! like.. keep it out of the heat or it will start to shift and therefore make all sorts of odd shapes. Dowling is also a good thing to have if you have a tall cake... a very good thing. But hey, they were happy with the cake anyway, so you live and you learn. For my next cake I will be making some purchases first. definately!!!

xx

Jo

Joining Our Forces!

My wonderful Mother-in-law and I have joined forces once again! This time for a full blown cake stall at this big event at an airfield. My Father-in-law is a pilot at Turweston Aerodrome in Oxfordshire. Once a year they do a big event where old cars and planes are showcased and they also have different stalls and even some rides for kids. So we decided to collaborate together on making things for this event. It was sooo much hard work, and SOOO much fun! Here is the list of things we ended up selling:

 Hazelnut Cupcakes

Strawberry Cupcakes

Marshmallow Cupcakes

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Bakewell Tarts

Carrotcakes

Guiness Fruitcake

Peanutbutter Cookies

Double Chocolate Cookies

Red Velvet Cakepops

Vanilla Cakepops

Chocolate Cakepops

Rumballs

Marzipan Rum Rolls

Scottish Allbutter Fudge

FlapJacks

Gumdrops

Rocky Road bars

Aeroplane Sugarcookies

and

Homemade Lemonade

So yes... We were busy, and we learnt a thing or two about time management! We had to figure out what we had to do ahead of time to make sure we could make everything fresh. It was Great! Here are some pictures!!

The Marshmallow cupcakes got little fondant lollipopsticks! Sweet as candy!

xx
Jo