Showing posts with label cake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cake. Show all posts

Monday, 29 November 2010

Santa Cake


I made this really cute Santa Christmas Cake.
This weekend.
Very proud.
Chocolate cake.
Yum!
But....
I
Am
Heartbroken.
Life is hard.
I have to give my really cute and very proud of my Santa Chocolate Cake away.
Yes, give the cake away.
Noooo!
Yes, true.
It had to be done.
That was the deal.
Ouch.


I took him to work today, ready for the guess the weight of the cake competition this week.
I left him on the table in the staff room with a LARGE note which read:

Santa Christmas Cake:
Please Look
do NOT touch.
do NOT eat.
(he is for the guess the weight of the cake competition for our Christmas Fayre)

So far, he is still intact.
A miracle in itself.
I now need to make one more for me and one for my work colleagues...
TO EAT!
(which is my cure for my heartbreak of having to give away my really cute Santa Christmas Chocolate cake)
What would your cure be?

Maybe.... I could enter the guess the weight of my really cute Santa Christmas Chocolate cake and win him back???

Sunday, 7 November 2010

Birthday week 365

Very excited that it will be my birthday this week in October!
Sunday 276/365 A day to relax and be creative with more tales from Learn Something New.

Monday 277/365

Tuesday 278/365 another page on Learn Something New done!

Wednesday 279/365 Yippee Jacob has arrived!

Thursday 280/365 Curry Night!

Friday 281/365 there is even some cake left!

Saturday 282/365 lovely cards amd celebrating!

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Wednesday Musings

When I was growing up, I would eventually appear downstairs for breakfast, trying to not be too late for leaving for school. My sleepy face must have always looked crestfallen, I guess. My Mum would cheerily say:"Don't worry Luci,it is Wednesday already, Half way through the week."
So, half way through the week it is and I am making a cake. I must have withdrawal symptoms, after the wedding cake. Besides, the Jamie Oliver's Nans Lemon Drizzle cake recipe was, as I already siad the other day, a little rubbish. So, new cake, it is.
We have had "the longest day" on Monday.
It seems hard to believe.
We haven't seemed to have enough sun to warrant the dark evenings beginning to return.
My days can evolve and be completely different to my plan some days.
Today, is the "big" world cup Wednesday match for England. I wonder how many sick days the nation will have, or how many leave work early?
Me?
I think I will go to the gym and swim and finish decorating a cake ready for the girls at housegroup tomorrow after I finish work.
Anna is leaving.
I can already picture Abbies sad face as she will sigh and say the now well known phrase: "Everybody leaves."
Wednesday, I am glad you are half way through the week and await to see what today holds.

Saturday, 19 June 2010

Creativity Bootcamp Day 9

I had to laugh when I saw the creative prompt for day 9: DRIZZLE
Would you believe it, the sun was actually shining?
Not a drizzle in sight.
Nope.
Not a drop.
Sun, sun, sun.
Me: at work.
Came home and looked longingly at this:

and found this:

I must be missing cake.
I had to eat toast and drizzle honey, instead.

I made the lemon drizzle cake today, as it is now Saturday, as I write this up.
My thoughts?
Read this:

Dear Jamie,
I love your book but I have to say, that your Nan's Lemon Drizzle Cake is a bit rubbish. I will eat this one, but have to make another one now as this one is flat.
love from Luci

Creativity Bootcamp Day 5

For more inspiring thoughts and creations for this Creativity Bootcamp, you can look here
My notes from my journalling follow along the threads of the challenge to write about our hopes and dreams and the expectations of life and a trip down memory lane with the music we loved growing up.
If I share with you some of my hopes and dreams I had growing up they included being married with children and serving God in some way. I dreamed of living in a house in the country with dogs and cats and a big family table for us all to sit around with friends gathered.
The trip down memory music lane was fun. I tried to be all neat and tidy and come up with a list of my top 5 or my top 10, but couldn't. I am not tidy, so my list is here: my top 14.
1. U2
2. Simple Minds
3. The Waterboys
4. Blondie
5. Eurythmics
6. Everything But the Girl
7. Depeche Mode
8. Madonna
9. Ultravox
10. Madness
11. The Police
12. Sting
13. Bruce Springsteen
14. Abba
Thinking and writing about some of my hopes and dreams with the prompt word: GROW was interesting too as I put the finishing touches to the wedding cake, last week ready for the wedding last weekend.
The wedding cake for my niece.
My "ex-niece" strictly speaking, I guess, as it is my ex-husband's family, where I would see my ex-husband for the first time in 16 years. I have stayed in good contact with the rest of my ex-family all these years and love them dearly, but not seen the ex for all this time. Weddings always bring back memories and are quite emotive events, aren't they? They are for me. A big trip down memory lane right there. Memories of hopes and dreams broken and shattered, tossed aside and trampled on, some still yet to be replaced and renewed.
And yet, the amazing reality and contrast perhaps, that the last 16 years have been with amazing growth, joy, peace, safety, love, kindness, increased friends and family, creativity, opportunities and adventures and new hopes and dreams too, for me. Wow.
My hopes and dreams have taken on whole new meanings and twists and turns.
Some I never thought would have been possible.
Some of it has been excrutiatingly painful, some wonderful moments of experiencing mourning into dancing, lovely surprises and some renewed dreams and rediscovering of gifts, talents and creativity.
New adventures, new possibilities, new promises and possibilities and surprises.
So, here is my tribute to the word Grow is right here in the wedding cake.
All 3 tiers.



I want to continue to grow, don't you?

Monday, 14 June 2010

The Pretty Spectacular Wedding Cake

I have just returned from my nieces wedding, where I did the wedding cake for them. The first wedding cake I have done.
I think the finished cake was pretty spectacular and felt very proud and pleased with the overall effect.
I hope you like the end result, too.
The bride and groom loved it and everyone said it tasted delicious.
Phew!
The finished bride and groom...


I was so relieved that it arrived safely, as I had to drive the cakes for 3 hours and then the next day transport it and set it up at the venue.

Thankfully, I had my brother in law with me to help cut the dowel rods, measure with the spirit level each tier we did and help move the cake boards so that they sat central to the level below on the pillars. It would have been really tricky on my own and he also helped calm my nerves too.

After the cakes were in place, I was left to add the fresh roses I had bought to go in between each tier.
Beautiful and delicate akido and ocean song and avalanche roses.



I decided that as Mr. Groom, the surprise footballer, has become legless several times over the last few weeks to leave him with 2 cocktail sticks at the back to help him remain upright the whole day. Noone ever knew and at least in the heat he remained upright all day and evening!

Congratulations Aaron and Charlotte!

Thursday, 3 June 2010

All About The Cake.


It is all about the cake this week for me. I have the week off from work so in between relaxing, meeting up with family, friends and catching up with life, I am cracking on with the wedding cake for my niece.
She wants tiers and a mix of fruit and sponge cakes.
A huge and heavy 12" fruit cake, a 10" and 8" sponge cakes and then the cake topper is on a 6" base. I used recipes from these books.

The sponges will be Madeira sponge cake recipes, using the Cakes to Inspire and Desire book I borrowed from my friend Abbie. The Madeira sponge will stay fresher longer than sponge cakes. It will also be denser to balance in tiers, successfully. I hope.
I made the fruit cake a while ago, using the recipe from my Sweet and Simple Party Cakes book and have since added a bit more brandy to keep it moist!
I have been buying bits like cake boards, ribbon, icing, marzipan, edible glue (as I am nearly all out of glue), some essential cake boxes to transport the cakes to the venue and an edible writing pen to write a small personalised plaque for the big day.

The flowers will be fresh roses in a variety of sizes and shades of white and lilac: avalanche, ocean song and akito. I will lay them on top of each cake layer in between the pillars.
Pillars.
The bit that gives me nightmares.
I imagine doing a cake "toppler" and it all ending in tears and not a cake "topper" at all.
For the cake topper, the bride to be wants a bit of a surprise for the groom.
You might remember, she wants him to be wearing a football kit in his favourite team, West Ham United. Their colours are claret and blue. I have been worried that if I did a claret groom that it would clash with the purple and lilac theme, so I am using a little artistic license and using a purple shade of icing.
I have been working on the cake toppers.
The bride was lots of fun and I am very pleased with her.

I added a few blue flowers to connect her to the grooms colours.

The groom has been a challenge for me. Ideally he would need to remain upright (at least for the photos, right? and for the speeches, traditionally, eh?)

I made him in pieces, adding denture fixative powder to the icing for his body. This brilliant idea came from Sheila, who led the cake decorating course I did last year as evening class. She was full of cheap and practical tips like this one! I left him to dry for a week or too and he really is like porcelain!
The pieces are then sturdy enough to stick together. In theory. The arms seemed to go on OK, but the legs attaching are a bit of a cross your fingers and hope, thing. I have him balanced upright against a jar of jam at the moment, to encourage his legs to adhere to his body!

I just have to fix the happy couple in place, with all the lettering, spelling the word "UNITED" and the plaque with their names and the wedding date and add the football team emblem on the front. I keep making one, painting the castle in "cream" which looks gold in neat form, but then I keep splodging it before it dries, so have to re-do it! 3rd time lucky,eh?
Today I am going to bake the Madeira sponge cakes.

Tins ready.

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Here Comes The Bride


The bride is finally finished.
I really like her.
Do you?

I did the flowers purple, lilac for her bridal colours and added some blue flowers to link in with the groom who will be in West ham football kit.
He, is still un-clothed, naked and in pieces and will have to wait to be clothed in his football kit when I return from the hen weekend this weekend!

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Pink Vanilla Cupcakes


I made these for Pink Vanilla Cupcakes for Sunday Lunch.
A basic cupcake recipe and I added pink colouring to the cake mixture and vanilla essence for a fun surprise!
I baked them for 20 minutes in their red dotty cupcake holders.
I added more pink colouring and vanilla essence for the butter cream topping. I didn't mix it completely to give it a ripple effect.
They would be as delicious with sprinkles as I did, or with some strawberries!

Monday, 17 May 2010

Ridiculously Delicious Sunday

It really was the most ridiculously delicious Sunday Lunch with the Girly Cake Chicks and our friends.
We do this not often enough but love it all the same.
Our housegroup and husbands and friends. We compile a list and invite everyone.
Simple!



Loads of food: I roasted chicken and beef and everyone brought yummy salads, bread, cakes, cakes and more cakes. It really was full house with about 16 of us and 2 very special little people too.
Oh, and a very big birthday cake made by Abbie for Jen too!

Good times and wonderful friends.

Saturday, 15 May 2010

All Star Thursday Night Creations


Ooh, I had sooo much fun on Thursday Night at Rachel's with the girly cake chicks.
This week, it was Rachel's turn to share something creative with us all to learn.
She taught us (or tried to teach us) to make star books!
We each had 3 sheets of double sided scrapbook paper. Gorgeous shades that Rachel chose for us from Basic Grey and 2 squares of thick cardboard and some yellow ribbon.

First though, tea, coffee and this delicious yummy cake that Rachel made.

Now, I won't pretend that the evening was easy. Competition was fierce, as was the laughter when one of us rushed ahead, or got it wrong, or misunderstood. Rachel kept saying to us, this isn't a race and it isn't a competition.
Harsh words.
Tough lessons learned.
Did we listen to her?
No.
Did we learn?
The hard way.

The things that went wrong, typically, were when we were asked to cut out 5x rectangles in 3 different sizes for our book pages. Abbie cut some of her rectangles with the plain titled edge that is along the basic grey 12x12 squares. Oops.

A few of mine were perhaps not "exactly" measured. More the "ish" variety.
Anna claimed to draw lines to cut and then cut along completely different lines. Abbie folded her rectangles in half the wrong way.

Anyway, after we had cut out our 15 rectangles, we sorted them into our favourite colourways and cut a square out of the 5 smallest rectangles.

They look like the top of a pinafore dress. Then fold them into "W" shapes. Then use loads of double sided sticky tape and stick the outside edge of the smallest to the middle, and then the middle to the largest. The small and middle stuck rectangles will now look like a "w" and the middle to biggest rectangles will now look like a "v" shape. Do this 5 x times.

I got carried away with all the double sides sticky tape and in my eagerness to make my star book, having seen a picture of the star book displayed in all it's beauty in a complete sphere,stuck my pages together in a complete spherical star shape. With tape. Without all the cardboard book cover . Or the ribbon.
"Ta Da!" I said, proudly admiring my creation.
"Did you stick it?" Rachel said.
"Yes" I said.
"Did you already do your book covers?" she enquired.
Oops.
That would be a No, then.
Everyone giggled as Rachel pointed to my 2 as yet unused bits of cardboard and ribbon, just lying there.
Everyone else was, by now, making their book covers and their "stars" were merely star shapes in folded form, loosely tied with their ribbons, so their creation could either be a book or a star.
Theirs were not stuck, fixed, securely, like mine, with the 5 sets of rectangles fastened with the last 4 edges attached with double sided tape to form an albeit a perfect spherical star. A beautiful decoration, yes, but not a star book.
So much for it not being a race.

Thankfully, Rachel is a whizz with a scalpel knife set and my "book" was quickly restored from it's brief "star-stuck" glory.
Phew. Thank you Rachel for coming to the rescue with your tools and skill.

And here is my star book.


You cold stick photos in in before sticking the pages together and without folding it into the "w" shapes, or we thought you could hang words on ribbon like star/beautiful/unique or record some of your "star" moments in your star book.
Thank You Rachel!
You are a star!
For more fabulous ides, check out Rachel's blog here.

Friday, 7 May 2010

Thankful Girly Cake Chicks

During this last week, my friends (the Girly cake chicks) and I have been focusing on being thankful. We meet together every Thursday as we are a house group, as part of our local church. There is always cake and laughter, sometimes tears and often something creative to share.

I wrote my list on being thankful on my blog, so I had my laptop for my show and tell!
Read it here
Here are some of the things the lovely Girly Cake Chicks, are Thankful for:

First up was Jen to share. She couldn't make it so she sent it to us!
She said she was thankful for us! (Aww!) Friendship is powerful isn't it!

Emily had an interesting choice, including loo roll!!!
Her list of Thankfulness had begun with the inspiration for the book: Love Mercy, about a lady and her journey from following the "American Dream" to discovering the Kingdom of God.
So she was very thankful for Loo Roll and flushing toilets.

Abbie shared her top 10 favourite things to be thankful for and included this book that had helped her. The book that inspired this was " If you want to walk on Water, you need to get out of the boat" by John Ortberg.

We still eagerly await hearing from the lovely Rachel and Anna, who also couldn't make it.

We did have plenty of time to eat cake! my party political Election Night Cupcakes.


Isn't it great to have a chance to take a fresh look at thankfulness?

Want to share your thankful list?
Post it here with this link.

Monday, 3 May 2010

The Wedding Cake Begins

A couple of months ago, my niece asked me to make her Wedding cake.
I said yes!
The Wedding is in June.
This year.
Soon.
We chatted about ideas and she looked at some of the pictures of some of the cakes I have done previously(although a Wedding cake will be a first for me!)
She decided on a cake done in tiers and I am hoping that it will not all end in tears as I have never balanced cakes before on pillars.
She wants pillars in between the layers with fresh flowers in the bridal colours laid on top of each layer.
Lovely!
I did a little practise over the Easter holidays to see how it might all go together and remain balanced and upright and if the Bride to be liked it!She loved it and so this weekend I have begun.
The base cake is a huge fruit cake.
I used a recipe from this recipe book.
You can check out the author's blog for other fabulous ideas too.
So, today, I had a smashing time.I came up with an ingenious bowl to use.I am glad I have recently joined a gym as the cake was really heavy!My niece wants a cake topper Bride and Groom with a surprise for the Groom!
I have begun making the Bride and Groom today too.
I used the same design as for my Merry Monk I did a few months ago and am trying to be creative with colours and clothing, as the Bride would like the groom to be wearing something like this.

So I mixed, purple and blue and the Bride is coming together nicely. Just have the roses to attach next for her bouquet.
The Groom is still in pieces. I used some denture fixative powder to strengthen him. I am leaving him in pieces to dry before clothing and sticking him together.
I really really hope that he will be upright in the end - or he could look very drunk as a cake topper, photographed like that for years to come. Imagine.
Friends suggested helpfully that he could be kneeling in prayer or leaning on the Bride but I fear he might end up flat on his face!
I will keep you posted with how this project develops over these next few weeks.
The remaining layers of cake will be sponge cakes, so I will do those in several weeks' time.