This week my sister came home with the Bake it in a Cake book for me. It was such a lovely surprise and after one flick through the book, I knew I wanted to make this recipe for my Dad’s birthday cake. My Dad loves cherry pies (I made him one here) so I knew he would love to find one inside his cake. I scaled the recipe up to birthday size and used a cherry pie enough for two people so it would fit in the cake tin. If I had more time I would have made my own, but this one worked well and stayed intact inside the cake. I kind of expected the pie to sink but when he cut it it was perfectly suspended inside. I really didn’t know what to expect when making this cake and watched the oven the whole time it was in there, half waiting for it to explode. The only problems I had were that it slightly sank at the top and the cake was a tiny bit less baked around the pie. However, it tasted delicious and the frosting was amazing. It was vanilla, but flavoured using the pod instead of essence which gave it a lovely taste, almost like custard, and cute black freckles. Wanting to keep the outside simple and not give away the inside I chose to follow this tutorial and create scalloped sides which was simple to do and gave it a neat finish. Dad loved his birthday cake and I loved seeing his face when he saw the hidden pie. Happy Birthday to the best Dad x
Today is my birthday. Woo! To celebrate, tonight I’m going to Hot Tub Cinema. To coordinate with this my Mum made this hilarious birthday cake. I love it. It’s probably the funniest cake ever I’ve ever seen. I especially love that it combines two birthday essentials, cake and jelly. The jelly was even lemonade flavour. So so good. Thank you so much Mum and everyone else that has made my birthday so special! x
I’m really over excited that my friend Jade is staying with me at the moment from South Africa. I decided that I would make her a birthday cake for every birthday we haven’t spent together since she left. So I made six 6 inch mini cakes using some of her favourite flavours. They were Victoria Sponge, Chocolate, Coffee, Coconut, Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Fluff and Banana with Baileys frosting.
I was recently asked to make some cupcakes for our neighbours’ daughter’s 3rd birthday party. This was a lovely task for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was great to do something for our neighbours who are really nice, and happen to have a couple of the cutest kids I’ve met. Secondly, I got to make something girly and pink which I hardly ever do. Her party was fairy themed so I covered them in a lot of edible glitter and pink stars. I was also really pleased to finally have a reason to use the large pink shiny cake board I’ve been eyeing for a while. Happy Birthday Tillie! I hope you had a lovely party.
Making my Grandmother’s birthday cake is always one of the highlights of my summer. Partly because I like doing something nice for her and partly because she is always so pleased with whatever she receives. Previous cakes for her can be seen here and here. Grandy has always loved lemons. I was told of how she would pick them as a little girl and eat them straight from the tree. To balance out the lemon and stick the two cakes together I filled it with raspberry jam. I’m pretty sure this was my first fully frosted cake so with a little practice hopefully I can get it a bit smoother. Happy Birthday Grandy!
Sociates Cupcakes by Afternoon Crumbs from Sociates on Vimeo.
My cupcakes beautifully captured by Sociates! It can be viewed much larger here.
My friend Steve, who made my lovely website for me just had his birthday. I wanted to make him something special and when I found these QR code cupcake toppers I knew that was what I wanted to do for him. QR (Quick Response) codes can be scanned and read like a barcode, and in this instance links you straight to the Sociates website. I ordered them from here along with a set of his company’s logo. I can’t recommend the edible toppers enough. The company was really helpful, we discussed what I wanted and they made the code. The toppers were also easy to use and arrived super quick. I really like this approach to cake decorating, definitely more interactive than sprinkles.
Due to my final university work I’ve only been doing some essential baking, such as birthday cakes for close friends and family. Including this gift for Ginetta, whose birthday it was this week. Not wanting to leave the stand empty I made these mini vanilla cupcakes, because who doesn’t love a partly edible present…
Yesterday was my best friend Becki’s birthday. Whenever we get cupcakes she always orders red velvet so I knew that it was her flavour of choice. I’ve never made it before so when I saw that the mix was really red I assumed that the cake would turn out the same. This was not the case. However it tasted amazing with the classic cream cheese frosting.
I’ve been promising my cousin I would make this for him for a while. Today was his birthday so I finally attempted it. His request was Mountain Dew cake. It felt weird adding a soft drink to cake mix and to frosting. I vaguely followed this recipe but doubled it and altered it along the way, tweaking to taste. It is a strange mixture of lemon, lime and a hint of orange which kind of actually tastes dew-ish. It does however have that sickly charm that Mountain Dew has so I guess I got it kind of right.
