Wednesdays are becoming my favourite day of the week. As I mentioned before we have been invading our friends house to watch Mad Men every Wednesday evening since the season began. There’s something nice about a mid week gathering that allows you to pause and relax with friends. Last week I made no contribution to the evening and merely consumed everything I was offered. So this week I thought I would make something special. I didn’t have any thoughts on what this would be until I was in the supermarket and picked up the June issue of Olive Magazine. A recipe for strawberry and pistachio cake caught my eye immediately, mostly due to the gorgeous colour combination. The cake was super simple to make with few steps and clear instructions. The only change I made was to make it in a round tin. I also went a bit overboard arranging strawberries on top. It was somewhat therapeutic. I hardly use pistachio when baking but loved the texture it added to the cake and it was great with the fresh strawberries and frosting.
There are people in my life that I just know I’m going to be friends with forever. I know this because I can be far away from them and only exchange a few funny texts from time to time, but when we do get together it’s like they were never more than a few streets away. The distance doesn’t really matter. They are equally as important to me as the friends that I love and see most days, but it’s special when they come home to visit and I get to see their faces. Andrew is one of these people. I’ve known him for most of my short life and it was really annoying that he decided to move to Dubai to work. Stupid. He came back to visit this week and requested some baked goods and blog love so I made him these. Vanilla cupcakes with maple syrup frosting topped with crispy streaky bacon. I wanted to make these for a couple of reasons. They reminded me of the road trip we took across America a couple of years ago and being at an IHOP. Also because we laughed at him a lot for going via Canada to meet us in LA for the roadtrip. Stupid. So the maple bacon combo was perfect for reminding him of this. These cupcakes have the same feeling as pancakes, fluffy and kind of comforting. One of the best things about making these was the smell of bacon that lingered in the kitchen all morning, my favourite. If I made them again I would add some blueberries to the vanilla cake to make it extra pancake like. I hope he liked them and comes back again soon!
Little Bird are a company who share an office with Found, where my sister works. One of their little birds, Rhianon, is flying the nest this week and so these cupcakes are a farewell to her. When I agreed to make these cupcakes I was unsure of what I was going to do. I pretty much instantly fell in love with the logo and colour combo of the company. It’s just so darn cute. So that was my starting point. But, it wasn’t until I sat down with a pile of fondant icing, some cutters and their website up in front of me that it all came together. The turquoise and brown together is quite striking but to me is softened by the scalloped topper, simple bird and flower. I opted for chocolate cake to keep with the colours and turquoise vanilla frosting. I hope she has a brilliant last day and enjoys her cupcakes!
I seem to think that making birthday cakes for family and friends is the best time to experiment and try different things. I guess it’s not really a bad thing, it allows me to learn new techniques and make a cake special to that person. This cake was for a dear family friend of ours. We’ve known her forever and she’s so kind and lovely and one of my favourite people. I made her this giant 3- tiered pink cake made up of layers of vanilla sponge, raspberry jam and vanilla frosting. I covered the top with fondant flowers which I left to dry in cupcake tins so they stuck up and then painted them with edible food colouring. I finished it by wrapping it in a matching pink bow. I hope she enjoys it and has a special birthday. Happy Birthday Azra! x
I was really pleased when Ginetta from Graphic Express asked me to make some cupcakes for BNI Elmbridge. BNI is a business networking organisation that meet once a week to exchange business leads, share their business experience and have breakfast. Sounds good right. I made these yummy cupcakes topped with the BNI logo in vanilla and chocolate with Nutella frosting. I hope they liked them and all have a successful day of business today, fuelled by cupcakes.
Everyone should be provided with cake on their birthday. Fact. These cupcakes are for our lovely friend Sharon to celebrate her birthday today. I wanted to make her something pretty with a bit of sparkle. I made vanilla cupcakes and topped them with glitter and circle sprinkles, which I’m slightly obsessed with. I hope they brighten up her day and distract her from the blizzard which seems to be happening outside. Happy Birthday Sharon, have a wonderful day! x
These cupcakes are for a guy called Keith at my sister’s work who is leaving. He’s such a lovely guy who has been at Found the longest out of anyone and I’m sure is gonna be majorly missed. I used gold foil cases and made both vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, because I never know which people prefer. For the toppers I did this funny little bear drawing by hand, scanned it in to the computer and coloured him. Then I had the image made in to cake toppers. Let me explain the drawing…I’ve always liked doing funny animal drawings, they kind of really amuse me. So as Keith plays the ukulele and they are so tiny I chose a big bear to exaggerate this. He also does KaraUke. Yep that’s right karaoke to ukulele. Yep awesome. We should all go. Don’t worry, I’m aware that this is totally not a normal cake to give someone, but I think its kinda cute and I hope he likes it!
I saw this stacked cookie cake a while ago and knew this was the cake for my cookie loving Cousin. He has been known to eat cookies as fast as I can make them and ate about 30 in his last sitting. As I didn’t think it was a birthday cake without the cake I added a single tier to act as a sort of pedestal for the stack of cookies. Naturally I made this in a chocolate chip sponge. I used mini chocolate chips in the whole thing which allowed the cookies to be nice and thin and used this recipe. I used vanilla frosting to cover the cake and in-between the cookie layers. To get the cookies roughly the same size I put the cookie dough in the fridge to chill a bit and then used an ice cream scoop. I then flattened them between baking paper.
I really like the minimal look of this cake and I just used one white candle on top. The best thing about this cake is the slice that you get. It’s epic. So huge it only just about fit on our plates and I definitely shared mine. To get the cookies to cut like a cake I put the whole cake in the fridge for a few hours. This makes the cookies softer and lets you cut into it. I loved making this cake and I think there are enough cookies here to keep my cousin quiet for a bit. Happy Birthday Fabian!
I like to think that the people I love already know how much I love them. But in my opinion you can never go too wrong with giving people cake to show them just how much.This is a really simple easy cake which combines two Valentines classics, strawberry and chocolate. It’s a marble cake with part chocolate and part pink vanilla sponge, topped with fresh strawberry frosting. To decorate I sprinkled some edible rose petals. It has a lighter feel than your normal Valentine sweet treat and I will definitely be sitting down to a cup of tea and slice of this with loved ones on Thursday.
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
