baking blog

I gave up violin long before piano. I found it tricky and not very rewarding. I guess I was young and it didn’t sound good right away. Don’t get me wrong, I looooved carrying around the case like a teeny 1920s gangster and using that little amber block of rosin (?!) on my bow, just not so much the playing. At school I was always mega impressed with the string section of the orchestra, which included my sister! (she played the violin a lot better and for a lot longer). It always sounded so amazing. Really good violin to me should look like it’s effortless, not all scrunched up faces and squeaky noises like my attempts.

I was asked to make a violin themed birthday cake this past week for a 17^th birthday. The cake itself was four layers of chocolate sponge filled with milk chocolate buttercream. I made these vanilla violin biscuits to line the outside of the cake and royal iced them in three different …

Warning: This post may contain spoilers…

I think I was pretty late to the Game of Thrones party. A friend insisted I watch it a year ago, she couldn’t understand how I wasn’t in to it already. It took me less than a month to catch up on the first five seasons and I’ve been obsessed ever since. I’ve been dying to make a GOT cake for ages. I really really wanted to make a throne and drip some blood. For the cake itself I made a classic Victoria Sponge layered on to a black cake board. It’s nowhere near the amount of blood shed on the show but for the one on the cake I thought I’d do my new favourite thing, colouring white chocolate ganache for drips.

I made the throne a couple days in advance so that it would have time to dry between each stage. It wasn’t toooooo tricky structurally and I went about making it roughly based on …

My friend Alexia is a floral rockstar. She has created the most stunning floral display for the make up company Cosmetics A La Carte for the ‘Chelsea in Bloom’ competition as part of the Chelsea Flower Show. The theme this year was ‘Carnival’ and she dreamt up these amazing frames which house bright flowers, painted palms and the make up packaging itself bursting with carnations. I love all the colours and the shiny compacts and lipstick cases which catch the light and reflect the colours of the flowers.

I was asked to make some little treats to be offered in the shop all week to match the theme. I made mini Victoria sponge cupcakes in bold colours topped with tiny fondant palm leaves, which I …

My grandmother is pretty damn amazing. Today she turned 93. She’s super funny, has great chat (she tells the best stories, I especially like the ones about things she ate as a kid in New York) and she has more energy for life than I do at 26.

She has a thing for pink and flowers so that’s normally the theme for her birthday cakes. This year I wanted to use fresh flowers and something other than roses, which I’d done for her before. I fell totally in love with these pink-edged hydrangeas. Hydrangeas aren’t the wisest option for cake flowers – they need ALL the water and wilt super quick. I combated this by decorating the cake with flowers right before I took it over to her. Definitely don’t try and …