birthday cupcakes

It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I wrote anything here. In fact I wasn’t even sure I would remember how to upload anything or even write something that wasn’t a short email or Instagram caption. I’ve been having a little break after Christmas and the start of a New Year is better time than any to look back on some of the highlights of last year and take time to appreciate it all.

I’m going to start with the fact that …

How YOOOOOOU doing?

I’ve pretty much spent most of my life watching Friends. I started watching it when I was pretty little. Although I obviously didn’t understand all the jokes way back when (the fake laughing in the background was the judge of when to laugh) it’s one of those programmes that I didn’t stop enjoying the older I got, it just got better.

We had some of the first series on VHS when I was young and when I was sick and off school I would watch Friends. That’s just what ya do. I must have seen those ones thousands of times. I remember we used to get my Aunt who lived in America to tape them and send them over as the episodes aired there way before the UK (extra bonus: she used to cut out the ads, probably quite a skill in the 90s).

It’s one of those shows that you can watch with whoever, whenever and it doesn’t stop being funny. I’d watch it with my grandparents, when I got home from school, when I got home from Uni, even now when I’m taking a baking break…It’s full of great characters, silly catchphrases and will always be one of my faves.

A fellow Friends-lover Shannon had her birthday last week so I made her these to celebrate. It was so much fun making all the little Friends icons, especially the …

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 …

Think you’re excited about the Rugby World Cup? You should speak to my Dad. Our house has reached a fever pitch of World Cup excitement. It has been filled with wall charts, rugby ball and shirt balloons and pretty much every game has been screened one after another. We went to the opening ceremony and England v Fiji match last weekend and it was so much fun. With an England scarf wrapped round my neck and beer in hand I cheered along with everyone else and was totally caught up in the excitement. I love a World Cup, but this is better because it’s Rugby which is way better than Football – it’s way more aggressive, there’s always a bit of bloodshed and even sometimes shorts fall down whiiiiiiich is always funny (see South Africa v Japan). To celebrate I made these cupcakes ahead of …