roses

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 …

Yesterday was my Grandmother’s (Grandy’s) Birthday. She loves whites, yellows and greens and whenever we buy her bunches of flowers it’s always in these colour tones. I wanted to replicate the birthday bouquet we were going to give her as the theme for her birthday cake. To do this I …

It’s been a few weeks now since the Hampton Court Flower Show was on but I’ve been waiting to share this post until I made this cake. I had the best day at Hampton Court with my flower-loving friend Alexia, and while the weather wasn’t amazing, the displays sure were. We wandered through the show gardens, browsed the stalls and enjoyed a demonstration from top florist Simon Lycett. I went away feeling super inspired by all the incredible plants and flowers. Their textures and colours were fascinating but mostly I ended up looking at everything and wishing it was made out of sugar. Typical. While in the rose tent one particular flower grabbed my attention for …

This week my friend Alexia took me to the flower market with the intention of picking up something to decorate a cake for my Grandmother’s 91st birthday. Last year I made sugar flowers so this year I thought I would opt for some fresh ones. We got up early, had a wander around and ate some killer bacon sandwiches. The market smelt uh-mazing and there was so much choice. However, as soon as I saw a bouquet of candy coloured roses I knew they were the ones. They featured …