Roisin's flower garden christening cake :)

Lemon sponge cake with lemon curd filling.

Swiss buttercream icing with handmade icing flowers and butterflies

Mmm mmmmmm

For my beautiful God-daughter

My little Raisin

:)

Thanks V Day for being such a great excuse...

Happy Valentine's Day all you luvvvvvers!!

Chocolate choc-chip cupcakes with baileys flavoured buttercream icing mmmmmm!!!

Happy Birthday Ashton!!

Mission complete.

Cake Update!!!

Getting ready for delivery now.
All he's missing is his wheels and ladder...

Cake progress...

Bloody miserable day today. Rain rain rain. Time to plan a holiday I think!!

Just an update on the progress of the fire engine cake, I am quite pleased with it so far :)

Hope he likes it! hehe.

Also, went in Prim Vintage Fashion in the city yesterday for the first time.

Oh. I wish I had been in every day since they opened lol

It's beoooooooooooooooooooooooootiful

23 years young...

And a pirate cake to celebrate :)

chocolate ship with ripple cannons, malteser cannonballs,

 rolos for barrels on the deck, and choc buttons for portholes...

all floating on a glittery blue buttercream sea...

YUM!!

Cupcakes!

The finished cupcakes for my cake and plant sale...

Yummy :)

fleurs...

Experimenting with marzipan flowers

and my new 'primrose' cutter :)

simnel cake mmmmm...

Happy Mothering Sunday!

tonight's tea...

meatballs in bbq sauce...

a success :)

It's that time again...

Valentine's day is just around the corner...

Unfortunately my other half is going away on a course! :(

and he hasn't been well either,

so we had an early celebration instead

with indian food (made by me) and

chocolate cupcakes (not made by me this time! thanks marks n sparks)

Have a good one!

Need. Warmth. !!!

Isn't it about warming up time?? I thought these nice warming images might help. Mulled wine and pretty flowers in comfortingly warm colours...

It's funny how quickly we get sick of snow in this country. I think most people are excited about it for the first day. After that it suddenly just becomes a massive chore :p Good job it's something of a rarity here then.....

Ye olde Crimbo

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas,

saw a lot of loved ones and ate a lot of lovely things!!

white christmas please!

For some time now I have been jealous of the americans, and their beautiful white iced cupcakes. This has posed a problem for me... because it always looks suspiciously like butter icing, so not just water and icing sugar or royal icing which will of course go very hard.....

However, using butter has always given me a yellowy butter icing (obviously),

so how do they do it??

Apparently it's because they use shortening, and some complicated recipe with egg whites and cream of tartar or corn syrup and all that kinda jazz.

This kind of icing does not appeal to me. YUCK. Apparently it does not give a great flavour, and also bestows a lovely vaseline-esque coating on your tongue.

So - I came up with a solution. The coconut oil solid cooking stuff that M's mum gave me! So yeh it tastes of coconut, but what could be wrong with that. So today I tried it out. Chocolate cupcakes topped with my usual butter icing recipe, only I used this crazy coconoil stuff instead of butter

mm mmmmmmm tasty

and super super white

yes!!!!!!!!

Want one?

Pony's birthday!!

Presents for Pony :)

I really really enjoyed making these cupcakes - Purple is such a satisfying colour to make!

And I really enjoyed our day trip to Cambridge...

Although next time I want to go punting!!!

yummy...

homemade tomato soup mm mmmm

Tomatoes and chillies galore!

The last of the harvest! :)

Sorting out in the garden today. Sooo many chillies!!!!! The red ones are ok because they dry out really well. I've had trouble with the green ones - so far they've just sort of shriveled and gone horrible. so the answer = chopping them up and drying them out in the oven. So far I've spent half an hour chopping, the picture above shows my progress. Ouch.

I'm trying to alleviate my jobless boredom, and it does seem to be working...

Have already made a big sweet potato chilli and a beef stew today. Now I just need some people to come over and eat it up!

My first ever meringues!

Mmmm perfect meringuey goodness... perfectly chewy in the middle. mmmmm sugar coma...

These gladioli are the perfect autumn colour - they look a bit peachy here but actually they're a lovely autumn orange colour. I'm quite happy about autumn at the moment, (I'm not too cold yet) and sooooo glad it rained today!

Ganesh

Had a bit of a move around yesterday... Decided to put a couple more things out to look at :)

Mum asked me to make her some cakes for something she's doing later - They're called 'Soul Cakes' - quite nice actually, more biscuits than cakes though...
They use 3 egg yolks, but not the whites so decided to use them up making meringues!!!! Have always wanted to make them, and they didn't disappoint. FunFunFun to make :) They're in the oven now cooling off, so will maybe put a picture on later when they're ready to eat mmmmm