Cake Pop Wedding Cake

This is the result of the conversation I had with a good friend nearly 2 years ago. It was at Charlie's christening when she tried her first ever cake pop and it blew her mind and she said 'promise me, if I ever get married, please can you make these as my wedding cake?' And I foolishly agreed! Little did I know there was no such precedent on the internet to copy! So I had to wing it and I nearly pooped my pants with the stress of it!

Not only was it the wedding cake it was also the dessert!

So I made 277 chocolate cake pop truffles (no sticks!) coated in either white, milk or dark chocolate. I used Rachel Allen's chocolate cake recipe from her Bake book for the base recipe.

I made them in batches - not all at once! And froze them.

They defrosted on the drive to the venue ready for assembly.

Then I was winging it completely! I made a cone out of silver thin card, it had a slight sheen to it. I put it on top of a cone shaped vase to give it additional support in case it fell in under the weight of itself. This wasn't necessary.

Then I assembled by sticking them on the cone with the correct coloured melted chocolate, starting at the base and working up. As it dried they were stuck fast. I filled in the gaps with some of the bridal flowers.

And gave it a feature at the top to finish it off!

It didn't use 277! It probably took about 120 so I could have gone bigger but I wasn't sure and didn't want to risk it. Fortunately it worked well like that anyway. There was enough for everyone to have pudding without disturbing the cake. Late in the night, after the partying, the odd pop started to be yanked off the 'cake' as people walked past!

If I did it again, I think I would make different size pops so that I could work down to the smaller ones near the top.

Hidden design lego brick cake

 Max's fifth birthday and a birthday treat of a trip to legoland meant the obvious choice for the cake was going to be somehow connected to lego.
Trawling the internet for ideas, I couldn't find what I wanted which was a lego brick, but that looked like it was built of lego bricks when you sliced it. I was excited by the success of the polka dot Mr Tumble cake and wanted to experiment more with hidden design cakes. So I had a think and this is what I came up with.
A 'sixer' and a 'fourer'. Basic fondant icing covered rectangular and cubic cake but....

 ...with the hidden surprise of looking like it was built of lego cake bricks!

First I baked 4 food paste coloured cakes. I used Nigella's buttermilk birthday cake recipe from Domestic Goddess which promises a stronger shape holding/weight bearing cake, which I confess I can't dispute!

I divided a square cake tin with parchment to save time. I cut off the browned edges after they had cooled.

I then cut into pieces trying to think what it would look like cut in one direction. And stuck them together with buttercream icing as mortar.

I built up three layers like this.

 This is a close up of the building brick lego, inside cake design.

Crazy Digger flapjack

This is a recipe from a friend who came to stay bearing gifts of a whole tin of these yummy flapjack type cocounutty thingys, which she called Diggers. 

I added some craisins and we renamed them Crazy Diggers;

Mix together 120g plain flour, 225g caster sugar, 100g oats and 80g desicated coconut and 80g cinnamon coated craisins. Melt 120g butter with 1 tbsp golden syrup. Mix 1 tsp bicarb with 2tbsp boiling water and put this into the melted butter mix. Combine all the above and press into a lined baking tray.

Cook in a preheated oven at 160*c for 20mins.

Allow to cool a little before cutting into small squares, then allow to cool completely before removing from the baking tray. 

Homemade Gift - Sightly rubbish (but made with lots of love) macaroons for Mothers' Day.

I decided to make macaroons/macarons for Mothers Day. I followed this recipe from Macaron fetish blogspot. I made one big batch and sub divided into multiple colours to make a rainbow of flavours.
These included;
Pink with strawberry jam
Pink with rose water scented white chocolate ganache
Orange with marmalade
Orange with orange flavoured dark chocolate ganache
Yellow with lemon curd
Uncoloured with speculoos paste
Uncoloured with almond flavoured white chocolate ganache
Uncoloured with almond flavoured white chocolate ganache and raspberry jam (bakewell tart flavour)
Uncoloured with toasted coconut sprinkle and coconut flavoured ganache
Blue with raspberry jam
Light green with mint flavoured dark chocolate ganache
Light brown with coffee flavoured chocolate ganache
Brown with chocolate ganache

I think I was over ambitious for a first time macaroon maker! Some worked and got 'feet' and didn't crack or fizzle or stick to the parchment! Most Did Not! But.... they did taste good non-the-less. They just had 'faces only a mother could love' which was just as well!

Mr Tumble's Spotty Birthday Cake (inside and out!)

The Hidden Spotty Design

Charlie's second birthday already and time to think of another cake! He is mad for Justin and Mr Tumble on Something Special (CBeebies) and so I thought we could have a go at a spotty cake. But that was too dull and so I thought I would have a bash at a hidden design cake and make it spotty on the inside too as a surprise.

I started by making the standard pound cake mix but split up the mix into 6 and added food colouring to make different colours.

I baked these in a mini muffin tray sprayed with cake release for about 15mins.

I then made another standard pound cake vanilla mix. I placed the cooked (and cooled) mini muffin cakes in a standard cake tin and spread the raw mix over and around the precooked ones. I then baked this for 22 mins (a few mins less than I ordinarily would). You have to be careful when testing it, to make sure the skewer goes in the vanilla mix not one of the spots!

I decorated with precoloured fondant icing (as the colouring is more intense than when you add it yourself).

It just so happened that the give away gift for Something Special magazine was a Mr Tumble figurine this month so I stood him next to the cake to alleviate any doubt that it was just a spotty cake!!!

Colourful mini muffins. A.K.A The Spots

The cooked 'Spots' covered in the vanilla raw cake mix, ready for their second bake.

Xmas Tree Biscuits

For the School Christmas Cake Sale, the boys and I made these Gingerbread Christmas Trees with smarties for baubles and vibrant green icing.

Mint Choc Chip Cookies (aka Grinch biscuits)

For the School Xmas Cake Stall I made some of this festive version of the best ever chewy cookie recipe (found here). For this version I added some peppermint extract, chocolate chips and a little green food colouring. Bob's your Uncle - Grinch biscuits.

4 types of Brownies

This week I had the first true test of my baking, baking for the W.I. cake stall!!!

Oh the pressure!

So I went for something I knew was a winner. Brownies and then I thought I would mix it up a bit and did 4 types:

Roasted Hazelnut (with a dash of Hazelnut syrup, usually used in our Saturday Lattes!)

Mint Choc brownies ( with a dash of peppermint extract and some green food colouring)

Regular Brownies (with white choc chunks)

Mocha Brownies (with some instant expresso powder)

The good news is that the ladies of the W.I. liked them!

Mummy school - Olympic biscuits

This weeks topic isn't very original but still worthwhile and very exciting. It is the Olympics.

We have been busy counting down & preparing for our opening ceremony feast, doing worksheets galore, playing some of the many games on the official Wenlock and Mandeville website and learning all about the countries participating , the history of the games and what games are included.

I will post a few of our favourite activities and this was certainly one. Not exactly in keeping with the ethos of health as they are cookies but they are made with wholemeal flour and malt to attempt to make them healthier than the average biscuit.

We used Nigellas cut out biscuit recipe but substituted wholemeal flour and added some instant horlicks powder for flavour rather than vanilla.

I then used my lovely new colour pastes to make the colours of the rings. Did you know the colours are chosen because every flag in the games contains at least one of these colours? 

We decorated them with our friends, learning that the 5 rings represent the 5 continents (although North & South America is counted as one which is a bit of a cheat!)

An Amazing Strawberry Cake

Nothing in the world beats a fresh Strawberry sponge. It is so wonderfully summery and British, evocative of   tea parties and the sound of cricket balls hitting bats as the game is played by gentlemen on the village green on a warm sunny day.

And it is so quick, bung all the ingredients for a simple sponge in the mixer, throw it in a couple of cake tins and bake for 20 mins. Whip up some fresh cream and slice or half the strawberries and when the cake is cool pile it up! Yum yum. And even better when you have just been out picking the strawberries yourself!

The Park Farm Cookbook

Granny is now a published celebrity chef!

For her birthday we created a photobook of all her most loved family recipes. I am please to say that she seems very chuffed with it! It is available for purchase here!!!!

I just love photobooks and all their home made and personalised gift potential.

Nursery Teacher Gift Idea

Teacher gifts are always tricky, and when it's nursery it's even trickier because there are lots of them!

 My friend is a primary school teacher and when asked what her preferred end of year gift was she said "Wine is always the winner, you can't go wrong because even when it isn't very nice you can always cook with it!"

So I give wine to the primary school teachers, but it felt a bit wrong to walk into nursery with 3 bottles of red! So I started thinking along the sweet treat line, but thought that they probably get overwhelmed with sweet treats all in one go, and had a eureka moment of making them some cookie dough that they can put in their freezer and slice and bake as the urge comes to them.

I used my best chewy cookie dough recipe (find it here) and made three flavours, cinnamon oaty raisin, peanut butter choc chip and mint choc chip.

I hadn't made the mint choc chip ones before so I had to use trial and error a bit. I made the basic choc chip (though you could use mint flavoured chocolate) and then added a bit of peppermint essence (about 2tsp) and a bit of my new paste colourings to make the perfect vivid green!!!

On a side note, I am so excited that I finally got around to getting professional paste food colourings for baking. They have changed my life - well, maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe not - my life is truly that sad!) They are such amazing value for money as you use just a tiny spec and get more colour than you get from a whole bottle of the stuff you get from supermarkets. I got mine here. I only bought yellow, red and blue as you can mix to make any colour yourself.

I dressed them up with a little poem we wrote to make it more personal and some baking/storage instructions. We did get some funny looks as we walked in with them on the last day, and some mothers asked me why I had made a green sausage but the teachers were absolutely delighted with them. I'm not sure who picked which but I think I can guess based on their three personality types!

Strictly Come Dancing Party- Glitter Ball Birthday Cake

Glitter/Mirror Ball Birthday Cake - like the Strictly Come Dancing trophy?

The other Strictly Come Dancing themed party item I made was the cake! It was ambitious (for me anyway) but I was up to the challenge, ably assisted by my mum and friend. I had to be as my sister is always upset that she can't be at my boys parties, not because she loves her nephews so (though she really does) but because she wants to eat their cakes!

Glitter Ball Cake - in progress

I forgot to take any photos while I was making it until this point!

My mum baked 2 cakes for me. Lovely chocolate cakes and she rented a soccer ball (dome) mould to make the 2 halves of the whole ball.

I then sandwiched these, one on top of the other with some chocolate butter icing. I spread the whole ball with a thin layer of butter icing to ensure the fondant icing would stick. I used grey fondant icing. I rolled a large circle, lay it over and then cut away the excess to ensure it folded around the ball to the base plate. I rolled the remnants as thin as I could and cut it into squares. I stuck these onto the original fondant layer with a little heated peach jam. 

I sprayed this whole thing with edible silver lustre spray. And sprinkled with ample edible glitter!

I decorated the plate with some black fondant shapes (from patchwork cutters) and moulded a 3 and a 0 out of pink fondant (around silver-foil forms) And stuck these to the top of the cake with cocktail sticks.

I also copied the font from Strictly Come Dancing to write my sister's name (Julia) in pink icing and stuck this on to make it look more like the Strictly Come Dancing trophy in cake form!

And ta-da!!!

The only trouble was getting it up the bumpy, windy, hilly, narrow roads to the venue on my own. Unfortunately I had to brake suddenly to avoid a car coming the other way and the top slip across the bottom and looked less than perfect on arrival!

Cheese and Chutney Picnic Loaf

We are in the process of trying to pack to move house and we have a whole shelf of homemade chutney. It seems crazy to pack a whole box just with chutney so we need to eat more! This came to me as an idea to use some up....

I made our regular 50/50 white/wholemeal loaf but decided after it's first proof to flatten into a rectangle and spread with nearly a whole jar of homemade chutney and sprinkle with some grated cheddar. Roll it up into a swiss roll type thing and then made into a ring. I left this to rise again before baking as usual.

It was lovely with a hearty stew for lunch. And it was even more delicious cold in packed lunches the next day!

There are all sorts of possibilities for this. I am thinking goats cheese with the caramelised onion chutney, blue cheese and chutney, the possibilities are endless.

Monster birthday cake

Here is the monster birthday cake I made for Max's Monster Birthday party. It was inspired thanks to this pin.

It was just a regular chocolate sponge, plus some star nozzle piped orange flavour (used squash concentrate) butter icing. The cake pops were made with a chocolate and marmalade cake I baked, mushed with chocolate fudge icing (shop bought), dipped in melted white chocolate with fondant icing eye lids, iris and pupils. The mouth is fondant icing also.

Some Easter biscuits

Thank you Aunty Sally for the wonderful Easter themed cookie cutters. We had a ball making some. Sadly the colours didn't come out quite as sweet and pastel as I hoped but fortunately my children have very bad taste in lurid biscuit colours. I must get myself some proper cake maker food colouring pastes rather than the rubbish you get in the supermarket. 

Saturday Family Breakfast - Apple pancakes with cinnamon sugar

This weekend's family breakfast involved cutting rings out of apples, before dipping them in our usual American Pancake mix (Nigella Lawson - How to be a domestic goddess) and then frying in a frying pan  like a normal pancake and dusting with cinnamon sugar (just a mix of cinnamon and sugar). We had them with some fruit, just to help us feel a bit more virtuous! They were lovely. We did both Granny Smiths and Pink Ladies and I think the Pink Ladies worked best. They flavour and texture was better.

Charlie's birthday cake - Little Charley Bear

Charlie is one tomorrow. I can't believe it. I am feeling enormously bad that we aren't having a big family party to celebrate like we did with the older two but it can't be helped when we are 500miles from our family now! At least my mum will be here as she is coming to visit.
I did still make a special cake. I made a Little Charley Bear cake. This is because the wee one is known almost exclusively as Charlie Bear or variations thereof, i.e. the Bear, Monsieur Le Bear, Little Bear, Baby Bear...
For those that don't know, there is a t.v programme on Cbeebies called Little Charley Bear, narrated by James  Cordon. This is entirely coincidental but very happily so. For Xmas Charlie got a stuffed bear from the brand that says things like "Are you there, Charlie Bear?" and " Aww Charlie, you're my best friend" which he loves.

Little Charley Bear birthday cake

So here it is. I used my fail-safe carrot cake recipe (which is posted somewhere on this blog I am sure). I used one layer as the face and one layer got cut up to make the ears and to raise the nose area. I used the cream cheese icing but put in a mix of black, red, yellow and blue food colourings to get the right shade for the fur. I also had to add more icing sugar to my usual recipe so when I piped it it was just firm enough (but not too firm) to hold the right texture to look like fur.
I melted chocolate for the eyes, inner ears and eyes.

I am really pleased with the results. Think it is one of my better ones! The only trouble is Charlie hates all types of cake (I know - will have to knock that out of him in time!) - fortunately some of my pals  have agreed to help out and come and eat some at coffee tomorrow. At least there will be a party of sorts! I'll give him a lovely big plateful of berries instead - that will make him very very happy!

Superhero party

Welcome to the Superhero Training Camp Party for Ollie's 6th birthday!

It's over - hooray! Weeks of work but it was all totally worth it when the last person left and Ollie ran into the middle of the hall and yelled, arms up - 'that was the most amazing party ever!'

The concept

It was a superhero training camp. At the start the kids were given a training record, with a checklist of all the superhero skills we were going to work on (in the form of the games to come). Information on the games we did will follow in this blog.

Decorations

I wrote Ollie is 6 using comic book pages.

I added Happy birthday Ollie speech bubbles to some cheap and cheerful plastic bunting. I downloaded Comic Book Commando, Badaboom and Casper Comic free fonts from a free font website to use for all the stationery.

I printed off pictures of all the superheroes I could think of, added a speech bubble and decorated the hall with them. They also became part of the quiz as the last question was to name as many as possible.

I cut up and painted a cardboard box to make some buildings. I used a sponge and got it painted and decorated in minutes. I used these against the stage with an old duvet cover to make a little photobooth for flying photos.

The food

The party was 2.30-4.30pm so we kept the food minimal as it wasn't technically a meal time and we were very busy with the training! We had cake, superhero cake pops, rainbow fruit kebabs and crisps.

Rainbow fruit kebabs

The cake was a vanilla sponge. Each layer was coloured red, blue, black and yellow with white buttercream icing to sandwich them and fondant icing on the outside. Fondant icing stars on sticks and a 6 made from silver foil wrapped in fondant icing.

Superhero cake

Superhero cake after cutting

The costumes

My husband and I made capes out of an old blue sheet. I was Mrs Dynomite (as seen in the you tube invite) and he was Captain Ka-boom. We painted on face masks to get into character. My dad and his wife came to help, they had outfits too - Superman and Supermac(donald)

The games/superhero training skills

Identity

First off we had to get ourselves a superhero identities. I got the children to pull a name out of hats. The first part from one hat, the second from the other.

Here is a list of the words we used;

Invincible

Incredible

Green

Super

Daring

Silver

Courageous

Electro

Galaxy

Shadow

Captain

Awesome

Steel

Star

Thunder

 Samurai

Defender

Phantom

Surfer

Avenger

Falcon

Cobra

Blizzard

Hands

Blast

Wonder

Tornado

Ninja

Star

Flash

Ollie was Phantom Thunder, Max was The Invincible Flash!

They then wrote their name on the checklist, and thought of some appropriate super powers for their name. 

We then made capes (using old t-shirts that I had pre-cut into the right shape - see previous post on superhero cape making) and the first letter of each of their name parts (which I had also pre-cut from felt/t-shirt material). They stuck them on using pritt stick, which held well enough.

Flying

The flying exercise was simply musical corners. I put a poster up in each corner of the hall, Batcave, Metropolis, Planet Krypton, Gotham City. They flew around in their capes and when the music stopped had to choose a corner to fly to. I called out a corner (without peeking) and those people were out.

Transforming

This was about speed of changing! It was also a team game so we could discuss how being a superhero sometimes means working together.

Two rows. One small suit jacket (purchased from charity shop for £1), one pair of glasses and one hat per team. They had to put all those item on and then take them off and pass to the next person in the row. The first row where they had all changed, won.

Knowledge

A quiz that I wrote.

X-ray vision

I painted some boxes to look like bricks. I put things inside and told them they had to tell me what was behind the brick wall. They could feel or smell. 

5 boxes;

Marmite, onions, peeled cherry tomatoes, lego and crushed up crisps.

Defeating villains

This game was like musical chairs. I printed off enough villains for 1 per child. I laminated these (not really necessary but I got a laminater for Xmas and wanted to use it!) and lay them on the floor in a circle. They walked around in a circle until the music stopped when they had to find one to stand on and I then said 'Batman defeats.........The Joker' etc whoever was standing on it was out until only one was left.

Kryptonite Avoidance

This game was basically pass the parcel without all the wrapping up layers. I made some kryptonite by scrumpling some aluminium foil and covering it with green tissue paper mache. If they were left holding the kryptonite when the music stopped they were out.

Power up

This was basically having a break to eat some crisps, cake pops and fruit kebabs!

Strength

This was bashing a homemade pinata of a villain. I don't think I have a photo as he was quite awful! But luckily he didn't have to look good to be a villain.

The end

We wrapped up at the end by singing happy birthday and cutting the cake. While the cake was being cut and put into party bags we presented the certificate saying they had passed their training and were now entry level superheroes!

Everyone seemed to have a good time and I am very grateful to the mum's who stayed and helped out with tea making and clearing and generally managing them when they all got a little hyper!

Thank you too to my Dad, his wife and my husband without whom the day would not have gone as well.