This Month – No April Showers, please

At the risk of sounding very old… Is it April already? Seriously!

As usual, my March plan didn’t quite go as expected. Although the important things got done: wedding cake, fundraising, lots of dancing to 70s tunes…, I am still feeling a bit disappointed with my slow progress with this blog. I have a few things I know I want to do for definite this month but, with even less time than before, it’s going to be a bit of a task. (And I still need to catch up with what I did last month! Eeek!)

So what’s going on this month?

Work

In my non-baking life, I am a mere civil servant. I say ‘mere’ but I actually adore my proper job nearly as much as I adore cake. I consider myself to be very lucky to work for English Heritage and to spend my working life in the most fascinating places.

My current work home is Mount Grace Priory in North Yorkshire. It offers the best preserved ruins of a Carthusian monastery, a beautiful 17^th century commonwealth house with 19^th century Arts & Crafts interiors, beautiful gardens, and an angry goose. It’s my spiritual home; the place where I can actually feel my soul being in a state of complete peace. Really.

If you are ever in the Yorkshire area, I urge you to go there, not just because I work there and we need the visitors, but because it is a truly fascinating place and immensely underrated. A hidden gem, if  you like. 

Due to budget cuts a couple of years ago, for 6 months of the year I work a measly total of 14 hours a week. This Easter weekend, however, marked the beginning of our summer season and will see me back at work 5 days a week like a proper person. This means that I now have to fit in cakes on my evenings. I have a feeling I will be pining for 14 hours weeks very soon…

Cakes

I’ve got a few cakes to do this month and I’m looking forward to them. There’s a Paris themed one for a 50^th birthday, giant cupcakes, my VW Campervan one (which was moved to this month,) golden anniversary cakes, and a cake for my boyfriend’s birthday which I can’t wait to do!

Left to right: cake my own, Paris hearts, Eiffel cake topper

I also hope I find some time to do some baking and hopefully bake something a little different compared to the masses of sponge cakes I have been doing lately!

Practice Makes Perfect

In August I am doing a wedding cake for a friend of a friend. I am very much looking forward to it because if I were to have a wedding cake it would be just like this one. That means, however, that in the next few months I need to get really good at royal icing! So, in order to take on this quest, I have bought Eddie Spence’s The Art of Royal Icing. This guy is a royal icing guru; MBEs don’t lie. 

Left to right: black icing, white wedding

Aside from needing it for the cake, whenever I use royal icing, I always dream of being an expert in its ways, so hopefully this will help me towards that and I will find the time to document my progress on here!

I wish you all the very best of sunny Aprils! Happy caking! J

Vicky xx

Happy (I know it was 2 days ago) Easter: Cute Easter Cake

Yes, yes, I realise I am a little late...Again! But it's never to late to share something sweet.

I've never been asked to do an Easter cake before and loved doing my very first one for a friend who was having a bit of an Easter family gathering.

I was left pretty much to my own devices with this one, which I enjoy, and came up with this cake topped with spring animals, Easter chicks and some chocolate eggs for full Easter effect!

To be honest, when it was finished, I quite wanted to keep it. I've never had an Easter cake before. *Tear*

It was a simple sponge cake filled with raspberry jam and white chocolate buttercream: a combination that always works well together.

This Easter has been a learning curve, I think people are now more open to alternatives to chocolate eggs, or perhaps want to have their cake and eat their chocolate eggs too. Either way, I need to find time to come up with quirky Easter treats and put them out there to the world for next year.

For now, however, my Easter Victoria sponge did the job :)

Vicky xx

Lalaloopsy Birthday Cake Pops

I've said before how much I love doing children's cake and these super sweet cake pops were no exception!

 

I was asked to do some cake pops based on the Lalaloopsy dolls. That's La-la-loopsy. (We had to ask about 5 times before we got that.) Lalaloopsy is a collection of rag dolls, each with their own personally and theme. I have to be honest: I want one. Or would like to be one when I grow up.

 

If  you were to Google these little ladies, you would find a huge variety of colours and hair styles, so it was quite a task to pick the ones I wanted to re-create!

My favourite things about these little ares are:

1. That they are really slightly creepy. Little rag dolls with button eyes? Sounds like something that could come after you in a horror film. But strangely I found that to be part of their charm.

2. It was amazing to see these come to life (.... :/) once the details of the eyes, cheeks and little stitched mouths were put in place.

I have ambitions to get these faces on a sugar cookie to really try to capture the details and try out even more colour and hair style combinations!

Big thank you to the little lady who asked me to do these; I had a blast! :)

Vicky x

Mother's Day Love

After being full of promises at the beginning of the month, it seems I have dropped back into old habits and am being very tardy with my blog posts. This month has, so far, been a nightmare, and pressure has got to me a lot. But it is for this reason that it is so important for me to get this particular post out into the world. It’s nearly a week late but it is a post dedicated to my lovely Mum!

Awww isn’t she cute!?

I am one of those people who is lucky enough to be able to say that my Mum is also a friend; her kindness, patience, strength, and constant and unyielding love make me super proud to be her daughter and others proud to be her friend. And she's well silly! :)

These are all things I hope that I have inherited from her.

I also hope that I have inherited her creative talent. My Mum has been cake decorating for a long time, and I can still remember her going off to classes on a Wednesday night. She still has the same icing tool kit with the remnants of a sticker on it that I stuck on when I was little.

All her practicing has paid off because I think she is fab! She has created so many beautiful cakes (some featured in this post) and the same people still ask her to do cakes, which is a testament to her talents. I know that if I need advice on anything with my own cakes, from how to make sugarpaste flowers, to how big a cake needs to be to feed a certain number of people, she’ll know. 

One thing that I have undoubtedly inherited from her is a relaxed approached to any task. Now, that could sound like a positive thing but it’s not so much…

Her relaxed approach is that things need doing any they’ll get done whether you do them 2 days before or 2 hours before. It always makes me laugh when people ask her how their cake is doing and she hasn’t even put it in the oven yet. Her answer? “Everything is going to plan.”

My interpretation of this, however, is to take too long doing stuff, get tired, get grumpy, get annoyed at my work, cry, and tell her I’m quitting. All this happened last week when I was trying to get some orders done for Mother’s Day and I simply hadn’t left myself enough time, totally underestimating what I needed to do.

I wanted to quit. 

But she was there on the other end of the phone telling me just to breathe, that I had more time than I thought, I was my own worst enemy and people would love them. I am currently still working on listening to her when she tells me such things (I have perfectionism issues) but knowing that her main concern is my well being and not the cake, always makes me feel better.

So I would like to dedicate this post to Mama Conroy, the absolute rock of our, more often than not crazy, household. My brother & I would be lost without her.

Vicky xx 

This Month: Mad March

I spent my last day of February in my bed in agony from a migraine while my Mum expertly finished 2 cakes and an order of cupcakes on her own after being at work all day. She is a true superstar. It is for this reason I have decided to start my March today, Monday, and I have lots to be getting on with!

Cakes 

We have a few fantastic cakes to be getting on with this month. The biggy being a wedding cake with a Superhero theme! Love it! What I love most about it is how much it suits the bride & groom, which I think is so important in a wedding.

Clockwise from left to right: http://pinterest.com/pin/37365871878581422/, http://pinterest.com/pin/218283913159694379/. http://pinterest.com/pin/117375134010391277/.  http://pinterest.com/pin/500392208567214442/

I’ve also been asked to do a VW Campervan cake. The best bit? I get to pick colour and surf board style. Yes!

Obviously Easter is coming up so I hope to get creating some nice treats. I love the pastel colours associated with Easter so am excited to work with those and lots of pretty patterns and cute animals.

Clockwise from top left to right: http://pinterest.com/pin/257268197434377363/, http://www.bakingdom.com/2011/04/chick-bunny-sugar-cookies.html, http://www.flickriver.com/photos/donna_makes_cakes/3963355313/, http://unbelievablysweet.tumblr.com/post/20610849206/recipe-easter-egg-cookies-by-pillsbury-com

Finally, have you seen this cake floating around? I keep seeing it everywhere after my brother first showed me it and absolutely love it. I was then shown it by a family member, and then, very randomly, by a work colleague. I’m taking it as a sign and would love to give it a go this month!

Isn't it fabulous? Sadly, I have no idea who the original owner is but I urge them to come forward and share their genius!!

Charity

Throughout March, Kidney research UK is encouraging people to ‘Go Purple’ for World Kidney Day on 14^th March. I will be ordering my fundraising pack very soon and making as many cakes as possible to raise as much money as possible for kidney research. I'll be sure to let you know how I get on and why this is so important to me.

You can find out more about World Kidney Day here: http://support.kidneyresearchuk.org/gopurple

https://support.kidneyresearchuk.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=606

Crazy Disco

Towards the end of the month I will be heading off to the exotic destination of Skegness. Armed with only my best friend (the other Tallulah,) a glittery frock and plenty of wine, I will be joining my mum, aunties, and their friends for a 70s weekend. I’m making it sound like I’m being forced but we’ve been a couple of times and always had great fun. I’m a big lover of Motown music so it’s just an excuse to dance the night away to some of my favourtie tunes, made even better by wearing sequins and shiny, white, knee-high boots, because let’s face it, on what other occasion can you do that? 

Left: last year's outfit - jumpsuit city, right: this year I'm going with sparkles!

So happy March to you all! I will leave you with a video of one of my favourtie Motown songs by Martha & The Vandellas. Enjoy!

  Vicky x