Cake of the Week

This cake could also be tagged as the cake that nearly led to divorce/a breakdown. Its fair to say, it hasn’t been an easy week – sometimes being a mother of 3, running my own business just catches up with me. Matched with people making a LOT of demands on me, not returning my calls/emails and people letting us down, it has made for a stressful week.

Not the fault of the couple who ordered this cake though – they were completely lovely. Very organised with pictures of themselves, swatches of the correct tartan and detailed descriptions of how they saw the cake but with enough freedom to be creative.

The cake itself wasn’t without its problems – I had to remake the middle chocolate tier as it was a massive explosion in the oven. The blue dress just didn’t sit right the first time I made it so that got redone too and I nearly forgot the pinky sandals and french manicure on the lady – Yep, every little detail was included.

I did have some lovely moments with the cake though. The couple’s 9yo son said it was the best cake he had ever seen (He can come again!) and I just loved making the man’s beard.

We had another good week of entries for Cake of the Week last week.
Sarah gave us a wonderfully simple (but so neat) piano cake.

Jackie has made a welcome return to Cake of the Week with a fabulous football cake

I promise to try to be a little more cheerful next week – another busy week ahead but hopefully it will be a good one. In the meantime, this crazy little one is bound to make things ok …

So what will you be up to this week? Cheer me up with some of your fabulous creations.

A totally new cake for me this week (Yay!) and the reason that Cake of the Week is running slightly late – Oops, we were out partying and then out with friends last night (Yep, we have some!)

Anyway, on with the cakes – I have to admit that I had to google Raa Raa the Noisy Lion as I had never heard of it. The eldest girls have moved on from CBeebies and Tara just isn’t interested in TV – weird, I know! Raa Raa seems like a friendly chap but the size of his head gave me cold sweats. Even with a creme egg body, I still struggled to keep him upright but managed to lean him next to the cake.

The colours on the cake matched Ruby’s napkins, tablecloths etc at her party – I was really pleased with the combination. The ‘tree trunk’ was made using a cake pillar and some leaves on wires poked into the middle.

The girls had the most amazing time at the party. Vi bonded with another little girl that she goes swimming with and Millie played Mum with Tara -bonus! And it was held in our close, so we didn’t have far to stagger home. Perfect.

Last week’s Cake of the Week linkup was brilliant – I’m loving exploring the new blogs I’m coming across and the creations out there are wonderful.  Kate from Five F’s gave us a wonderful sounding Lavender Cake – I’ve not used lavender in cake yet but keep intending to after the success of the Lavender Cookies. Lisa showed us her first attempt at a number 13 birthday cake for her son – she really made me laugh at her horror of the tins not having bottoms – we’ve all had the same thoughts, Lisa!

Julie from MyLifeandKids amazed me with this fantastic Peppa Pig Cake – I tend to shy away from Building cakes but from seeing this I want to give one a go.

And then I came across this from Angie at Cakesphotolife – Wow!! Angie says in her post that she is proud of this cake – and so she should be. I really must get to grips with my Giant Cupcake tin but seeing this wonder gives me the jitters. Just fantastic!

Thanks so much everyone who takes part in Cake of the Week, I completely love it that the cake community is so strong and supporting of each other.

Of all the characters, I make, Upsy Daisy has got to be one of my least favourites. There’s so much that can go wrong with her (her spikes can break if you just look at them funny) and there’s tons of detail that takes forever. Every time I make one I say, ‘Never again’ … until the next time.

Iggle Piggle is a joy to make in comparison – as long as I remember to make his body a couple of days in advance to dry (which I did this time – no Creme Eggs or Walnut Whips necessary for this one)\

So, I guess, what I’m saying is don’t expect many In the Night Garden cakes to be featured here – I’m not saying never, I’m just saying Not Often ;-)

It was a great week for the Cake of the Week linky last week:

We had a delicious looking (and flour free – does that make it gluten free?) chocolate roulade from Cara & Emma came back for a second visit with an intriguing Coconut Milk Layer Cake. Over at the Five F’s, Kate is getting familiar with sugarpaste and finding just how much colouring is needed for vivid colours with this very neat Football Cake (Tip: I always buy my deep coloured sugarpaste ready made – have spent too long mixing reds and blacks).

After posting my Peppa Pig tutorial earlier this week, I was shown an amazing Peppa and Friends cake by @JudeandOllie – I could spend days looking at the amount of detail in this cake. Wonderful!

I also want to introduce you to my new apprentice, my daughter Millie. I didn’t know I had an apprentice until yesterday when she brought me her Playdoh rose – Just shows that they watch every little thing that you do!

Link is up as usual – share with us your creations over the next week. Looking forward to seeing them.

A much less stressful week for cakes this week so why on earth was I so last minute finishing this cake? I was due to deliver it on Friday at 2pm and at 1.20PM I’m still putting the last minute touches on it. I always have been better with a deadline though.

The cake has a lovely story behind it – Joshua is emigrating to Saudi Arabia next Thursday. He was leaving his primary school on Friday and his Mum had organised a party for him and 12 of his friends to say Goodbye. Needless to say, Joshua’s Mum burst into tears when she saw the cake – I must get out of the habit of making everyone cry!

I based the camel on a picture of one from Custom Cake Designs based in Australia (but did send them a message to say I hope it was ok). I wanted to add the suitcase detail to show where they were going to and added Demerara sugar around the base to look like sand.

It’s been a bit of week for travelling, we have just had a lovely family weekend away in Yorkshire and on Thursday night we met up with some friends who were going back to New Zealand early the next morning. It is 5 years since they emigrated and they don’t expect to be back for at least another 5 to visit (not surprising with 4 kids) – Looks like we’ll just have to pay them a visit in between! ;-)

We had a new visitor to Cake of the Week last week. Many Thanks go to Emma from Emma’s Kitchen Diary who entered a wonderful looking and sounding Gluten Free Chocolate Cake – I really must try this out.

Looking forward to seeing what we get next week in Cake of the Week – we celebrate St George’s Day tomorrow – anyone got any patriotic cakes/recipes? I think I’m going to try crumpets this week (and so is my brother-in-law so let the competition commence!)

I wasn’t going to post about this cake. It was a really difficult cake to make – not just because it was massive and Disney characters are really hard to get right but because of what the cake meant. I got asked to make this cake for the 2nd birthday of a little girl who is terminally ill and will be celebrating her last birthday. Doesn’t get much worse than that, does it?

I didn’t know if it was appropriate to write a blog post about the cake and Olivia but when I got to the venue today and met her Mum & Dad, all their wonderful friends and most importantly, Olivia herself, I realised that they wanted today to be as much of a celebration as possible. The room was decorated so wonderfully – loads of balloons, Disney decorations and had such a lovely feel to it. As people were arriving it was clear that the day meant a lot to everyone, there were some gorgeous outfits, hairdos and a feeling of holding everyone up.

There were tears too – not just me, but Olivia’s mum when she saw the cake and I get the feeling that they won’t be the only ones today.

Olivia had a trip to Disney at Christmas so the party was Disney themed with every tiny detail included – There were loads of activities and sweets for the kids.

I wish Olivia, her Mum and her Dad, a special day on Tuesday for her actual birthday and am grateful for the chance to meet such inspiring people and little Olivia, who would crack even the hardest of people. xxx

Happy Easter Everyone. Hope you are having a wonderful day. We have unexpectedly come home early from our second caravan trip of the year – Violet became unwell yesterday and we didn’t want to chance her spending the night vomiting in the caravan – Of course, as soon as we got home, Violet was right as rain. We don’t mind really as we got a couple of days to spend at home relaxing. We have been to church this morning which was lovely (Tara wasn’t quite so impressed) and now we are home to carry on eating chocolate.

Our house was slightly more full than usual of chocolate this week due to a massive 4 tier chocolate wedding cake for a couple that got married on Good Friday.

They wanted the same style cake as this one but slightly different so chose it to have the corners covered by the moulded roses. Each rose was dusted with gold lustre and each tier was chocolate fudge cake. I’d completely forgotten how long it takes to do the roses (especially the white chocolate ones that melt as soon as you look at them)

For those who would like to have a go at making moulded fondant chocolate roses, heres how:

We’ve not had a Cake of the Week link up for a while, so here’s the link – don’t forget to spread the word and invite new members – I love seeing your creations!

I’m posting this week’s Cake of the Week on a Tuesday this week not because I forgot but because I’ve only just dropped the cake off in the past half an hour!

This is a repeat order for a family I have got to know. One of the Mums was 80 in December and the other Mum is 80 this week. What a healthy long living family they are.

My brief for this cake was to be fairly similar to the last cake but this time with yellow tea roses. They still wanted the bling that was on the last cake and I’m never going to argue with that, am I?

I really love the fresh spring colours and its such a beautiful day today that it seemed only right to have a happy cheery looking cake.

We had a new entry into Cake of the Week last week. Amy joined us from Cooking,Cakes and Children with this fabulous lego cake. I’m desperate to do a funky lego cake but try as I might my girls seem to want other things.

I’m just back from a child free weekend! Yes, me! I’ve spent the weekend getting pampered and spending time with 7 other lovely ladies here. The occasion was to celebrate on of my best friend, Sue’s 50th birthday. This weekend was just one of a number of outings we are having this year to celebrate Sue’s milestone age- in fact the year 2012 is to be her birthday year. I fully intend on doing the same in 2013 to celebrate my 40th birthday and invite you all to join me along the way.

I made this cake for Sue last week for her big birthday party – her theme was PINK! I love doing these sugar loops and the big polystyrene sparkly 50 seemed perfect to show off her age. Don’t worry, there’s barely a soul in St Helens who hasn’t heard about her significant age.

Last week was a brilliant week for Cake of the Week. We had some new members – Kate with a very delicious looking Victoria Sponge and Anjali’s pineapple ice-cream cake (which I MUST make!). Jackie has taken part before but wonderfully says this week, she would like to take part every week – Just look at her amazing display of bag and shoe cakes!

I’m going to try to publicise Cake of the Week a bit this week so if you see somewhere appropriate for it, give it a mention!

Right, me and my newly pretty painted toes and going to have an evening on the sofa watching last night’s Casualty – all this gadding about being relaxed has made me exhausted!

There was no choice to be made about what would be Cake of the Week this week – Baby T is One and this is her cake. A Very Hungry Caterpillar cake. It is an absolute miracle that there is any semblance of a cake as this week has been so busy – Why do I always have my babies during school holidays??

Tara’s birthday isn’t actually until tomorrow so I will save the overly emotional mummy post until then (Just wait until you see the picture lined up for tomorrow’s post though!)

We are having Tara’s birthday party later today and once again I may have ‘slightly’ over catered. I even went to the lengths of ordering a Costco cake to be on the safe side – When I saw that they have a caterpillar design I just HAD to get it – I even got Dermot’s name put on there too as it is his 34th birthday tomorrow too.

I got help doing the board for the caterpillar cake from Millie and my Mum – Its definitely a cake design that everyone can get involved in!

Anyway, hope you like it – I’m off to bed to prepare for an afternoon of partying – Don’t forget to come back for the aftermath post along with the 1st birthday post – I’ve just finished watching this week’s One Born Every Minute which seemed the only fit way to mark doing the same thing exactly a year ago!

PS Has anyone seen Millie’s Ipod? Its going to be a very quiet party without it!

Not sure what exactly to call this cake – I’m thinking its animal print icing but is it a zebra or a tiger? I had completely free reign on this cake – I suggested red and black as Vicky’s sister tells me that she isn’t very girly so pink wouldn’t do.

We decided on a star explosion but the rest was a surprise. I really wanted to do a funky board so was really pleased how it turned out – obviously it had the obligatory bling with the black stripes being sparkly.

I had a really good catch up with Gina, Vicky’s sister who used to look after Vi at nursery – Good job she is used to kids – mine were WILD that morning!

Last week’s Cake of the Week had a fabulous response – There was a real cutie from Real Suburban Mummy eating her chocolate cake and an entry from Mary Oxendine introducing us to her recipe blog.

There was an amazing Twix cake from Jackie Marum which bowled me over -I hope Jackie doesn’t mind me putting a link to her photo up.

So what have you been up to this week – I’ve currently got a loaf proving in the oven as I’m joining up with the Baking with Julia crew – I used to join in with their first book, Tuesdays with Dorie so am really excited about what I can learn as I bake through the next book.