Ealing venue
Read MoreA European Buffet Table!
just for fun
Read MoreDeath star creme eggs and other eggy treats.
This Easter, I decided I really really NEEDED to make Creme Eggs. And if you are going to make a Creme Egg, why wouldn't you upgrade the design? I decided I had to make them in the shape of the Death Star, and couldn't rest until I'd managed it.
Death Star Creme Egg!
To make it, you just need a death star ice cube mold. You can find them on amazon for a few pounds. (They make excellent, enormous, ice cubes by the way!)
I dusted the inside with Rolkem silver lustre, but you could skip that bit if you want it to look chocolatey. Then you need to coat each half with melted chocolate. I found the easiest way was to fill both halves with chocolate, then leave it for 10 mins or so, and pour it out. You need quite a thick layer so that it doesn't crack when you de-mold. Leave it for a good while to set in the fridge till it's really tough and then ease it out of the mould.
Then I filled with delicious creme egg gloop. I used this recipe: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/18/how-we-made-creem-eggs-chocolate-easter
Just spoon the white gloop into both halves, then add a bit of yellow in the centers. Then calmly and probably messily, join the two halves together. I used royal icing as glue.
Boom!
I also made the traditional pimped eggs for the family - I tart up some basic easter eggs with modelling chocolate. This year we had: Roger Moore, a Porg, Frida Kahlo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and Hedwig.
Happy Easter!
Rotten Eggs: a villains themed buffet table
I present the third annual "New Years Eve buffet table quiz round"!
This year, our fancy dress party theme was "Heroes and Villains". We had a quiz, and the first round was to spot as many villains as possible hidden within the buffet table. See how you do.
NB I think it's completely acceptable to offer guests a buffet of Baby Bels, chewing gum and candy cigarettes. This is what passes for hors d'oeuvre around these parts. We are very sophisticated. And, I might add, someone did eat the orange/cheesestring combo. Furthermore I saw at least two children (aged between 9 and 13) "smoking" the cigarettes the wrong way round. Can't work out if this is excellent or terrible parenting.
One point if you name the character depicted. Half a point if you can't name them, but know what they're from. Answers below.
1. Chicken drumsticks in a "Los Pollos Hermanos" box = Gus Fring (Breaking Bad)
2. Sausages = Mr Punch
3. Dips = Daleks (Dr Who)
4. Crisps inside an angry looking TV set = Evil Edna (Willo The Wisp)
5. A tube of Pringles = Kim Jong Un
6. An orange, with cheese string hair = Donald J. Trump
7. Pineapple and cheese hedgehog hair = Side Show Bob (The Simpsons)
8. Baby Bels = Hal (2001 A Space Odyssey)
9. Cheeseboard = Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde...or as close to their names as you can manage! (the ghosts from Pacman).
10. A house full of popcorn that has squashed a witch = Wicked Witch of the East (not West! I want the squashed witch!) from the Wizard fo Oz
11. Scary red balloon cake pops = Pennywise, from It
12. A romantic meal of tuna bake, followed by apple pie and home-made custard ("of course") ends with blood on the kitchen tiles = Rob Titchener (The Archers). So shocked that none of my friends or family got this one.
13. Bubblegum = Balthazar Bratt (Despicable Me 3)
14. Chocolate coins = Scrooge McDuck (Duck Tails)
15. Chocolates with popping candy = Darth Vader
16. Candy Cigarettes = Nick O'Teen (1980s Superman baddie)
17. Mini Donuts (wedding rings?) in a hat = Papa Lazaru (League of Gentlemen). YOU'RE MY WIFE NOW, DAVE.
18. Lollipops! Lots of lovely lollipops! = Kiddy Catcher (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)
19. Matchmakers = Slenderman (Creepy Pasta) ....one for the under 40s!
20. Jelly oozing through the doors of the Colonial Cinema = The Blob
21. Oreo fudge throne with cocktail stick swords = Joffrey (Game of Thrones)
22. Gingerbread hotel with maze = The Overlook Hotel (the Shining). The hotel is sentient, and evil, so it's the Overlook that I want not Jack Torrence!
23. Tube of smarties = Isombard King Kong Brunel (Dangermouse)
24. Glass of orange juice = O.J. Simpson
25. Napkins = Cal Hockley (Titanic)
26. Plates, disguised as a work by acclaimed 1980s Australian artist, Helen Daniels = Mrs Mangel (Neighbours)
Pimped Easter Eggs!
This post has nothing to do with wedding cakes - but everything to do with having fun with your food!
Every year I give my family's easter eggs an up-grade. I've blogged one instructions (very loose instructions....) before, click on the "Easter Eggs" link (at the bottom, or over there --->) to find it.
Here are this year's eggs!
Golden Snitch egg...with edible wings!!
Asterix Easter Egg!
Wilson from castaway easter egg!
Have a lovely Easter!
Food Standards Agency
I've had my routine food safety inspection and I'm delighted to say I got the full 5 stars!
I think it's important to brag about this becuase I work from home. Many, many cake makers work from home, but that doesn't stop people some times assuming that it's therefore a 'hobby'. This is a full-time business and my sole income. I am registered, insured, and all the rest of it. If you get your cake from a home-based business then it's completely acceptable to ask what their food hygiene rating is. If they haven't got one then run a mile! A good food hygiene rating means you have safe working practices and treat your catering business seriously.
The advantage of buying from a home-based business is, of course, that the price of your cake doesn't include shop overheads. Also, I don't take on too many orders so yours will always get the attention it deserves.
Hampton Court Palace
A quick post about Sunday! I don't need to tell you that Hampton Court Palace is beautiful, nor that it has a remarkable historical connection with the institution of marriage. Humm. Well, if we learned one thing from Henry VIII it would be that it's quality not quantity that counts when it comes to weddings!
I was lucky enough to be invited to the Hampton Court Palace approved suppliers wedding showcase. I took a few of the girls (Maya, Tootsie, Delilah and Greenery, to be precise) and a huuuuge pile of slices of chocolate and salted caramel cake.
I met LOTS of lovely couples - one couple who'd only been engaged for a week! - and lots of really incredible suppliers, including but not limited to: Gatsby-inspired girl group The WIld Tonics, Toastmaster Ian Low, Stationers Coral and Slate and Florists Lavender Green and Violets and Velvet.
If you are getting married at Hampton Court Palace then get in touch. I deliver and set-up there for free!
Literally Literary Wedding Cakes
I've writen about naked and semi-naked cakes recently, but my real love is for iced cakes. Once a cake is iced, you can do almost anything with it, decoration-wise, as the icing can take all sorts of pimping! One of my favourite quirky ideas is my 'book club' cake.
I first made this cake for Michelle and Graham in 2013. They had met through an on-line book club, and they came to me with the idea of a pile of penguin classics. I grabbed some books from the bookshelf to try and demonstrate how we might stack them. Graham said that most of the books I'd (randomly) grabbed were books they'd have on their cake. And that was the exact moment I fell in love with these two!! The link above is well worth a look, not least because their photographer was awesome Assassynation.
Since then, I've made this cake so many times. Every time is different. Two things stay the same:
(1) I'm told that all the guests wondered why there was a pile of books on the table, not realising that they'd be eating them later!
(2) Someone, somewhere, will see the cake and ask me if the couple get to choose the books. Yes. Yes they do. It would be some kind of weird cake maker that met a couple once and then made sweeping generalisations about which books they'd want!! I'd never have got to ecclectic lists such as Noam Chomsky / Black Beauty or The Very Hungry Caterpillar / Wuthering Heights!
The top book can be a 'real' book, or it can be something to summarise things, such as "The Next Chapter by Georgina and Daniel", or "A Day at The Zoo by Julia and Jeff", who were married at London Zoo.
Of course the books don't have to be penguin classics. They just lend themselves so well to making a fun cake as they are iconic, beautiful and - my favourite bit - brightly coloured! I can make them any colours though so you could have some more muted colours if you prefer. I believe that the aforementioned 'Very Hungry Caterpillar' is yet to be published as a penguin classic, but the campaign starts now.
Louisa and Sam sent me a lovely card after the wedding, and I think Louisa's words serve as a pretty ace review for this design. Lousia says, "What can I say? THE CAKE WAS AMAZING!!! Seriously, we had fairly high expectatoins but you completely blew us away! Your cake was the talking point of the whole wedding, people were wondering at it for days afterwards: it basically stole the show! Several people even confessed to me they thought it was a bit odd that we had a stack of books on the table - until we cut it...And I have to agree - we were marvelling at the level of detail: the way you had added individual pages, the way each spine wrapped around the books. Incredible!"
If books are the way to your heart, then do get in touch. I WANT to hear from you!!
An "iconic album cover" themed buffet table.
Hot on the heels of last new year's eve's themed buffet table quiz round, I present to you our 2016/17 NYE buffet table! This year's party theme was songs: everyone dressed as a song, and our quiz was music-based. In a room with quite a few serious music buffs, the quiz was entirely non-serious. Infact, the buffet table round was possibly the closest we got to testing anyone's music knowledge. The kids were slightly mystified by it though ("what's an album?") but the food kept them interested. So, for your enjoyment, here it is. Name the 23 iconic (ahem) albums hidden with this buffet table!
Last year my photography was hampered by the fact I was wearing Madonna's white lace gloves. This year I KNEW I would be hampered by my costume (I went as Nena's 99 Red Balloons) so I managed to take photos earlier!
1. Houmous and Celery
3. The Roast is Toast. Roast chicken drumsticks.
5. Quavers. I was pretty pleased with myself over this, I can tell you.
7. Cheese board and percy pig.
9. Brownies
11. Sherbert fountains. Yes, I do a very classy buffet table.
13. Retro sweets
15. Lemonade
17. Jazzles
19. A bag of chocolate money
2. Tzatziki, carrot & cucumber (and, err, raisins)
4. Sausages. Full disclosure: this maybe isn't an 'iconic' album, more of an album cover that featured sausages, and I really wanted to eat sausages.
6. Pineapple & cheese. Ditto on the 'pretty pleased with myself" front.
8. Banana
10. Mini pavlovas with slightly frightening lychee & blueberry eyeballs.
12. Mince pies
14. A little hard to tell, but these are jelly babies, in jelly. It turns out that jelly babies dissolve in jelly...so this is a little more macabre than the album cover that it represents.
16. Chocolate sticks.
18. Cake!
20. Popcorn/chocolate/lemon combo!
21. Cookies
22. Napkins
23. Plates
How many can you guess? How many do you own?? Can you work out my age based on the albums I chose??? (clue: I do not know one single song from number 23). Answers below.........
1. The Cure, Boys Don't Cry.
2. Ride, Going Blank Again.
3. The Smiths, Meat is Murder.
4. Crosbie Stills and Nash, Live it Up. (yeah, ok, I don't know it either, just here for the sausages...)
5. Kylie Minogue, Kylie.
6. Limahl, Never Ending Story. YES IT IS ICONIC.
7. Pink Floyd, Animals.
8. Velvet Underground & Nico.
9. Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures.
10. The Pixies, Trompe Le Monde.
11. Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill.
12. David Bowie, Blackstar.
13. Happy Mondays, Pills Thrills & Bellyaches.
14. Nirvana, Nevermind.
15. Beyonce, Lemonade.
16. Led Zepellin, IV.
17. Radiohead, Pablo Honey.
18. Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed.
19. Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque.
20. The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses.
21. Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks.
22. The Beatles, White Album.
23. Kanye West, Yeezus.
Semi-naked Cakes
At the start of the year, I wrote a post about Naked Cakes. I've made looooads of beautiful naked cakes this year, but there is a new rising star on on the horizon - the semi-naked cake - so I thought I would jot down a few thoughts about those! I've made loads of them this year and I'm expecting them to be just as popular next year. Why? Here's why....
A semi-naked cake? That just sounds weird.
Yeah, not the greatest ever name. I don't know who came up with it. A naked cake has no icing on the outside - a semi-naked has a bit. Just a scraping so you get nice straight lines, but with a bit of cake peeping through.
Let's call them something else.
Fine with me - I go for 'Salome'. She was the biblical character who perfermed the dance of the seven veils. In my head, this cake is doing a strip-tease.
What do they look like?
Pretty! Check out the pictures. They can be dressed with fresh flowers and/or fruit. They are a really ace mix of rustic and contemporary. If you like your rustic to be tidy, then this is what you want.
Do you supply the flowers?
Normally, you will just order them from your florist, and I'll arrange them on the cake.
Are they a good budget option?
Yep. I charge a little bit more than a naked cake, as they are a little bit more work, but they are still less work than a fully iced cake and that's reflected in the price.
Can they be any flavour?
Yes - you can have different flavours in different tiers. Some flavours work better than others.
Can I have one?
Drop me an email and I'll sort it all out for you!