30th Birthday Cake

One of my best friends in the whole world turned 30 last friday. To celebrate, she threw a fancy dress party and left me in charge of baking her a cake, the only stipulation being that it was very girly. I'm fairly sure I lived up the request. This is my best cake yet :)

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80th Birthday Cake

No recipe to post here, I just wanted to share my creation with you. A lady at work asked me to bake her Father an 80th birthday cake. At this point in time, I had only baked one cake previously so needless to say I was pretty nervous. I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out though :)

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Dreamy White Cupcakes

Ode to a cupcake

Beautiful cupcake
your silky white frosting swirls
like flower petals
I want to eat you

Your mushroom top and
your delightful little stump
makes my mouth water
I’m going to eat you

Cupcake you’re so sweet
a tasty miniature cake
baked special for me
I ate you

(poem found here:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1408206)

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Office Bake Sale - Cupcakes.

Recently at work we held a bake sale to raise money for Macmillian Cancer Relief. I decided to bake a chocolate fudge cake (which I'm proud to say sold out in 15 minutes), savoury palmiers and of course, cupcakes.

I used a standard chocolate cupcake mixture and topped half the cupcakes with an orange frosting and the other half with a peppermint frosting. Both are easy to make by adapting a basic buttercream frosting recipe. Just add green food colouring and peppermint essence to one batch, and orange food colouring and orange juice and zest to the other batch. Add extra icing/confectioners sugar if the mixture becomes too wet.

Please excuse the poor quality pictures:

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Leeds United Cupcakes

The football season kicked off last month, and Leeds' first game of the season against Derby was aired on television. My in-laws had us over for nibbles, and to watch the match. I decided to bake some Leeds cupcakes for everybody. The sponge is a simple, rich chocolate recipe and the icing is just coloured buttercream...

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England Cake (England vs USA)

After months of anticipation and excitement, the World Cup has finally arrived. For their first match, England had been drawn to play against the USA, and with football.....or soccer...being the most popular sport in the England, and the fastest growing sport in the US, this had all the makings of a great match. To mark the occasion, my in-laws invited everyone over to watch the game, which was a perfect excuse for me to break out the cake pan!

I decided to make an England flag cake. I've never used royal icing before so it was a bit of a challenge. I made two rectangle sponges and sandwiched them together using buttercream and jam. I rolled out shop bought royal icing to decorate the cake. The finished cake was a little messy, but not bad for my first attempt. And whilst we couldn't say that victory was sweet, at least the cake was!


And here's a snap of myself in all my festive glory:

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