This weekend we celebrated the birthday of my son and my nephew, with a Mexican Themed party and lots of cake!
The table
The table was put together with the help of my gorgeous niece and Alexia Lenoir, who had the unenviable task of trying to stop her from eating all of the sweets before the guests arrived!
The shot glasses with sweets was just too much of a temptation!
Confetti, confetti everywhere!
On the menu were vanilla cakepops, chocolate & ginger cupcakes and birthday cake.
Chocolate and ginger cupcakes, topped with Chantilly creme, chocolate and sprinkles
The cupcakes are a new recipe I'm working on which were inspired by the Primrose Bakery. All will be revealed soon but for now, check this link for the original chocolate and marshmallow version.
The birthday boys
A word to the wise, sparklers don't make great candles for birthday cake, especially if you are trying to light more than one. That said, they look cool so you will be forgiven for trying anyway!
Today is the birthday of my beautiful sister, Rashida, Rashonye, Rae!!!
Here are 10 things you need to know about my sister.
1. She's my oldest & most trusted confidante, I used to make her squirm with all of my teenage secrets, (things are even worse these days!)
Old school us!
2. Back in the days, when there was stalemate in my flat over who would clean the kitchen and there wasn't a single clean dish, my sister would come and wash up the dishes and tidy up to make my life bearable.
Rashonye, DJ & Ellie
3. When my son was born, my sister took about 6 months (maybe more) after graduating to look after him for me because I wasn't ready to send him to nursery.
My sis & Bailey
4. I've lost count of the number of times my sister has helped me complete cake orders. Usually, I'm too (proud, disorganised, deluded about my capabilities) to ask in advance. She doesn't ask, she just rolls her sleeves up and gets involved.
5. She never takes any credit for any input or involvement with anything I do. Instead, she sings my praises and celebrates my work.
Chocolate fans, Ferrero Rocher and glitter
6. Rashida is an incredible cook, the OG chef in the family. Whenever I'm going through one of my ever frequent loss of appetite/skinny phases, her food is the only thing that I can eat and have seconds of.
Living life like it's golden
7. She's gotten me out of a tricky situation a ridiculous number of times. Two favourites are the time I missed my train home from Paris and she wired money across so that I could catch the next one. Or the time she paid my hotel bill when I had a problem with my debit card.
Cake fit for a beautiful person
8. She knows me better than myself. To be fair it's borderline witchcraft. She can verbalise what I'm feeling without me having to say a single word, (like I said, it's witchery!!!!!)
African Queen
9. Aside from being beautiful, she is INCREDIBLY talented. She can play the guitar, sing, cook, bake, dance, sew, paint, draw, play sports, teach, entertain, do hair, the list goes on and on and on.
Sister vibes!
10. I love her because she's awesome.
Happy Birthday Sis
Peace & Love
xx
(p.s. The cake is a chocolate sponge sandwiched together with vanilla buttercream and chocolate fudge frosting. It's then covered with chocolate fans and Ferrero Rochers.)
I'm lucky that I've been blessed with a beautiful family. Last week my niece Bailey turned 2 and ordered two birthday cakes, one for each of her favourite TV characters; Peppa Pig and Rastamouse.
Peppa Pig Cake
Rastamouse Cake
At the weekend we had a family picnic, one of those things that you say you're going to do every 'summer' but usually the weather or people's busy schedules put paid to that. However, this year we finally got our act together & made it happen & it was beautiful!
Beautiful Bailey!
Beautiful Bailey!
Picnic Time...
Speaking of weather, I'm still trying to come to terms with this continued sunshine & heat that we're having! It's been an actual summer - something which has left a lot of us confused as to what to do with ourselves & more importantly what to wear - I'm not complaining though! :)
Me & Bailey when she was born
Me & Bailey :)
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the cakies & pictures. I'm going to get back into the kitchen to get ready for my next little girl's cake... This time the theme is Pirates!
Baking for little girls is such fun! This was a birthday cake for my beautiful niece Ellie who turned 3 not too long ago. I'd been dying to try out the ruffle buttercream effect and figured that this was as good a time as any :).
The birthday girl
The cake was made using the Amy Atlas vanilla cake recipe as it's currently my favourite. I've been searching the net to find the recipe online but without success so far, and I'm not sure if it would be wrong for me to put it up myself. So for now you will need to get her book, Sweet Designs for the details (it's definitely worth it!)
My son & Ellie
Happy Birthday to yooooooou!
Watching the children around me grow up makes me realise just how much time is flying. I still can't get my head around the fact that I have two of my own! Just the other day I was a little girl running around eating cake and now I'm a mum with responsibilities! I reckon that your brain stops maturing at around 20 and then you spend the rest of your life watching events unfolding, wondering 'How did that happen?!'
My niece and nephew
I am making it my goal to savour every day and to embrace this thing called 'getting old'. I love it in fact. As I get older, I get wiser and more in control. I also get to relive my childhood and make beautiful Princess cakies :)
Many things make me happy: music makes me happy, sunshine makes me happy and making other people happy makes me happy.
I used to paint & draw and make stuff, I was never good at art per say but I liked to mess around. My favourite thing was making personalised cards for friends and posting them as a 'just-because' surprise. I used to love writing letters and still do, there's something beautiful & special about a hand written letter. Emails are great and quick but getting something hand made can never be equalled.
These days, I buy my cards but pour that creative energy into the cakes that I make.
A few weeks back I made a joint birthday cake for a couple whose birthdays are days apart. The plan was to make it for a family BBQ but I got the dates mixed up & ended up making the cake a week early (in time for the actual birthday celebrations I might add!)
I really wanted the cake to reflect the fun and energy of the couple and also to incorporate their beautiful little boy. I decided on a small 2-tier cake (chocolate and vanilla with strawberries), in bright colours with a funky stick man family! I mixed the colours from Mummy and Daddy to make baby and had fun making them cut some shapes on the dance-floor :)
I must say that I'm so glad to have a creative outlet, I thought that once I 'grew-up' I would have to put all of the things that I love (but don't make money) aside. I realise now that is not true and that enjoyment and passion is not only for the 'young'.
What do you still do that makes you feel that little bit childish?
Happy Monday People, I hope you all had a good weekend. Yesterday was my son's 6th birthday. He's been counting down to it for the last 3 months, (no exaggeration), so you could imagine his level of excitement come Saturday night. He asked for a Streetfighter Ryu cake, then decided he wanted a giant cupcake so we decided to try and do both. Both of the my boys helped me make them, it was a lot of fun & very messy :)
The birthday boy picking his Ryu image...
We went to a soft play place called Party Man World and they ran around for about 4 hours, just watching them was exhausting!
The guests arriving...
Normality has now been restored and it's countdown time till Christmas. As for me, I'm in need of some inspiration and will be going to at least one art gallery this week if not more. I'm also looking forward to trying some new recipes. What are you up to this week? Whatever you do have fun!
