Champagne and kisses...xxx

Pink Fluffy Cakies xxx

All black everything....

 Today is the birthday of a good friend of mine, Lee Hazzard.

Aside from being a long time friend, he is a born entrepreneur & the CEO of Hazzardous Entertainment.

 This weekend he celebrated in style with his sister and many friends in West London. I knew about it for a while and have been racking my brains wondering what type of cake to make for him.

Looking good :)

I took inspiration from the logo for his company which is simple and striking. I also wanted to personalise it a little and at first I was going to have some cupcakes or mini cakes with his face on to go with the main cake. Then my mum (hereby appointed my Creative Director) came up with the idea of making a dice out of cake... work with me.

A little photoshop magic later & I came up with a cool pop art image of his face. I've got to say I am SUPER excited about pop art images and I'm sure you will see this sort of thing again...

Cake dice yo

 

 I didn't realise until I tried to put up this post just how hard it is to take a decent picture of a black cake!

The cake is still a bit wet here but at least you can see the detail...

On display

Happy Birthday my brother & many more!

Keep Calm and.....

This week has been the busiest week at work ever! My event planning skills have been stretched to capacity as I had to organise a learning day at work. Those of you that have read earlier posts will know that event planning is not one of my strengths! I have not had 5 minutes to catch my breath, let alone write a post and I have missed you, in a weird, 'I don't know who you are' kind of way. 

Somehow, I managed to pull off the day successfully, wearing myself out in the process. BUT it's the weekend now and, strangely almost everyone I know is having a birthday party over the next couple of days (maybe everyone is a slight exaggeration but there are lots of people celebrating). So it's baking & party time, Yay!

We're gonna party like it's your birthday...

I am looking forward to showing you my cake creations next week but for now, I must keep calm & go to sleep....

Peace & Love

xx

Congratulations Jaime und Anna xx

This weekend was the wedding celebration for two of my friends who are vegans. It was a lovely intimate and informal affair in their beautiful garden, and the guests were asked to bring a dish along. 

I spent last week trying out various vegan cupcake recipes with my tasting committee at work and even posted a blog about it, but, for some reason Blogger has deleted my post.

I will do another vegan cake post in the future but I'm still a bit wounded by the fact that hours of work has just disappeared....

OK

Right, I'm back. Without writing the entire post again, I will say that I settled on the basic vanilla cupcake recipe in a book called 'Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Initially I wasn't bowled over by the cake as although it had a great texture, I thought it had an unpleasant aftertaste. One of my tasting committee members (thank you Sarah) suggested I add a filling to combat that. With a few tweaks on the ingredients and a choice of a Victoria Plum Jam or Raspberry Jam centre the cakes came out quite nicely. 

To be honest I was surprised as I am a bit skeptical. I would go as far to say that I will bake them again just because they tasted so good!

The toppers - and Anna is German by the way!

I made some Gerbera flowers as toppers. As it turns out sugar flower paste has egg in it so after all of my efforts some of the cakes weren't 100% legit. I didn't realise that until it was too late - vegan cooking is really challenging! 

I did try and compensate by using icing sheets which are gluten and dairy free as some of the toppers so it wasn't a complete flop.

My attempt at German...

Overall, a success. Vegan cupcakes can be genuinely tasty, who'd have thought??

Ceci n'est pas un cupcake...

Translated as 'This is not a cupcake'

My name is Bailey Ana and I am an addict....

People; I have not had internet for like 3 days, it's been hell. My phone line went down the morning of the 3rd but because the internet was still going, it took a while for us to realise.

However by the evening the internet went down and I reported it to BT. On the 5th (today) I received this text from British Telecom (BT);

Can you imagine??? The 9th is like 100 years away??? £130??? How many things are wrong with this text???

Anyways, BT turned up early unannounced and spent all day fixing the fault. Thank you BT.

But it got me thinking... 2 days without internet (not including work internet) had me feening (missing/ yearning for) my internet. It was then I realised, I am an internet addict.

How do people live without the internet? In 2011 we NEED the internet. Without it I had to fill my time doing things like ironing (????!) & even sleeping at night! It's not natural... The evening is made for learning, surfing the net, inspiration and cake porn #theysleepwegrind.

Thankfully order has been restored. I have internet and I am grateful. Thank you.

No, leave me logged on please. Thank you xx

My name is Bailey Ana and I am an addict.... That is all.

x

Extra special shout out to my mum, who understood the severity of the sitcheation [SIC] and stayed at home while BT man did his thing... #worthyourweightingold. Love you, may the Lord bless you richly xxx

Chocolate is the answer, who cares what the question is...

 Can all the chocolate cake lovers please stand up?

I hardly ever get requests for chocolate cakes. It's always plain sponge or cakes that "aren't too sweet". This always throws me because surely cake is sweet. In my head, I'm like "So do you want a cake or a vegetable?" 

What's more distressing is that I have spent years perfecting the chocolate cake as I thought this was obviously the most important cake... Apparently that is only the case for me!

I'm being a bit of a hypocrite to be honest, as I don't like it when cake is too sweet either. I think that is a quintessentially British thing. We like middle of the road, nothing too fancy. I've noticed Americans have an amazing array of flavours and combinations but if I suggest anything like that to someone here, they give me a strange look & then say "that sounds great, but can I have a vanilla sponge please, nothing too sweet?"

Sometimes it's nice to do something a bit different so I did.

This cake is basically anti-establishment; it's rich, decadent and totally over-the-top. Four layers of Death by Chocolate sponge; filled with strawberries & cream, then covered in chocolate buttercream and Oreo cookie crumbs.

One slice of this cake probably meets your daily calorie requirement!


Bonus How To Picture Guide:

Step 1

Bake your cake. I've gone for four layers so I sandwiched two pairs together with the chocolate buttercream, but I'm sure that two would be fine.

Step 2

 Put the layer with the topping in the freezer for about an hour so that it hardens and can support the top layer.

Step 3

And there you have it... I think it looks pretty impressive and can feed quite a few people. My cake is only 6" round but because it is so deep and rich you only need thin slices.

Enjoy

x