Wedding 1/3!!!

The beautiful couple

Yesterday was the first of 3 weddings that I am baking for this year, the union of the beautiful couple, Tatiana & Arne. It was a wonderful day, the weather behaved itself and the drinks flowed! 

The cake!

Most importantly for me, the cake went well on the day! I had to change the design because of the heat. Originally the ruffles were meant to be made out of buttercream but on a test run, the buttercream melted and I had to make the ruffles out of fondant instead to prevent a destroyed cake and a day spent panicking about it.

Fun Times

Baking for a wedding is part labour of love and part heart-attack inducing. I don't think there is a cake more important than a wedding cake. I usually have at least two meetings before finalising the design to go through ideas. Then there's the tasting session & the trial run & finally once you start making the cake, there is always something crazy that happens (like a heatwave) and you have to think on your feet when you've probably had about 3 hours sleep for the last 48 hours.

More cake

This was no exception. Despite being the first person to arrive at the hall, I had to wait for everyone to set up before I could put the cake together and ended up missing the beautiful ceremony. On the upside, there was Pisco (Chilean tequila style alcohol) and I caught the bouquet of flowers - so I'm pretty much guaranteed happily ever after... :)

I've can exhale for another month until my next wedding. In the meantime I shall be thinking who is going to be the lucky one to take my hand in marriage! :)

Cake cutting time...

Peace & Love

xx

Bailey's Birthday Vibes...

Hello People!

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!

Peace & Love 

Xx

Mango & Lemon Fusion Cupcakes (Inspired by Ellen Gallagher)

Back in June I went to see the Ellen Gallagher: AxME exhibition at the Tate Modern and was inspired to create a cupcake flavour.

The exhibition was very interesting: Ellen uses a mixture of different mediums including paint, photographs & even plasticine to bring her art to life. After taking it all in, I came away thinking of all things yellow and decided try out variations of either lemon or mango cupcakes.

I started out with a vanilla recipe as the base. The lemon cupcake had a lemon curd centre with a whipped cream topping, lightly flavoured with lemon curd. For the mango cupcake, I pureed some sweet mangoes (the Pakistani variety I believe) for the centre and flavoured the whipped (double) cream with some of the mango puree and a little icing sugar.

However, when I put everything together, I mixed up the toppings & fillings and ended up with a lemon, mango fusion. The best variety being the mango centre with the lemon cream topping.

At first I was kicking myself for messing up but when I tasted it, it was actually really good! It got me thinking about making mistakes, how often I seem to make them and how annoyed I get with myself for it.

The truth is, no-one is perfect, least of all me and that as long as I'm growing and evolving I will continue to make mistakes. The good news is that sometimes, they can turn out to be important discoveries and if you're really lucky, very tasty!

Here's to making tasty mistakes!

Peace & Love
xx