100th Birthday Cake - Finished

 Here's the finished two tier cake

And a closer picture of the top tier, complete with ribbons and roses.

Icing Tier 1

 With just under a week to go 'til the big party, I had to ice Tier 1 (fruit) of the cake otherwise I simply won't have time to do everything this week.  It's not ideal as I fear the cake will dry out too much but it's the way it has to be.

After searching widely for pictures of birthday cakes on the Internet, I looked into a book I have and was inspired to create this.  It's also very fitting as my nan actually gave me the book about 14 years ago when I first started making birthday cakes for my children.  (It's very nostalgic looking back through it to see which cakes I have tried to create versions of over the years...)

 Enough nostalgia and back to the cake.  Daughter thought lilac would be a good colour my nan's cake.  Lot's of the cakes on the Internet were pink, but I do agree that lilac or peach are better colour's for my nan. So lilac was the main colour for the icing on the first tier and the edge of the board is covered with lilac ribbon.  Then I created drapes round each corner out of semi-circles of white rolling icing and made roses out of the same rolling icing.  I'm not very good at piping icing but I am quite reasonable at modelling! For an added special touch I had bought some edible glitter and dipped each rose in that before attaching to the cake

This picture shows how the cake pillars will fit onto the large circle on the top of the cake, with the Chocolate cake (Tier 2) on top. 

Christmas Pudding Day

Sunday I finally made the Christmas pud.  I only make a small one each year as there's only my dad and mother-in-law that eat it.  I have a special recipe that I make each year which isn't quite traditional as it contains beer.

Here's the little beauty after it's been steamed ready to have fresh baking paper cap and be stored away ready for the big day.

Progress has been made on the ruffle dress, the collar is finished and completed with three small buttons to close it - just the hems to do now.  But I realised I need another top/dress for a work party, I have a lovely piece of satin that a work friend gave me for my birthday and this needs to be made into the work party outfit to show her how much I appreciated the gift.  The birthday cake needs to progress.  Daughter has promised to help me with making the chocolate cake and perhaps the icing, in return for me highlighting her hair.  At nearly 13, I think she is finally beginning to show some small signs of being a girl, although wearing a skirt is still very much out of the question.  But it could be worse, I could have a daughter who wants to wear very inappropriate outfits.  As well as this I have two sixth form open evenings to attend with son, not to mention getting the rest of the christmas shopping and wrapping up things that need to be distributed early, so apologies but blog posts will be a bit sporadic.

Anyone have a good fruit cake recipe?

We have a VERY special family occasion coming up next month, not Christmas but my Nan's 100th birthday (I hardly dare mention it in case something bad happens) and I have been asked to make and ice two cakes for it.  A chocolate cake and a fruit cake.  Whilst I'm not an expert at cake making, I've made the kids loads of novelty birthday cakes over the years and I iced my brother's wedding cake. I have a well tried and tested chocolate cake recipe, which I have used lots for kids birthday cakes, but I don't have a well tested fruit cake recipe.  If anyone can point me in the direction of one I will be grateful.

There will be more on the progress of the cakes and other crafty bits associated with this event in the next few weeks.

We wish you a merry ......

No I'm not going to use that word, as I think November is way too early.  However I have a lot to fit into the next few weeks and before I know it that  time of year will be upon us.  So I am being organised this year and spent a happy afternoon creating cards form old wrapping paper and cards and some other bits in my card making stash.  There are about 28 in total which is a good start but I'll need a few more. 

Happy Halloween

 It's that spooky time of year again and here's my small pumpkin lantern, to celebrate the occasion.

Here's this year's rather meagre selection of pumpkin's.  No where near as many as last year, but last year we had far too many.

I think I must be getting very old, because when I was a kid I'm sure there weren't any pumpkin's.  There certainly wasn't in our house.  If we were lucky mum would do swede for tea on Halloween and she would carefully scrape out the middle of the swede (which must have been really hard) and we made a lantern out of the swede.  We used to have fab Halloween parties as well where we all dressed up.  We had apple bobbing and then putting your face in flour to get sweets - without drying your face in between (very messy).  Trying to eat doughnuts hanging from string with your hands tied behind your back.  And a 'Dr. Dread', where someone set up covered bowls of stuff in the kitchen with names like 'intestines' when it was spagetti and we had to put our hands in and guess what it really was.   But this year it was just my one little pumpkin lantern.