birthday baking

 It's daughter's 13th birthday tomorrow and she's having her friend round for tea and to go ice-skating at the local rink before tea.  So I've baked a few cookies.

 She didn't want a big cake so I've baked some muffins, I'll ice them quickly in the morning

I've borrowed a cake stand from my friend and as luck would have it, if I take off the bottom tier it has space for 13 cakes, I've put it on this nice cake plate.  I'm going to serve the muffins like this with a few candles stuck into the top cake.

Then on Saturday we're having a family tea party so I'll be doing loads more baking.

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. 

Birthday - mark 2

 For years both my children have had two birthday parties.  One for the family and one for their friends.  This year I decided that for daughter's movie night and sleepover party with the girl's I wouldn't make another big birthday cake.  Instead I made cute cupcakes - six chocolate with white icing and six white with chocolate icing and all nicely decorated.  I wanted pink sugar flower's but daughter thought that was too girly so I settled for hundred's and thousand's, silver balls, mini marshmallow's and chocolate sprinkle's.

I made pizza dough and the girl'seach made thier own pizza and chose the toppings.

Then we made popcorn ready for the movie.

This morning I made them pancakes before they all went home.

Happy Birthday

The party was yesterday.  The cake was made.  The food was prepared and the family arrived to have a wonderful birthday party for my daughter.

They must have been very hungry as there wasn't much food left over and I think that they all had a good time.  At the end of the day my feet ached from preparing the food and then making endless cups of tea for everyone.

Tomorrow 'the girl's' are coming for a movie and sleepover.  Three of daughter's friends are coming and they are going to make popcorn and watch movies and then make pizza and cupcakes for thier tea.  I'm sure they'll all have fun.

Latest Makes

 

Here are some pictures of the swing waistcoat that I have been making.  I will be outting together some better pictures of it in action, but I'm just about to uplaod it to Ravelry so I thought I would show it here as well.

I have also realised just how many people I know who have birthdays in February and March.  I will be busy making up a whole lot of presents over the next few weeks.  I will also be making some cards as well.
Here's the next present, a textured scarf for my daughter's friend.  It's knitted with a yarn that has thick and thin sections and this creates the teture.

Me

well it's my birthday today and I have finally got this blog going. This is a picture of me. I haven't got many pictures yet but as i got a new phone with camera and internet access, I'm expecting to be able to take lots now and upload them on this blog.