A bridge made of cake!

On Sunday I will be building a giant bridge of cake! What's that you ask? 'Why?' Well, I'm not really sure how it happened but I appear to have agreed to attempt a 2m cake bridge, (Can you detect Miss Cakehead's involvement though!) 

 My house has been taken over by eggs and butter and flour and sprinkles.

The event is organised by Westfield Stratford to celebrate the opening of a fabulous bridge linking the shopping area with Stratford. There will be a plant, textile and Lego bridges too.

There are community groups involved too, so last week I did a cake workshop with some children, obviously whenever kids are involved more is more!

The event starts at 11am at Chestnut Plaza and at 4pm all the cake must be eaten, so come on down, please introduce yourself and have some cake. You can find more details here.

xxx

I need to get more work done today

Apple pinning

Work is a little quieter this week, I'm hoping to be able to catch up with alot of things I have not had time for recently, ie; paperwork, cleaning the house and dying my hair!

But more free time means more pinning. I wanted to create a seasonal mood board for September, and a good proportion of the pictures I was finding were apples, so I went with the theme.

Apples in Trug by White On Rice Couple

Apple Hanging by Tradgards Garden Flow

Apples by Samantha Nason

Apple Tree by Kasey Buick

Twig Candy Apples by The Ardent Sparrow

Spectrum of Apples by Jon Wason

If you are lucky enough to have an apple tree in your garden you may need some recipes. 

You can find my apple pie cupcake recipe here.

xxx

Cakes for radio.

I had the pleasure of recording a radio programme last week with Nick Coffer (My Daddy Cooks) and Edd Kimber (The Boy Who Bakes).

Nick's show on Three Counties radio is a cooking show, but the one I am in was specially dedicated to baking.

He normally has a wine expert in also, but this week it was tea expert Damien Cauldwell from Halsey's Deli in Hitchen.

It was a lovely fun show to do and I was very lucky to be able to sample some of Edd's goodies made from recipes in his book, out now!.

I took some flapjack, you can find the recipe here, and a Victoria sponge which I filled with homemade blackberry jam. Nick requested that I paint it, so I came up with a pretty floral design.

You can listen to me on the show here at 12pm today.

I was also very privileged to be included in a fabulous article about alternative wedding cakes in this month's issue of Wedding Magasine.

Kat who wrote the article also writes the fabulous RocknRoll Bride blog.

I shall be back next week with more owly goodness!

Have a smashing weekend.

xxx

How to paint an owl cookie.

Rise up this mornin', Smiled with the risin' sun, Three little birds pitch by my doorstep 

We are having a very special owl and ladybird party soon and preparations are well underway. In the party bags there has to be a cookie, and I thought I'd share with you how to paint a happy (or should that be funny?) owl.

We had a lovely week in Cornwall during the Summer, and one of our trips was to the Screech Owl Sanctuary. It was fabulous, the kidlets got to stroke lots of owls and even have a go at flying them. We took lots of pictures , including this gorgeous chap (sorry I can't remember his name or breed). 

A few of their owls were used as models for the film Legend of the Guardians, so we got to see Movie stars too.

Anyway now we have our model we are ready to begin.

Leave your fondant to dry over night.

I used Sugarflair dark brown and liquorice and Wilton cornflower blue, a dark brown food colouring pen, and size 4 and 1 brushes. I use water to paint with.

The trick is to keep your brush as dry as possible, don't overload it with water and make you strokes as light as you can so they don't etch into the fondant.

If you have a go I'd love to see your creations and do let me know if you have any painting issues.

I still have a few places on my next course 29th September, (e-mail me nevie-pie@hotmail.co.uk) but you'll have to get in soon if you want to come.

xxx

Happy National Cupcake Week!

I received a last minute commission at the weekend for some very special cupcakes.

Daybreak (a TV show in the UK) wanted to present some portrait cupcakes as part of National Cupcake week.

(Unfortunately if you don't live in the UK you will have no idea of who these people are! Sorry.)  

As one of the Daybreak presenters is appearing in Strictly Come Dancing they wanted a sparkly/blingy version of him, and then the two hosts, Brucie and Tess.
(Miss Cakehead had the perfect title; 'Nice to see you, to see you iced!')

The final one was of James Blunt which was harder to do as he has chopped his trade mark curls, so I gave them two versions and let them decide.

I thought you may also like to see some of my favourite cupcakes to help celebrate cupcake week.

Because you can never have too many cupcakes, can you?

What is your favourite cupcake flavour? I like apple of toffee and always chocolate!

xxx

A Special Birthday Cake

It was Mr LD's birthday recently, a very special one.

We had our party in May but how could I let this day go by without a special birthday cake.

He is quite the Japanophile having visited that country on numerous occasions. His love for all things Japanese has been handed down to his offspring, we all love the film MY Neighbour Totoro and I bought him a Totoro film poster (not an original I'm afraid) as one of his presents.

He had requested a Totoro cake last year but I never got round to it so I decided this was the year to try.

This is the most carved cake I have made, his arms, legs and ears were squished rice crispie bars, but I was fairly pleased with the final effect.

The kidlets wanted to join in too, so big kidlet made a figure and the blue Totoro, and little kidlet made the mini Totoro's. The birthday boy was very pleased with it all...oh and of course it was lemon flavour!

(You can see more of our Totoro obsession in this post)

(And if you want to see some really amazing carved cakes have a look here.)

xxxx

Pinterest

Do you pin?

I recently started and it has quickly become my new obsession!  I love it, and if I'm ever feeling a bit stressed a quick scroll through some gorgeous pins calms me down!

It has proved very useful for some of the various projects I'm working on as I can keep the image plus the link.

The kidlets have both started their own boards, so any Pokemon pinned are theirs!

We are hosting a very special party next week as my baby turns 5. The theme of ladybirds and owls has been in place since the last party. I thought you may like to see some of the inspiration we found on Pinterest.

1.Martha Stewart  2.Martha Stewart  3.Foodcraft  4. I Do It Myself  5.Craftjuice  6.Sundries and Plunder  7.Attilladesign

You can see the rest of the board here and follow me on Pinterest here.

Happy pinning!

xxx