Springtime treats

This week I have been making vintage pretties as samples for some of the courses that I am going to be teaching in the second half of the year at Cakeology Ltd.

The first course is a frilly ruffle cake piped with buttercream and decorated with a handmade dahlia. I love making ruffle cakes - they are so pretty and surprisingly easy to put together.

The second course covers 'teaparty cupcakes' - pretty pastel cupcakes decorated with handmade pinwheels, doilies, roses, bunting, umbrellas filled with blossoms, and frilly flowers.

I'll also be demonstrating some simple royal icing techniques to enable students to pipe pretty borders around their cupcakes to give them a professional finish.

'Cake Craft Made Easy' Book Launch Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of my new book 'Cake Craft Made Easy' this week, I'm excited to be able to run a little giveaway!

There a 3 prizes available to win!

 

First prize is a copy of 'Cake Craft Made Easy' and an awesome pack of Spring-inspired cake decorating supplies: a Wilton bunny brownie/whoopie pie baking pan, assorted coloured cupcake cases, tubes of pink and green non-pariels, a tube of edible pearls, a lovely shabby chic rose tea towel, a Wilton bows and buttons silicone mould, and 8 Spring cookie cutters!

 

Second prize is a copy of 'Cake Craft Made Easy', a dual colour piping kit and five 'take a bite' cookie cutters.

Third prize is a copy of my book.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED - CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE WINNERS!

How to Enter
Enter the giveaway in the Rafflecopter box below.
The only mandatory (required) item is the first one – leaving a comment on this blog post letting me know about your favourite spring-time bake. (Make sure you check that off in the Rafflecopter box). The other entries are just more opportunities to win.

Giveaway Details

• No purchase necessary to win.
• This contest is International.
• The winners will be chosen randomly at www.random.org.
• Winners will be contacted on Monday 27th May, 2013, and announced on this blog once contact has been made.
• Leave all your comment entries here, not on Facebook.
• Please read all contest entry details in the Rafflecopter widget below.
• You do not need to use Facebook to use Rafflecopter, an email is fine. Your email will not be shared with anyone.

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Good luck!

Springtime Cookies

It is finally starting to feel like Spring in London so I couldn't resist digging out all of my pastel crockery and making a batch of Springtime cookies for afternoon tea.

With a few different piping nozzles, it's easy to make simple, pretty designs in royal icing to decorate your cookies. Below are step by step instructions to decorate two of my Springtime cookies.

Green Scalloped Cookies

 

 

 

Pink Frilly Cookies
 

 

 

 

 

Hope you have fun making Springtime cookies.

Vintage Tea Party

Earlier this year I had a second wedding reception in Australia for my family and friends who couldn't join my London wedding last year. I spent months collecting vintage crockery from London car boot sales to send to Australia to recreate a British teaparty for my guests. Here are some photos from the day....

Flower arrangements from my neighbour's farm. Teapot biscuit favours made by me. I also made labels for the teapots that said 'Keep Calm and Drink Tea' to add extra Britishness!

I used paper doilies as name places and tied labels onto store bought jam with lace ribbon to add a touch of class. Table numbers were designed by In the Treehouse. A lovely assortment of cakes and sandwiches were made by High Society.

A candy bar featuring retro sweets, cake pops and meringues was put together by the wonderful Princess Jades Candy Buffet. I made the meringues, and got the lovely Savannah from Savvy Fare to make the pretty 2-tiered white chocolate mud cake, decorated with handmade sugar flowers for the centre of the table - just stunning. 

All our guests were encouraged to take a little bag to fill with sweets from the candy bar - it was so lovely to see the faces on all of the kids there when they saw the candy bar - they thought they were in heaven!

Mini teasets were given to the children to play with in their activity bags. I also filled the bag with bubbles, colouring books and a retro tin of snap cards. I made the activity packs using simple white paper craft bags decorated with handmade paper pinwheels (Tilda paper) with button centres and a little name tag. The kid's activity packs rested on mini chalkboards which made nice placemats for the kids and also provided another form of activity to keep the kids occupied! A single head of white micro hydrangea was placed into a vintage blue Balls jar on each table. There was so much lovely crockery on each table already providing decoration so I didn't need a large flower centrepiece as well.

It was such a lovely day.

Springtime

 

It finally feels like Spring has arrived in London after a very long cold winter. Time to get all of my pastel crockery out and start to adorn the house in flowers. Some of the spring touches I've added to my house this week are above. You can see a sneek peek of a few of my teasets as well. I must admit, collecting old crockery is my absolute favourite past time, apart from baking of course....

Here are a few things coming out of the kitchen at Icing Bliss to bring the sunshine into the house...

Cookie stacks decorated with delicate sugar blossoms

Sweet little bunny biscuits decorated with royal icing

Teapot cookies - they make lovely favours for a kitchen tea

Shabby chic grey and cream cupcakes - gorgeous for an elegant wedding

Frilly flower 6" cutting cake  made as part of a display for a wedding

 Hope the lovely weather is inspiring you all to create lovely bakes this week!

Shabby Chic Cookies

Here are some photos of my cookies which I entered into the Decorated Cookie class at Cake International last weekend. I was really chuffed to get a bronze award as all the entries were incredibly beautiful.

Cake International - London 2013

Cake International was held from 12-14th April at the ExCel centre in London. Thousands of aspiring and professional cake decorators flooded through the doors to see live demonstrations from baking experts and buy the latest equipment in cake decorating from over 100 exhibitor stands. There were also over 500 entries in the competition classes - almost double the number from the previous year. The buzz at the show was infectious and I was really excited to gaze at all the amazing talent in the cake decorating world. Here are a few pictures from the show....

 

There were so many amazing cakes and you can see many more of them in this great video montage. Congratulations to everyone who won an award at the show!

A day of vintage crafting

On Saturday I had a lovely day with Sarah Moore, author of Homemade Gifts Vintage Style. Sarah regularly contributes vintage craft projects to Country Living Magazine and sells her beautiful vintage gifts and craft materials through her website Sarah Moore Vintage.

I was so excited when I found out that she is starting to run vintage craft masterclasses at her local village hall in Northchapel. I love her book and was eager to meet her and try my hand at some crafting.

Although it was a dreary day outside and pouring with rain most of the day, inside the hall, it was warm and cosy, decorated like Sarah's lounge room with beautiful pieces of furniture which she had brought from her home. Sarah created a relaxing environment and encouraged everyone to sit on the chairs, read her lovely books and have a cup of tea if we wanted to take a break from crafting at anytime throughout the day.

We started the day making pinboards decorated in a patchwork pattern with pieces of vintage wallpaper which had been cut into hexagons. Sarah has an enviable collection of beautiful vintage wallpapers to choose from. It took me at least half an hour to decide on which papers i wanted to use. We were really spoilt for choice. Here's how my pinboard turned out....

I couldn't resist taking some close up photos as well for you - all the papers were so pretty.  If you want to make a pinboard you can purchase packets of vintage paper which has already been cut into hexagons on Sarah's website.

After the pinboards were finished, we had a lovely lunch, served on beautiful mismatched vintage crockery. Sarah is not only a craft expert - she is also a trained chef and we were treated to a lovely meze spread.

The afternoon was filled with more lovely little craft projects. First up was a little velvet strawberry filled with lavender....

I was really chuffed with my effort as I'm not a competent sewer. Sarah put me at ease and explained all the steps really clearly so even a novice like me could complete the project quite easily. We also sewed little corsages made from graduating circles of vintage fabric. Sarah sells finished corsages, and the kit to make them if you want to create your own on her website so if you can't make her masterclass you can have a go and make one at home. Here's a photo from her website of the type of corsages you can make with the kit....

 So beautiful.....

To finish the day, we wrapped 6 bars of soap in gorgeous vintage wallpaper and placed them in a tin decorated with stickers which Sarah has designed. The soaps were transformed into little bundles of luxury once they were wrapped up - it's amazing how a little effort can make a common object look so special. Sarah also sells pieces of vintage wallpaper so you can wrap up your own soaps, or use them for scrapbooking etc. Or, you can buy a tin of 6 soaps already wrapped up beautifully if you are looking for a lovely gift for someone. Here are some of Sarah's soaps.....so pretty.

The afternoon also included a beautiful vintage afternoon tea, again served on Sarah's lovely vintage crockery. It was such a nice day, and I'm really looking forward to doing another masterclass with her again soon. If you want to try your hand at vintage crafting you can find out about upcoming courses with Sarah here.