Bizzy Lizzy's

This is a shout out to my friend Sarah's cafe Bizzy Lizzy's in Ambleside, if any of you who read this blog are ever in the Lake District please pop in to Bizzy Lizzy's it makes lovely home-made cakes and scones totally worth checking it out. Plus the scenery is stunning.

Golden Wedding Anniversary Cake

For the Golden Wedding Anniversary Cake I was asked to cover the fruit cake provided and the two things that had to be on the cake were the message: 'Congratulations on your golden wedding anniversary Colin and Chris' and the beading around the bottom of the cake. Anything else was just whatever I thought would look nice, so I went with a bed of yellow roses intermingled with leaves and blue blossom flowers.
For the message I wasn't sure as to what colour to go for, the choices were yellow, green, blue and a pinky rose colour. I think the pinky rose colour would have been quite nice but I was over ruled by everyone saying not to add any other colour so I went with light blue which keep the cake bright and the message prominent.
The beading was made with ivory fondant and then dusted with lustre dust which is my new favourite toy it makes everything look pretty.

Pagan Wedding Cake

For some this may go against all their beliefs about wedding cakes as its not white, ivory or cream. I'm on the fence with this!

I think a traditional wedding cake would have looked out of place for a pagan wedding and the colour scheme of purple and black matched the very cute witch and vampire (bride and groom) cake topper, which are in fact a salt and pepper shaker. 

For the bottom tier I made an extremely lemony lemon cake with lemon butter cream which was covered in marzipan and fondant. The top tier was the chocolate cake that I absolutely love as it tastes like brownies and gets better with age (well days) not that it lasts that long in our house. I filled this cake with chocolate butter cream and then covered with marzipan and purple fondant.

The trimming around the bottom layer was a tear drop beading in black fondant and the roses on top were made with a mixture of sugar paste and fondant so I could roll the fondant thinner, I've found this works best if the flowers are going to be eaten.

The finishing touches were the black ribbon around the top tier and the cute cake topper.

Cupcakes

I'd been asked to make a batch of cupcakes for a kids party last weekend coinciding with the Queen's Jubilee so I knew some of the cupcakes had to be patriotic. 

Another requirement was to make a handful of gluten free cupcakes which I was happy to do but had no specific recipe for so I was a little worried. In the end I used the same recipe as the other cupcakes but substituted self raising flour for gluten free and instead of margarine I used the liquid flora so a 100ml of that is the equivalent of 100g of margarine (or there abouts). 

The none gluten free cupcakes were a mixture of vanilla, chocolate and marbled. The decorations varied from Union Jacks with a cherry on top to jelly gems and stars and flowers. I wanted the decorations to be kid friendly and not to frou-frou. 

The gluten free were vanilla with chocolate icing and gluten free chocolate drops halved to make the cake look like hedgehogs.

Peppa Pig Birthday Cake

My next door neighbours youngest turned 2 the other day and asked me to make a birthday cake, I had the choice of Peppa Pig and Postman Pat (I think that was the second option) anyway I went with Peppa Pig.

My first idea was to carve the cake into a Peppa Pig shape but after looking through lots of pictures on the Internet I found a backpack with Peppa Pig at the fairground holding a panda she had just won so I had to do that, anything with pandas and I'm happy. 

The cake was chocolate sponge (the same recipe I used for the wedding cake) and then I filled and dirty iced it with chocolate butter cream. The cake is covered in leaf green fondant and bright blue fondant that I toned down by adding some white fondant as it was a bit garish. 

Peppa Pig was a free hand cut out of light pink fondant and the dress in cerise coloured fondant. It took a couple of attempts to get the head right I think it was because after I added the teeth it looked a little weird so I tried to make the teeth smaller. Outlining the face made a big difference to the finished look.

I used a patchwork cutter for the panda, I've been desperate to use the cutter as I got it last year for my birthday as part of the Teddy Bears Picnic Set, so that was straight forward. The fair ground hut, clouds and balloons are also free hand and the flowers are small blossom flowers.