Pinup Picnic In The Park - I Mean Bar!

It's that time again, has it really been a whole year since the last one? Last year the wonderful ladies known as The British Belles hosted a wonderful picnic in Hyde Park where I met lots of wonderful ladies. This year we were set to attend the same, however. RAIN. Of course, bloody rain. Luckily one of the Belle's, Amber managed to get us all into a fabulous tiki bar instead to save our pincurls, hurrah!

Last time was a bit nerve-racking, I hadn't actually met any of this lovely bunch in person. We had only ever stalked each others social media accounts and shared a love of all things vintage and rockabilly. This year however I was looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and meeting some new lovelies I've been interacting with since last year.  I even had a train buddy! I met Carrie-Ann at a previous Most Marvelous meet up and she is now my vintage partner in crime, I've decided. I may even be helping her plan some meet-ups which will be exciting.

Carrie-Ann, Kariss and I

 

A few of us met at King's Cross to then go on and find the bar together. We got a bit of attention when in a group and was lovely to have a quick catch up before we set off.

What I wore: Hair flowers from Claire's accessories, top from Hell Bunny, mermaid Lucy cardi from Collectif, flamingo bag from Retro Vixens and the skirt I made myself under my little label Vintage Valentina. 

 

When we got to Chancery Lane tube station, the closest to the bar there were hoards of pinups on each side all whooping and waving to each other, it was great!  So we all marched on together getting more and more confused looks as we went, confused and happy looks may I add. Generally speaking a heard of pinups always raises a smile of confusion. 

After a couple of wrong turns and the power of Google Maps we found our way to the bar and started on the cocktails! The club in question is Kanaloa, full of tiki heads, tropical flowers and good vibes. It was nothing but wonderful to have so many like-minded gals (and some guys) in the same place. Loaded up with some gorgeous tiki cocktails we spent the afternoon chatting about hair, vintage clothing, hair colour, Poundland pins and sewing, all fangirling over each other all excited to meet each other for the first time. 

Nicola from Nickabockaglory and I

 

There were so many familiar faces and so many that I didn't get to say hello to. Normally the idea of being in a room with hundreds of people you'd never met you may end up feeling a bit sick with fear. Not here though, we all basically ran at each other like life-long friends. It's hard to explain but you meet up with these guys and you feel like you've found your people. No better feeling!

The lighting was a bit dark inside so many of us ventured out at various points to take some better photos. One of the best things about this meet-up may I add is that no one judges you for all the selfies, make up and hair close ups, we all even encourage them. 

I especially loved seeing Kayla, miss her face lots so was lovely to catch up and take some silly selfies.

All too soon the day was over and we had to head home.  Excited about future meets and finding the new stunners I met online on the train ride home Carrie-Ann and I chatted all the way home, I cannot wait for our next adventure!

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Cath Kidston Inspired Cake Pops

It feels like months since I've made cake pops, and probably because, it actually has been months! Which is a shame as I love making them, I've just been too busy so it was nice to have time to do some properly when asked to make a batch.

This particular batch were to be very pretty, pastel, floral and Cath Kidston inspired. Who doesn't life a bit of Cath Kidston? The colours, flowers, polka dots... it's all too cute and I love it.

I made three designs, two floral ones which were similar but with different base colours and one with polka dots standing up in floral cases. The two floral ones were made from being dipped in coloured white chocolate. Half in pink and half in pale blue.



For the floral part I cut out circles of fondant and set them on the cake pops with royal icing, for the flowers I cut out red fondant with flower plungers, added a gold pearl for the bud and again placed them on with royal icing. For the stalk and leaves I piped on green royal icing and to finish piped white pearls around the design.



The polka dot ones were sooo easy to make and look super cute. I saw these mini cupcake cases in the garden center and the floral design fitted in so well I couldn't pass them by. So when I had dipped the cake pops in white chocolate, just before they were set I put them head down in the cases so they stood up. To make them even sweeter I piped pink polka dots around them and boom, they were finished.

To make them look more professional I wrapped them up in their own little individual cellophane bag and silver tie. When they were finished they looked great and like something out of Laura Ashley and I hear they went down a storm.

I even got to use my Wilton cake pop decorating stand that I got for Christmas for the first time. This shows you just how long it's been since I made them.



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Farewell Giant Cupcake!

Friday was the day we all said goodbye to our lovely boss Cathy from our designs of death corner.  We're all going to miss her so much, and as she doesn't like attention or fuss...that is of course what she got!

There were baloons, party poppers, flowers, sweets, present after present and of course....a cake! We all mulled over ideas for the cake which at one point included, coffins, leopard print and Christmas (because she hates it!) but in the end I decided to make her a cake I knew she'd really love. In fact if there is anything she really does love it's chocolate, Cadbury's and Rolo's to be precise!

So for the bottom I covered it in a layer of vanilla buttercream and covered it with chooclate fingers, you need two boxes for this as I only had about 4 left over, so don't eat any before you've finished covering it! I would however advise that you buttercream the top of the base and place the 'top' of the cupcake on before you add the fingers as if the base isn't tall enough it could push the fingers back out.

I decided to keep the top quite classic with vanilla buttercream piped with a 1M Wilton nozzle and then I placed a rolo in the middle of each buttercream rose and also one on top. For the front I made an ivory fondant heart and piped onto the front dots and the wording 'Jog On'....don't worry it wasn't mean, she loves this humour! :) I then gave it all a liberal dusting of pink edible glitter and tied some cream and brown ribbon around the bottom - which also helped keep the fingers in place!

Luckily she loved it and shared it all around the office...it's almost like we're going to miss her isn't it :(

Nom! x

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Chocolate 24th Birthday Giant Cupcake

There's gonna be a few of these giant cupcake posts this week, I haven't done any in what seems like a million years - so I'm happy I've got a few to put up.

Of course I still carried the same theme through and made a chocolate sponge topped with chocolate buttercream, the smell driving it over there was heavenly! 

Now this cake was made before I went on holiday, and for one of my oldest friends 24th birthday, Vici. Last year I made her the chocoholic cake, but it was quite massive and she wasn't able to finish it all! So this year I made a more reasonable sized giant cupcake, still loads left over after our aptly named 'cake o'clock' feast.

I'm really loving the chocolate and pink theme at the moment, if you can tell! I made pink fondant for the bottom and decoration with Claret Sugarflair colouring paste, feeling much braver since my last attempt with the textured rolling pin I gave it another go. And it worked! For decoration I made fondant rolled roses out of ivory fondant with pink leaves using a plunger cutter.

Needing more delicate lettering I decided against the blocked numbers as they looked a bit clunky on a little cake, instead I made them by hand with fondant so I could curl them into a curly font.

I also added some white and pink sugar pearls, white chocolate stars and an insane amount of edilbe cake glitter, you can never have too much!! All tied up with a cute pink bow and it was ready to eat, nom!

Giant cupcakes are a great present to give, although figuring out how to cut them up can sometimes be challenging - we always get the hang of it though :).

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Wedding Party Cake Pops

It's been a crazy few weeks, and we've all been looking forward to my brother and his wife's wedding party at the weekend. It was a great excuse for everyone to get back together again and for all those who couldn't make the wedding join in some of the fun too.

Of course with me when there's a party it always means one thing - cake! I loved doing the wedding cake and cake pops for the actual wedding so I thought it was a great excuse to make some more.

The sponge itself is chocolate, crumbed and mixed with white chocolate ganache. One rolled and chilled I dipped them in milk chocolate and decorated with pink sprinkles, pink chocolate curls, white chocolate stars and lots of pink cake glitter.

I really wanted it to look special, as they'd hired their favourite pub for the party I thought I'd stick with the theme and used pint glasses to display them. I know that doesn't sound too special, but I did stuff them with white and star-patterned tissue paper and tied the glass with white and pink ribbon with silver bells and wedding ring decorations on. The finished product looked really good and I think in the end I made about 70 - I think my little brother and niece had about four each!

I really am going to try to make more cake pops, I think they're my new favourite - and it is my niece's birthday next week...there might be a few kicking around there too :)

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Leopard Print Giant Cupcake

Another giant cupcakes I hear you say?! I know...the obsession is getting crazy now! But it seems like a bit of a tradition that whenever one of my friends has a birthday...they get a cupcake. I try to make it a surprise too by not telling them or giving any hint as I love the element of surprise!

This one was for one of my best friends Natalie. She's basically Rihanna....it makes me sick but I love her lol. So her cake had to be pretty fierce, no delicate flowers for her. And I can't quite explain it but something just said to me....leopard print. I've seen loads of cakes using this with pink and I thought that was a super cute idea...so I stole it!

The cake itself is chocolate with vanilla buttercream. I got to use my Norwegian cocoa powder again which I love as it really makes the cake a dark chocolate colour which I find so hard to do with other brands.

The bottom I have to admit took me forever, and I'd twinged my back earlier so it wasn't a pleasant process shall we say - but all worth it :). I made the bottom a very light brown colour using Sugarflair Dark Bown colouring paste, then with some left over fondant I split it into two and added a lot more dark brown to get the chocolate colour, and the other half I made black with Sugarflair Liquorice.

I wasn't sure about how the pattern was looking to begin with but I'm really happy with how it turned out. For the top I used my new favourite Wilton 1M nozzle, I'll stop going on about how amazing it is soon I promise...actually I can't promise that...

I didn't want to make the top too busy as the bottom was like a print so I kept it simple by making a pink fondant heart coloured with a teeny tiny dab of Sugarflair Claret colouring paste. Using some of the left over brown and black I rolled them together to get this twisted candy cane look and shaped it into a smaller heart, and also a bigger one for a boarder and stuck them on with a tiny dab of water. Be careful when using water as if it's visible on a fondant surface and it dries...it'll never look smooth! A trick my dad taught me and it's so true.

I dusted the top with gold cake glitter, I've used this so much I need to stock up soon and get some more colours I think I absolutely love them. I finished it off with a little pink bow at the front, only doing a small one at the front and not all the way around as to not ruin the print look.

I'm so happy she loved the cake and it was great to do something a bit sexy! I'm sure they'll be another cupcake up soon...and I still have my Wilton cupcake tin to try out too so keep posted for that one!

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Butterfly Wedding Cupcakes

So this week I had my first wedding order, it's been in the works for a while and I can't believe it came around so quick. I've never done anything on this scale so it was certainly a challenge.

The theme was simple, pink and butterflies. A theme I'm really familiar with so I was actually really looking forward to it. I'm going to post a lot of pictures so beware!

They wanted 150 cupcakes and a giant cupcake for a top tier which I think is a great idea, I've seen it a few times and always thought it looked really cute, cupcake heaven!

The cases were a big part of the order and loved these paper wrappers and originally wanted them in black, pink and white, but bright pink was impossible to find so it had to be black and white. Pink buttercream was also the first idea, but magenta turns out to be an impossible colour to make! I couldn't make it anyway. So we decided it would look nicer with plain ivory buttercream with rice paper pink butterflies. These were really good because they looked like real butterflies, had great detail and were completely edible.

To finish them off I dusted them with pink cake glitter to make them really sparkle. The cupcake tower said it could hold up to 120 cupcakes...wrong! I don't see how this would work unless they were petit fours! Luckily I had prepared for this and already had two of the silver 23 cupcake holding towers. The rest had to be scattered around the three towers which did make them look like they were cascading around.

The top tier was plain as shown, they said they were going to put a bright pink cake topper on it, but I didn't get a picture of that so you will just have to imagine. As luck would have it I had a little stand perfect for giant cupcakes that I got for Christmas from Sainsbury's which is luckily white too so it fit in perfectly.

Now I've done my first wedding I can't wait until I get another order, I can be a bit of an angry baker when I get stressed, but this didn't stress me out one bit it just flowed, so my confidence is growing too. I'm just so happy with how professional it looked.

My poor house was totally taken over by these cakes, I took a day off just to make and decorate them. The baking wasn't too bad, it was the icing! It took me hoooooooours, and I was stood at a funny angle for ages too so I felt destroyed by the end of it. I even had to extend our table just to fit them all in.

What is even more impressive is that we managed to get them all inside my mums little Peugeot 106, 150 cupcakes and one big one. All in boxes from the supermarket, cake tins and also the trays that hold Muller yoghurts in, I collected them from Tesco! Eco friendly too! And a perfect fit for cupcakes...who knew eh. Pin It Now!

Girly Birthday Giant Cupcake

I have a few orders of giant cupcakes over the next month or so, so you'll be seeing a few of them!

This one was for a colleague's mum's birthday. I got a lot of free reign with it, just told to make it very girly and cute and pink, my favourite! I really love making girly cakes as I can go all out on them and love making them excessively pretty.

As it was for someone's mum I didn't want to go too princessy, I tried to keep it cute but a bit more grown up. I'd recently ordered the Wilton Gum Paste Flower Making Set from a previous Baking Wishlist post...it will also be in my upcoming Baking Buys post as I've gone a bit spend-crazy this week! I decided to make some dasies, as to be honest these seemed the easiest as I only had fondant to work with and required minimal work as it was my first go. But they came out looking brilliant so I was really happy with them.

Another item you'll be seeing in my Baking Buys post are the butterflies, made from rice paper I got them from surprise surprise...eBay! You have to cut them out though which was a bit fiddly, but the colours are nice and strong and they look really realistic! I placed them on the flowers so they looked like they had just landed on them. I didn't want to overdo the decoration as I do think that sometimes less is more.

I decorated the bottom with crisp white fondant tied around with a pink gingham ribbon and bow. I need something nicer than pins to use to keep them in place, any ideas? I was thinking of using the ones with the balls at the end like the one on the front, not sure if you can get them in just one colour though as most sets have all kinds of colours in them.

The top is decorated with pink buttercream coloured with Sugarflair's Claret colour and piped on with a large star nozzle from Tala, I'm struggling to find the rose ones in large? I also used one of the disposable piping bags - I wasn't sure about them to begin with but I have to say I absolutely love them now I've used them a few times!

To finish off I simply used cutters for her name, kept it in white to match the base and left it there. I was tempted to carry on adding decoration but stopped myself before I ruined it! Pin It Now!

Girly Cupcakes And Cake Pops

Sometimes I can go weeks with no cakes to make to order, and sometimes the break is nice, this week I have thee to make so the pressure is on!

The first is this, I was asked to make some cupcakes and cake pops for a lady at work for her daughter. I had free reign on the decoration but girly, pink, purples and cute were the main themes. Luckily these are my favourite kind so I had no problem in getting into it. Also her daughter is thinking of having cupcakes at her wedding so it's good to impress!

I do actually have a big wedding cupcake order coming up next month so I will keep you posted but luckily they are also on this theme so it's good to get some practice in.

So first I did the cake pops, I followed by previous cake pop recipe but this time I kept the buttercream vanilla as the outsides were going to be quite decorative. I went with some coloured sugars, ruby red slipper glitter and some lavender coloured chocolate to go on the white base covering.
I think they came out really cute and super girly so I really hope she likes them!

As for the cupcakes I followed my standard cupcake and buttercream recipe which you will find on my blog here just omit extra ingredients such as cherries, cola essence etc. I then coloured the icing with Claret Sugarflair paste and decorating them with fondant butterflies (that I coloured with Grape Violet Sugarflair paste) and cut out with the cutters from my Baking Buys post, I also used pink and white sugar pearls, I tried not to over-do these as simplicity is sometimes a lot prettier.

All in all I am really happy with this girly order and think they will make a great little extra birthday gift :) Pin It Now!

This Week In Cakes

This week has seriously been cake week, I've done four! Luckily three of them were cupcakes so it wasn't too bad.

My first cake was for a 1st birthday and had the characters from Waybuloo on it. This was a challenge as I hadn't done anything from this TV show before so I had to do a lot of Googling. All I can say is thank God for Sugarflair colouring pastes, A year ago I hadn't used any before and they are incredible! Thanks to them I managed to get colours bright enough for a kids cake.

I also had a Mother's Day cupcake to make, a clean and simple white and pink Victoria sponge cake one, sometimes keeping it simple can make it look brilliant.

I had a surprise leaving cupcake to make for a colleague who loves pink, so I created this beauty which I think looked very girly and definitely pink! Loved it, love hearts always add that extra girly touch!

Finally it was my mum's birthday this week and I wasn't able to make a cake for the day of her birthday as I had some orders taking over, so I made her one for the day of Mother's day so she can have a dual one. I made it as a cupcake as the shape was perfect, I made it look like a bunch of Daffodils as they are her favourite flower. I couldn't get hold of any Sugarpaste in time so I made the flowers out of fondant, which wasn't too bad but I then had to let them dry for a long time but luckily it worked! It's Victoria sponge with lemon butter icing, nom!

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Birthday Cakes!

Here are some of the birthday cakes I haven't got round to putting up or what got lost in my deleted blog!
Just a few of quick ones!

The Russian doll cake I made for one of my work friends that were leaving - one day we will travel around Russia drinking vodka! I based it on my actual Russian doll and I think it came out actually really pretty!

 

One of my biggest cakes was for a 40th birthday, a football fan - obviously! So while they didn't want a specific football type cake I suggest the pattern in the birthday number, and it came out really great!

 

Girly cakes are some of my favourite ones to make! It might have something to do with all the pink icing and piping! this one was an order for a very girly girl who loved pink and sweets! 

 

Another week - another giant cupcake! I hadn't done a lilac one before which was great and lit looked really good against the chocolate!

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