A Day In Laaaaaaandaaaaaaan

As you may be aware...there's been some sporting events going on in London this summer, heard of them? Anyway, we were lucky enough to get hold of tickets to the Olympic Park so thought it would be a good excuse to look around the park, soak up the atmosphere and go on the Javelin train!

Be warned...lots of photos!

London was boiling, why I decided to wear make-up I have no idea, the eyeliner was practically melting off of my face. We decided to go to the park early, there literally wasn't a cloud in the sky and I could feel myself burning already! It was the last day of the Paralympics today and we could hear them practicing, exciting stuff! There was such a great atmosphere in the park, people singing, covered in flags and we even saw one of the athetes walking around. After having a good nose around and taking A LOT of photos before giving up when it got too hot we sat down for an ice cream. Is it wrong to say my favourite part was the javelin train? It was amazing, I'd love to travel like that every day, and all the staff for the games were so helpful too, one volunteer even gave us his oyster card to use!

After the park we headed back on the javelin and made our way to the Scandinavian Kitchen, they'll get they're own blog post I think as I took so many photos. We couldn't resist some open-faced sandwiches...or 'topless' ones as they put it. Being ultimate consumers we had a look around their food items and stocked up on some essentials to keep us going until we have another visit from the vikings. Apparently the coffee was great, and coming from my mother, that is the mark of a truly great cafe.

Lastly we couldn't resist a trip to Choccywoccydoodah on Carnaby Street, again I think this needs its own post to do it justice. I loved the Brighton shop when we went in November so was very excited to check out the London one, and I wasn't disappointed! The shop was beautiful, the staff lovely and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit the cafe upstairs. As much as we really wanted a hot chocolate, in that heat we couldn't really justify it so opted to share a slice of cake, it was huge...totally worth the calories. I can't wait to show you all the photos in a proper post soon :)

It was such a brilliant day everything went right, which is rare for a whole day in London! Back home now with Norwegian goodies waiting for the closing ceremony and a huge refreshing glass of coke! Bring it on.

Nom! x Pin It Now!

Has everbody heard about the bird?

Right before I completely launch into song I will actually tell you about the bird...cake!

Another co-worker's birthday means another giant cupcake, this is the last one for a while so I wanted to make it a good one. This was my third cake from last week's 'cake week' and for my friend Vicki who is an illustrator by trade so wanted to make it a bit different :) I actually got the idea for this cake from a recent copy of 'Mollie Makes' magazine in a lino printing section.

The sponge is chocolate, everyone loves chocolate cake on their birthday don't they? The bottom part is covered in white fondant and the top in pink vanilla buttercream using a 1M nozzle in the rose design. For the design I decided to with teal and purple for the main colours, teal being birds and flowers and purple for hearts. I made the birds using cookie cutters and piped the pattern on with royal icing. Plungers are my favourite tools at the moment, makes making extra decoration easier and in mass! You can never have too many flowers or hearts can you? For the final touches I added some white chocolate hearts, coloured sugar balls and a pink ribbon. What was really nice was that the cake ended up matching the card too :D I'm a sucker for celebrating, I love decorating desks, making cakes and really drawing attention to people, this one had to be no different...I'll be unbearable when the forbidden festive word comes round!

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Chocoholic Birthday Cake

The time finally came to make the ultimate chocolate cake. It was my friends birthday yesterday, we've known each other since we were 11 and the one thing you could never dispute...is that she loved chocolate. So it was an easy decision what sort of cake to do when it came to her surprise birthday cake.

Ok so first of all, it's not allll chocolate, I made the sponge a Victoria one, I thought if it was all chocolate then I'd probably kill her with sugar! But I did use chocolate buttercream to give it a bit of chocolatey goodness.

It's two tiered, leveled with my cake leveler, this is a really simple tool to help keep everything straight and even as it's so easy to make it wonky without realising.
I got mine from Lakeland for £3.29.

I thought rather than using icing to make it look like chocolate, I would use actual chocolate, one of my friends suggested I use Curly Wurlys on the outside as they have a nice pattern. This actually worked really well, thought it took 19 of them cut in half! I then covered the tops of the tiers in Cadbury's chocolate buttons, Maltesers and white chocolate stars. I piped some buttercream on for the finishing touch. To top it off I tied a purple Happy Birthday ribbon around it to give it the Cadburys touch!

The perfect cake for the chocolate lover Pin It Now!