Happy Angry Birthday!

Today is my lovely boyfriend Sam's birthday and I felt the need to make an Angry Birds cake.  Ok so I am not making it for a cute kid like most of the ones online but I wanted to make one and he was obsessed with Angry Birds when he first got his iphone so it fit. 

Aerial View

I am sooo happy with this!  The cake is just a sponge and then has buttercream icing and the birds and pigs are made from marzipan rather than icing as Sam loves his marzipan.  (Seriously he just ate the rest of the pack.) 

Piggies!

The Stonehenge arrangement is cheapo caramel wafers stuck together with icing.  I am not very happy with Silver Spoon, I bought their writing icing and the white exploded out the wrong end first time I went to use it.  Plus it was more clear with a hint of white than actual white.  I just mixed up some icing sugar and water to make the eyes in the end.  The black icing was fine though and pretty fun to write with.

Birdies!

The birds are my favourites, I like the fat little tummies and the monobrows.  The funny thing is that now it won't fit in my new cake tin, it is just too high!  There are also some strategically placed toothpicks as I was worried the henge might fall down.

Who will win?

A Late Christmas Present!

I'm back from my trip to see friends and we exchanged presents from Christmas, it is a bit of a tradition for us to give our presents late, mainly because we are both craft procrastinators!  Kylie loved her Dorothy top and wore it all day, I was really happy that it fitted and she loved it so much.  She gave me a cute crocheted bag and this lovely Primrose Bakery Cookbook.  I am a sucker for cook books.

We made these cinnamon cupcakes with marshmallow icing and they were delish!  The icing is really easy and tastes just like gooey marshmallow.  The cakes were supposed to be the Nutella cupcake mix but the oven was dodgy and burnt the Nutella on the top of the mix.  I am def going to try them again though at home with my own oven.

 

Next we tried the triple chocolate layer cake with caramel buttercream icing.  The sponge was really lovely but we found the icing was a bit sickly and the whole batch hardened up so quickly it was hard to spread on the cake.

 

I am really glad to have this book, there are so many really lovely recipes in it that are based around different flavours rather than just different ways to decorate cakes like some books.  I recommend it!

Cake Pops!

Cake pops for tea?

I have wanted to try cake pops for a while now and I decided to  take the plunge and try them out.  I got the sticks for 99p for 50 on ebay which I thought was a bargain, plus I can easily wash and re-use them as they are pretty tough plastic.  I did look at a fair few tutorials and recipes online but in the end I just sort of winged it.

I bought a cheapo chocolate cake mix for under a pound that you just added eggs and water to for the the main cake as I didn't really want to spend lots on ingredients as this was a dry run for a Guide activity and I want to make them cheap and easy.  Plus I would be sad about blending up a perfectly good cake.  So after baking the cake mix I whizzed it in the food processor then made a batch of buttercream icing and mixed it all in.  Then I spent some time making very uneven balls and then using a little bit of chocolate to secure the sticks in the cake balls then I refridgerated.

One cake mix made around 40 pops

I wasn't sure how many I would make out of one batch but I had 39 so that would be plenty for my guide group when I do it with them.  I did leave them overnight as I didn't have much time so I was doing a little bit each day and they did go pretty solid.  This turned out to be a good thing though as it set the chocolate really quickly being cold and it stopped the crumbs falling off.  I won't have long to set them when I make them with guides so I am just hoping that they will be set enough.

Lollipop, no, cake pop!

I used chocolate to coat them as my local supermarket only had 2 types of candy melts and they were quite expensive.  The chocolate wasn't as smooth as I would like, I expect melts are a lot smoother as they contain more oils but they are fine for a trial.  I found citrus sprinkles which I thought would be great with the chocolate and you can taste them but they are still subtle. 

Butterflies!

I ran out of milk chocolate just over half way through so had to use white for the rest.  The white didn't cover the chocolate sponge as well, you can still see it through the chocolate, and sugar butterflies.  The white actually tastes really good with the sponge though.  Maybe 2 layers would work best but I didn't have time for that.  I worked out that if you used 100g of chocolate per 10 pops I would have plenty.  Especially as the girls are quite likely to pile it on and make a mess everywhere!  I have tested them out on my boyfriend and co-workers and they went down really well, they are very rich and the icing keeps the cake very moist.  I am definatley going to make more!

Strawberry Cupcakes and Macaroni Cheese

In between sewing breaks I have been doing a little baking and cooking which is something I like doing but I have to be in the right mood.  I wanted to try out some American products I got in a swap a little while bake so these cupcakes have strawberry flavouring in the batter which turned them pink, and pink icing using the special icing gel I got too.  It is really fantastic and just a little bit makes them really vibrant. 

Strawberry Cupcakes

Yummy strawberry sponge

Pretty!

I also made macaroni cheese (though with the wrong pasta shapes as I didn't have the right ones!) I used this recipe though I added spinach for a bit of colour and extra yum.

Macaroni Cheese

Birthday Cakes!

Yesterday was my boyfriends birthday and as we are short on money at the moment I decided to make both his card and cake but to make it a little bit different and quite personal.  I like making things for other people as I just love the reaction you get from them. 

I found someone on DeviantArt who had cross stitched some Moomin patterns and I commented on how much I liked them, and she sent me the scans of the patterns!  http://auraya89.deviantart.com/

Snork Maiden

I couldn't see the colour symbols very well on the pattern so I just used colours that I thought matched the cartoon.  Moomin is one of our pet names for each other heehee! 

I also saw some amazing Cookie Monster cakes on Craftster a little while ago and thought they would be perfect for his birthday.  http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=376515.0

I didn't really remember the details for the Craftster ones but I used white chocolate buttons and chocoltae drops for the eyes, oreos for the mouth and a heck of a lot of blue cream cheese icing which I piped to get the hairy look!  http://www.cookuk.co.uk/cupcakes/cream-cheese-icing.htm  This recipe makes a heck of a lot and I only really needed half for 12 cupcakes.  They are chocolate chip cakes too which are lovely!  I think it would work well with marshmallows for eyes too. 

Enjoying the sunshine!

As the title suggests I am loving the sunny weather at the moment!  Unfortunately it is no conducive to making me sew so last weekend I had a break from it and went for a wander on Gower.

Three Cliffs Bay

It is so beautiful and I am glad that I live somewhere that I can enjoy scenes like this.

I also made some cupcakes for a picnic which we ended up having in the garden as the boyf was not feeling up to a walk after too many night shifts.

My Dad is also doing alot better and I am hoping to go visit him in hospital this weekend.

Cake, Cutting and Sunshine

I have had a small sewing break as I have been enjoying the sunshine and a good book (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield) and I didn't have enough interfacing and lining fabric to hand so had to wait for the post fairies to deliver some.  At the moment I am cutting out my Queen of Hearts coat, which is quite a few pieces and lined and interfaced so that is quite a lot of cutting.

Some pattern pieces so far

I made another cake though, this one a Victoria sponge with cream and jam as that is what the boyfriend requested and it used up leftover cream.

And finally, this is what I want in the garden in the lovely warm weather we are enjoying at the moment!

:)

Good News!

I won a competition today :)  Hooray!  It was run over on Beebee's Vintage Dress blog http://beebeesvintagedress.blogspot.com/ and I got some really nice patterns.  I know more patterns but can you ever really have enough?

Today I finished my birdy skirt too and will get some pictures tomorrow when the light is better and I can hopefully make it into an outfit.  I also made a Victoria sponge which Is really yummy.  Do you reckon I could win any WI competitions with this?

For Mother's Day I made my mum a card and bracelet as she deserves something nice.  I sent a couple of books too but these were my handmade items.

The flowers were brads from a stationers and I just added the rest.

It's pretty simple as that is how my mum likes her jewelry and she should be able to wear it to work without it stopping her from typing as chunky ones sometimes do.

Late Christmas presents are the best!

I have been away for the weekend with my lovely *hem* bunch of guides.  We did some crafty activites including glass painting, space pictures and lavender bags which went down well apart from the fact they cannot be trusted with expensive permenant paint and got it everywhere.  We also made 5 min ice cream and sherbet which worked really well and I would recommend to anyone.

Before I went away I recieved a lovely late Christmas present form a fellow crafty friend.  She made me this gorgeous wollen scarf which changes colour and the colours themselves really remind me on her :)

Isn't it amazing?  It must have taken her ages!  I also got this very cute earring tree and a necklace holder which I haven't put up yet as I am not sure where to put it yet.

She sent me this very cute little mirror, I love the Moomins and I have a bit of an on going joke/nickname with my bf about them too.  It has a pretty blue moomin on the otherside too.

 The whole lot is amazing and I can't wait to use them!  At the moment I am working on a carrier bag holder which I am hoping to applique some fruit onto in rainbow colours so here is a progress so far piccie!

I got hungry tonight and tried the microwave cake recipe that has been circling the net.  It totally exploded heehee!  but was very yummy and I added choc chunks.