Heaven is a place in Bloomsbury

I had a lovely day out today - the sort of day that makes me fall in love with London again. A group of us gathered together for a friend's birthday celebrations. We took in the Egyptian mummies and assorted gilded Elizabethan clocks in the British Museum and then headed to my new favourite place in the world Bea's of Bloomsbury for the most marvellous tea!

I loved the high kicking cake stand and the red velvet cupcake was to die for. They have an open kitchen there so you can spy on all the clever pastry chefs rustling up wonderful sweet treats. I would heartily recommend it to anyone with a sweet tooth!

Cake Autumn: Two and Three

So my mad three weeks of baking have finally come to an end which means that you should hear a bit more from me from now on than you have done of late.

This was the cake I made for my new Goddaughter's christening:



And this was the grand finale for the gorgeous partnership ceremony of two friends at the weekend:






So now I can turn my attention back to our much neglected flat!

Cake Autumn: Number One

I am part way through three weeks of consecutive cake making at the moment. I made the cake for the lovely wedding of one of my school friends in Wiltshire last weekend. It was a nice one to make as it involved lots of sugar flowers which are always fun.


I know some of you have asked about how I make the roses before. At some point I will do a tutorial but in the meantime there is a brilliant set of demo videos on YouTube which I have followed in the past. Here is part one to whet your appetite:



I am making a Christening cake this week and a wedding cake the week after so more cake posts to follow!

Lytham St Annes Wedding

Once again I realise I have been a bit quiet of late. I have been busy baking cupcakes for the wedding of two gorgeous friends that I attended this weekend gone in Lytham St Annes, near Blackpool. It was a wonderful day and the happy couple looked absolutely made up. Thankfully the cakes survived the seven hour drive from South East London!

Back with cake pics

Well I am back from a glorious week in the French countryside where we celebrated our first anniversary. We spent a lot of time reading with glasses of red wine in hand - blissful!

But before I left I promised a photo of the cake I made for a friend's 30th last weekend so here it is:

I designed it to look like a Birkin Bag and a pair of Manolos. I was a bit nervous that it wouldn't end up anything like the image I had in my head as I haven't really done that much in the way of 3D cakes before but I was really pleased with how it turned out. Hope you like it!

Life's a Picnic

I spent this weekend down in West Sussex, where Mr Crafty hails from. The sun was out in all its glory on Sunday which was a miracle as we had scheduled in a picnic with some friends a couple of months ago and that is usually like a red rag to a bull for the gods to play havoc with the weather. Instead we got brilliant sunshine and spent the day enjoying a heady mix of orange and lavender cake, prosecco with wild strawberry liquer and rounders.

Here are the chocolate truffle torte with fresh raspberries and afore-mentioned orange and lavender cake that I baked for the occasion (please imagine for a moment that these are resplendant on pretty vintage cake stands rather than in tupperware boxes).

I was reminded that when I was growing up my Father always coveted a proper picnic hamper complete with china, cloth napkins and metal cutlery, the sort that is synonymous with Glyndebourne, punting on the Cam and Pimms i.e. quintessentially British. I have inhereted a similar longing from him but these days most picnic sets come in the form of rucksacks with non-breakable, far too sensible plastic crockery and cutlery. What I hanker after is totally a impractical willow basket lined with lovely linens and stocked with patterned china and glasses you can clink.

I was, therefore, delighted to find the hampers of my dreams at Life's A Picnic. They assemble gorgeous hampers from vintage crockery and cutlery and do all the sewing and leather work themselves. At around £180 - £260 a hamper they are not cheap but no two hampers are the same and they are the sort of investment that you could pass down through the generations:

Is it Pimms O'Clock already? Must dash. TTFN...

Bank Holiday Baby Shower

I spent part of the lovely sunny bank holiday weekend just gone celebrating the joint baby shower for two of my very good friends from primary school. It means a huge amount to me that we are all still in touch after all these years and I am so looking forward to meeting the two new junior additions to our clan.

I am planning to make each new arrival some little shoes when I know their genders and can pick out a nice fabric for them but in the meantime I thought some basic white babygrows, scratch mittens and blankets would be useful for their mums when they are newborns. I spent a while looking for nice gift bags to put the bits and pieces in and couldn't find anything I liked so instead, on a whim, I decided to make some from some leftover yellow striped wallpaper that I used for our wedding. Now I know how easy it is to make gift bags from scratch I shan't ever be buying one again!

I made these by wrapping the paper round a shallow carboard box as a guide. The next time I make some I will take some step by step photos and put a proper tutorial on here as it is so easy there is just no need to buy ready made bags which are always so overpriced for what they are. I finished the bags off with some buff luggage tags which I stamped with a pretty green swallow print. I tied all the individual babygrows and mittens etc with sheer yellow, green polka dot and green gingham ribbons and popped them inside. I hope it made some rather boring but useful Mothercare basics a lot more personal.

And as no baby shower is complete without cupcakes I made a batch to take along:

Hundreds and thousands take me right back to the parties that we all used to go to together when we were five years old. I love the fact that here we all are, two of us about to be mums and another a mum twice over already, still eating cupcakes topped with hundreds and thousands and enjoying each others company just as we always did.

More cakes!

Ok - so I realise this is my umpteenth blog post in one day but, hey, I'm lagging behind so many others I reckon I have some catching up to do!

I thought I would just stick a few more of my cake creations up...

I discovered a real love of making sugar flowers whilst making this one for a very pretty wedding in Windsor:



This one was mine and Mr Crafty's lovebird engagement cake:







Layers of sponge on a sunny May morning:

Icing on the Cake

I have a number of passions - interior design being just one. Another is cake decorating which I discovered five years ago when it occurred to me that it could be a perfect blending of two great loves; food and design.

Once course at Hackney Community College and a lot of trial and error later I now produce wedding and birthday cakes for friends, friends of friends and family.

Here are a few of my faves:







And this one I made for my wedding last July which was a bunting-tastic affair: