Christmas Cake

 No Christmas pudding for us this year, made so many differne tbakes last year tha\t we struggled to eat it all before it went off. This year it's just a cake for the Smith household.

I made our cake back in the middle of October using an old recipe my Nan gave me, tried and tested always makes a good cake so why change the recipe I use.

 I gave it weekly feeds of whiskey and brandy, flipping it every week to ensure even soaking of the alcohol.

Finally a fortnight before christmas I covered the cake in marzipan and left it overnight to dry.

Then came the fun part of decorating the cake. I used my fimo penguins as decorations, which will no doubt be a regular feature on all of our Christmas cakes from now on.

 Funniest thing was a neighbour knocked at our front door while I was decorating the cake so I answered the door covered in glitter, red and green icing colouring pastes... had to show him the cake to prove I wasn't completely mad.

Making Penguins

So I will admit I have a bit of a penguin obsession, I know...

Last year I made some icing penguins for our christmas cake, they were very fiddly and it was such a shame to have to eat them... so this year I decided to make some out of fimo instead so they could be reused and not eaten.

The white fimo of the penguins is glittery making them a little bit more festive, can't wait to see them on our christmas cake...now I just need to design the rest of our cake.

The other bit of penguin madness started at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace a few weeks ago.... Mum bought me a half metre of penguin print fabric that I just couldn't leave behind. I made myself a tote bag from the fabric and still have enough left to make another makeup bag or something of a similar size.

 Anyone else get the pont that I kinda really like penguins???

A Little Late....Christmas Bakes

 Sitting watching The Great British Bake Off and I've realised that I never shared the photos of my christmas bakes from 2013....so a fair few months behind but better late than never.

After 2012's cake decorating class I decided to be brave and go it alone. The side was done using a miniature snowflake rolling pin on the icing. Stars punched out of icing and snowballs rolled. The penguins took a fair bit of work as making icing black is not as easy as I expected it to be. I then handpainted the merry christmas sentiment using red food colouring gel. A lovely boozy cake, marzipan hidden under the icing and it lasted us for weeks.

  I then had a crack at Paul Hollywood's mince pie recipe and decided to make the lids star shaped. A little tricky to bake as each star top cooked at a different speed. An awful lot of these mince pies were made and eaten over christmas, almost every family member and friend that we saw over christmas has a few of these too.

Now to up the scale and design for 2014's christmas bakes!

Poppy Birthday Cake

In November my nan turned 80, her birthday is the 11th so she has always been into poppies. I took the challenge to make her a birthday cake to celebrate the occasion.

The cake itself is a lemon sponge, similar to that used in a lemon drizzle cake, but I added fresh lemon juice and zest into the cake mix. I cut the sponge into 2 layers and added a layer of strawberry jam to add flavour.

Then I iced and decorated the cake, covering it in poppies. Maybe i should have taken a photo of the state of my hands after rolling the colours Into the icing, I was covered in red dye!

Not bad for my first attempt at icig and decorating a cake without being on a cake decorating course.

She loved the cake so I guess it can be called a success. Even got asked for the sponge recipe...still haven't shared the recipe with anyone though.

Her other favourite thing is giraffes...so I took on the design challenge of making a giraffe themed birthday card too...

 I used: 

• Zoo Review stamp set
• Sassy Salutations stamp set
• Hexagon Punch