I have a couple of days off baking now. Pure heaven after the manic fortnight or so I've just had! I plan on spending most of my time out in the garden enjoying the beautiful weather we're having! We have a rabbit run being built at the moment so it's just nice to all be out in the garden. We've got chickens too who are laying beautiful eggs! I had hoped to use in my yummy cakes but it looks like you can't use unstamped eggs in baking which is a shame. I always get my eggs direct from a Norfolk farm which are stamped, they're gorgeous eggs to so I'm happy to keep using them, it would just be nice to be able to say that the eggs I use have come from pampered free range pet chickens! Never mind, just means there's more for us to eat instead!
I've done a couple of very pretty cakes this last week, a very girly birthday cake and a spring Wedding cake. I just love doing girly cakes, they're so much fun! This one was a Vanilla Giant Cupcake decorated in plenty of pink and glitter!
Us bakers are having fun at the moment trying to find safe glitters to use as lots of people were using safe 'non-toxic' glitters on their cakes. This meant that although they were completely safe to be eaten, they contain no nutritional value and are not digested, therefore, are now deemed in-edible. There seems to be a lot of confusion with what can be eaten. I've been doing my research and have found a couple of brands who make edible glitters and dusts. I have been making my own glitters using lustre's mixers with caster sugar too. The glitters and confetti I have in stock are all considered safe by the FSA as they are made from modified starches and food additives (E numbers). I make a vast majority of my own decorations for cakes as well and always do so from fondant icing which is completely edible and rather tasty too!
Here's a picture I was sent by a customer to show what design they'd like for their wedding cake (please note I do not own this photo and I did not make the cake pictured)
As you can see it's quite an unusual cake with the divider under the top tier but also quite pretty! The bride wanted to have daffodils on the cake as well as the butterflies.
Now, here's the one I made, before and after the daffodils were added.
What do you think? The bottom tier is chocolate, the middle is vanilla and the top is fruit cake which they wanted so it could be kept. I wanted to get a picture of the cake with and without the daffodils as I think they really change the look and feel of the cake. I decided to go with less decorations than the example picture and went for differently place butterflies. It's a shame you can't appreciate the effect of the butterflies and they delicately glittered and looked gorgeous in the light.
Well I really should be getting on!
Thanks for reading, Sam x
