I really love this idea. Yesterday I was having a cup of tea with a bride and we were discussing favours. She is having a summer country wedding at ‘Le Manoir’ and all the female guests will be receiving a silk fan. I often struggle to find lovely boutique wedding favour gifts and I’m always on the lookout for new inspiration to share with my clients. So, I thought i’d share this idea with you too…..Just a thought. By the way, take a look at my new fan styled wedding cookies.
The summer has well and truly arrived and I think it’s time to go tropical! My last few weeks have been very busy making wedding cakes and I’ve been making the final adjustments to my new cake book, it’s looking so lovely and I’m so pleased with it! So this week I thought I’d take life a little easier and enjoy some of the summer sunshine, but as usual I couldn’t keep away from the cake kitchen. These mini loaf cakes are based on a recipe that I found some years ago, I had mislaid it somewhere and so I have developed my own variation here. The recipe includes candied peel, pineapple and coconut and is perfect for a summer pic-nic.
Makes 9 mini loaves
Tropical fruit fancy recipe
100g butter
150g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
75g candied peel
75g glace cherries
2 passion fruits
150g drained pineapple pulp
50g desiccated coconut
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees celsius (160 for a fan oven).
2. Line 9 mini loaf tins.
3. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each.
5. Sift in the flour and baking powder.
6. Add the coconut and vanilla extract.
7. Chop the glace cherries into quarters.
8. Place the cherries and candied peel into a sieve and rinse with cold water. (removing the syrup coating will prevent the fruit from sinking).
9. Remove the pulp from the passion fruits and strain the pineapple.
10. Add the candied fruit, pineapple and passion fruit pulp. Mix thoroughly.
11. Spoon the mixture into the mini loaf tins and bake in the oven for 25 minutes until golden brown.
12. Remove from the oven, turn each cake onto a cooling rack and remove the greaseproof paper.
13. When the mini loaves are cool, dust with icing sugar.
‘TROPICAL FRUIT FANCY’
Today I spoke to the very talented Selina Lake. She is a fabulous stylist and author of the best selling interiors title ‘Bazaar Style’ (available on Amazon) She is on the hunt for beautiful homes/gardens/studios to feature in her new book. She loves my cakes and wondered if my clients homes and their wedding venues were as stylish as my wedding cakes and whether I could recommend any shoot locations. And boy have I seen some wonderful venues! From classic English hotels, to idyllic country houses and magical garden marquees, trendy roof top London clubs and sumptuous mansion houses. I viewed some of the work that she has done and I have to say that I wanted to jump into all of her pictures and live there. She has wonderful creativity and a great eye for detail and I will be making some pretty cupcakes for her next book.
Her website is here http://www.selinalake.co.uk/
and her blog is here http://selinalake.blogspot.com/
Year: 1950. Location: California. Headline: Homosexuality is a growing social problem.
Check that year. 59 years later and yesterday’s supreme court ruling in California to ban same sex marriage could easily be a headline from a 50′s newspaper. This is the country that took us to the moon, developed the micro chip and voted for a black president.
And yet it seems that the most culturally diverse state in America fell asleep in the 50′s and needs a bit of a shake.
2009: WAKE UP! California…..you’ve been dreaming that the world hates gays, and for homosexuals it’s turning into a nightmare. See, we’ve all moved on.
Marriages and partnerships are about love, commitment, contentment and trust. and banning the legal recognition of a partnership between two people who love each other is simply wrong.
I have worked in the wedding industry for 10 years and was thrilled when at last in December 2005 Civil partnerships in England and Wales became available for same sex couples. The bill was passed and immediately I was inundated with orders for Christmas Civil partnership wedding cakes. I met with a lovely couple the other day, Matt and Stuart, who are planning their wedding cake for a June celebration. They’re so excited and can’t wait for their big day.
Meanwhile for thousands of homosexuals in California ‘all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey’.
This is an interesting article written by the actor Alec Baldwin:
Alec Baldwin – Why Childless Straight Couples Make the Case for Gay Marriage
Recently my husband told me that the radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, television took 13 years, the internet 4 years and facebook 2 years. Spreading the word about your business or music or blogging about your life and interests is easier than it ever was and sometimes It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day and that life is rushing away from us faster than we can keep up.
So where does the time go?
When it comes to blogging, I’m a newbie. I’ve been reading some past posts from my blog and I’ve been thinking how lovely my life sounds. I always seem to be either popping around a friends house for tea and cake, or buying some special ingredient for a new recipe or deciding which dress to wear to tonight’s party.
I’ve noticed that I don’t seem to have the time to mention how busy i am. Why?
I often work more than 10 hours a day including weekends and there is a stream of constant duties to perform including administration, staff management, ordering supplies, sketching designs, meetings and consultations, or arranging deliveries and collections. While at the same time I am writing a book and marketing and promoting my company. I am running a thriving business and the cost is my time but I’ve noticed that I don’t blog the stress.
The other night we were invited by friends to share a bottle of wine and to watch our favourite TV series ‘Lost’ at their house. When we arrived my husband found a book in their kitchen called ‘The dummies guide to cognitive behavioral therapy’… according to this book ‘You are what you think’. This is so true.
Focusing on all the positive aspects in my life and work has been really beneficial to me and everyone around me. Yes, i have lots of duties to perform and things to do that I’d rather not – but I also have so many things that I cherish and enjoy.
This is what my blog is about. It is about freedom.
Starting my own wedding cake company was the second best thing i ever did (the first was marrying my wonderful husband!). I now own my time. There is no one here to tell me when I can eat lunch or who decides what I wear or who I can talk to. I have real job security too. If my company goes under it’s my fault not some anonymous board of directors. So, if you are a hobbyist or an amateur sugar-crafter then my advice to you is to start your own business. In the current climate it’s a perfect solution to redundancies and job losses and though it’s very demanding, it’s also so much fun. So if time is rushing by and you’re stuck in a job that you don’t like then defrost your passion and pop a cake in the oven.
In the meantime I’m going to waffle on about all the wonderful things that I love in my life..incidentally one of them being waffles with maple syrup!
We have very light curtains in our bedroom because we like to keep the room nice and bright and airy. This is a problem because with any light in the room I’m a terrible sleeper! The room has to be dark otherwise I wake up and, not one for lying in bed and dreaming of wedding cakes, I get up……and with these lovely light Summer mornings we’re having now, it means there are no sleep-ins for me. This was until I bought this fabulous eye mask. It’s comfortable in velvet and satin and filled with lavender. It makes the room so dark that I think it’s the middle of the night in the morning. And girls if you’re feeling playful, it doubles as a blindfold! Perfect x
You can get one here – www.aromahome.com
I recently designed a Grace Kelly inspired wedding cake and whilst browsing the internet I came across an article about MGM’s designer costume designer Helen Rose. I read that Helen had been Grace Kelly’s wedding dress designer. Helen Rose was hired by Twentieth century fox in 1942 to work on their musicals. By 1956 she had designed the clothes for the stars of more than ninety films. Of these films four were for Grace Kelly, including one of my all time favourite musicals ‘High Society’. While working on the film Helen received the assignment to design Grace’s wedding dress for her marriage to Prince Rainier of Monaco and their starting point was one of the ball gowns worn in the movie. MGM studios made every resource available to Helen and the gown took six weeks to prepare and involved 35 MGM craftspeople who all worked to make the dress to be a masterpiece.
Grace’s wedding gown was the most expensive design that Helen Rose had ever made. It used twenty-five yards of silk taffeta and one hundred yards of silk net. Its 125-year-old rose point lace was purchased from a museum and thousants of tiny pearls were sewn on the veil. Grace was 26 years old.
The 600 wedding guests included Hollywood stars David Niven and his wife, Gloria Swanson, Ava Gardner, the Aga Khan, and Conrad Hilton. Queen Elizabeth flatly refused to attend on the grounds of there being “too many movie stars.” The ceremony was watched on television by an estimated 30 million people!
I was strolling around Brixton market on Saturday and a bottle of rose water in the window of the Indian supermarket caught my eye. It was a lovely sunny day and I had been invited round to a neighbours for a cup of tea that afternoon. Always one to try out a new recipe on a friend I decided to buy a bottle of the rose water and pop some cupcakes in the oven. On the way home I passed a stall selling the most sunshine yellow lemons I have seen in ages, so I decided the recipe would be lemon and rose. Earlier I had bought some crystallized rose petals from ‘Rococo Chocolates’ on the kings road and so I popped them on top as little decorations.
Slightly ordinary to the eye these little cakes hide a flavour sensation. My neighbour remarked ‘It’s like biting into a piece of Summer’. Perfect little sophisticated tea time treats.
‘ZESTY LEMON AND ROSE-WATER CUPCAKES’
(zesty lemon cupcakes, lemon syrup drizzle, rose-water glace icing, crystalized rose petals)
makes 12
Zesty lemon cupcakes recipe
50g plain flour
175g self raising flour
175g golden caster sugar
175g butter, softened
4 eggs
90ml water
Zest of 1 lemon
Half teaspoon of vanilla extract
Lemon syrup
Juice of 1 lemon
5 teaspoons of caster sugar
Rose-water glace icing
150g icing sugar
Rose-water
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (160 for a fan oven)
2. Line a 12 tin muffin tin with 12 muffin cases
3. Sift the flours into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and butter
4. break the eggs into another bowl, add the water and vanilla extract. Beat mixture together
5. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mix, add the lemon zest and beat on a fast speed.
6. Divide the mixture between the 12 tins and bake in the oven for approx 30 mins or until golden brown and bouncy to the touch.
7. Whilst the cakes are baking make the lemon syrup. Juice the lemon into a small pan and add the sugar. Turn onto a low heat and simmer until the sugar has dissolved.
8. When the cakes are baked, remove from the oven and place on a wire rack.
9. When the cakes are still warm, pour a teaspoon of the lemon syrup over each cake. Allow to cool
10. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add drops of the rose-water gradually until the icing becomes thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. You don’t want it too runny, so if it’s looking like you’ve added a little too much rose-water, add a little more sifted icing sugar to thicken.
11. When the cakes are cool, spoon a teaspoonful of the glace icing on the top of the cupcake and smooth over.
12. I chose a few little crystallized rose petals as my decoration, bought from ‘Rococo Chocolates’ on the Kings Road .
‘ZESTY LEMON AND ROSE-WATER CUPCAKES’
Happy Baking X
I just love the glamour of iconic weddings. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, Elvis and Priscilla and here, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.
Married On May 21, 1945, their wedding and honeymoon took place at Malabar Farm in Lucas, Ohio.
It was the country home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield, a close friend of Bogart. The wedding was held in the Big House. Bacall was 20 and Bogart was 45…lucky fella!
I’m not too sure about the wedding cake though? What do you think?
Fold-up bags aren’t a new invention, but this range of stylish reusable shopping bags will come in really handy when you want to hit the shops! I was gifted one of these bags by my Auntie Ginny a couple of months ago and I never leave the house without it. Perfect for either picking up wedding cake supplies at my local market or shopping for shoes in town. The bag compacts to about 4 x 1.5 inches but when unfolded it’s a great size and very comfortable on the shoulder! No more old Sainsbury’s carrier bags for me! Here is the design that I have….
Visit there website here – http://www.envirosax.com/
