Handbag Cake - Step by Step Tutorial

 

This cake was so much fun to make, my daughter decided that she would love this grown up handbag cake for her birthday. So much so that she drew it out on a sheet of paper, -having seen a cake she liked on the blog previously - detailing the exact colours she wanted and the style she wanted, it made for a very easy cake indeed when it came to buying all the supplies we needed 😊

Of course when you are making your own cake, feel free to personalise it, change the colours or even the basic style, perhaps you would prefer a flat stitched handle or the handles affixed to the top of the bag beside the clasp and laying down the side of the bag.

This is the beginning of a wonderful word of amazing people with your baking skills!!

Emoji Cake Tutorial

These cakes are great fun to make and they are so easy to personalise!! My daughter and I had great fun deciding what emoji faces to choose for her birthday cake this year. She finally settled on the Tears of Joy and Blowing a Kiss emoji cakes! 

The inside of the cake has a little surprise too because it is a vanilla and chocolate Zebra cake, which was delicious and a lot of fun to make. 

3D Shark Cake- How To

Oh we had fun making this cake, my son is nothing short of obsessed with all things shark like. We searched YouTube for tutorials on how to make a 3D shark cake. It wasn't long before we came across CakesByChoppA and his tutorial. He makes it look so easy so I thought sure why not! 

Rich Chocolate Bundt Cake

So I wanted to bake something outstanding for a recent birthday celebration, the recipient is an out and out chocoholic...me! 

I figure that it should be something special - this is very important, it should be extremely easy to make and with minimal washing up - which this recipe is.

Also it had the added benefit allowing little hands to help with plenty of chocolate covered spoons to lick.  

This cake is alarmingly easy to make, no electric mixers involved, just good old fashioned saucepans and a mixing bowl. The method is simple and there is nothing fancy on the ingredient list.

I love that is isn't too sweet but so moist and moreish! I promise you that the bundt tin you bought -in my case, at our local German discount store in the reduced to clear basket! - and haven't really used will come to life with this perfect celebration cake.  

Easy Chocolate Cake

This chocolate cake looks good and it tastes great too, guess what...it is really easy to make!! This is so easy to make and decorate that I made two of them for my childrens teacher, the perfect end of year thank you!!

The sponge mix is an all in one - put everything into a bowl, mix it up - and the chocolate buttercream is a doddle to make.

Little Miss Sunshine Cake Tutorial

The Mr. Men and Little Miss. books have a very special place in our home, they were my childrens first bedtime stories. The type of stories that are "laugh out loud" funny but also have a moral lesson. These books saw my children from giggling toddlers to grown school goers, sounding out the words.

My children grew up with these books always within reach and that transformed them from having the stories read to them, to slowly reading them and eventually reading them fluently to eachother.  My daughter takes great pleasure telling us that she has all fifty Mr. Men books read....twice!

Simple Vanilla Buttercream Recipe

It's tempting isn't it, wouldn't it be wonderful if you could make a batch of light and fluffy buttercream at home instead of always buying it. Well now is your chance, this is unlike anything you will buy, it is silky smooth and full of pure vanilla goodness. Better still you can tailor this recipe as you please with different flavours and colours! 

Lego Movie Cake (Design Creative Cakes by Sharon)

This is just a short post to let you know about a brilliant YouTube channel I found while searching for some inspiration for my son's birthday cake.

I stumbled upon this very detailed tutorial on YouTube from the very talented  Creative Cakes by Sharon. Sharon made it look so doable (that's a word... right!!!) That I just couldn't resist.

How to Make a Merida Doll Cake

My daughter fell in love with the film Brave -since that the book has been read over and over again -so much so that she can rhyme it off by heart. It was the feisty Merida that really caught her attention -the bow and arrow wielding princess that rides bareback through the wilds of Scotland shooting at targets and climbing sheer rock faces!

Chocolate Beetroot Cake

I have been working on my photography recently, trying to improve my composition and the overall feel of the title shots. Tricky work and like any food blogger I wanted a certain look for my blog and most importantly do the food justice.  

Last last year I joined my local camera club with the sole intention of getting a better understanding of how my camera worked. It had that nasty habit of doing exactly as it pleased - I wanted to have more control of the finished image. I had these great ideas in my head about how the finished shot should look, but I couldn't translate them into workable photos- very frustrating.  

One Year Older (but not wiser!!)

It is a funny thing getting older, people look to you for advice, expecting a pearl of wisdom to drop from your lips. I'm not sure that I am any older or wiser than I was ten years ago! My birth certificate says one thing but my mind says another, to be honest I feel like a teenager inside, a slightly giddy one at that.

How to Make a Power Ranger Cake

This is my son's birthday cake from earlier this year, he and I spent ages trawling the internet (it's a tradition now!) for the perfect birthday cake. We watched Cakes By ChoppA make his extremely popular Spiderman Cake on YouTube, which I used as my inspiration for this project. Actually this cake started out as a Spiderman Cake but as with all little boys he changed his mind at the last moment and decided that his cake should be of Jayden the Red Samurai Power Ranger!

How to Make a Shirt and Tie Cake

I made this cake recently for Father's Day (we made matching cards too), it could also be a very thoughtful birthday cake. Birthday cakes for men can be a tricky thing, as a result I am constantly looking for inspiration for the men in my life. To compound the thing it is even more of a task if they don't support a football team. This on the other hand is what I call a neutral cake, it could be made for a birthday, thank you teacher or a retirement cake without any problem.

How To Make A Cinderella Doll Cake

My daughter is obsessed by Disney princesses, so much so that she spends days at a time wearing her princess dresses, acting out what she sees on screen, romantic dances with handsome princes (mainly her unwilling 5 year old brother!!), singing while doing her chores and generally wishing for her fairy Godmother to come along to finish her homework for her (so she can get back to the business of being a princess). Her current favorite is of course Cinderella, so I tried not to be too alarmed when she very politely requested a Cinderella birthday cake. Now I am very much a newbie to the whole world of cake decorating, this would most assuredly be a challenge! 

How to Make a Handbag Cake

Here is my step by step tutorial for a Handbag cake. I made this cake for my sister's birthday, I don't think she'll appreciate if I disclose her age, but sufficed it to say that it is a memorable one! I really enjoyed making this cake and I have to thank Cake Decorating magazine for their step by step instructions.

Fun Circles Cake

Every January the advertisements for the periodicals start, they're on all matter of subjects, from the vehicles that starred in the James Bonds films to patchwork quilting, and for the most part they hold no attraction for me, but this year turned up a real treat. Cake Decorating caught my eye, it was on the magazine shelf while I was out shopping and I was immediatly sold, locally we have no baking supplies shop so this offered me access to good quality cutters etc. The first issue had this cake on the cover (as well as a butterfly metal cutters, pink glitter and a cupcake stand, woo hoo!!) I was in heaven, I spent the whole afternoon pouring over it's bright photographs and step-by-step instructions (very much my kind of thing!!). This met all my needs, sugar crafting equipment and the know how all in one.

Ladybird Birthday Cake

My daughter loves spring time and it seemed natural to her that daffodils and ladybirds should adorn her birthday cake, especially since she had to bring daffodils into her school's nature table. Each ladybird was named and the location of every flower carefully chosen for the perfect birthday cake!

My Chocolate Celebration Cake

 

I experimented with Mich Turners' recipe for her Chocolate Truffle cake which flopped, mainly because I didn't use the proper tin size. This however is a more robust cake and having learnt my lesson, I used two sandwich tins. Bake ware is an important factor and on this occasion I used silicone bake ware which is very handy if you dislike lining tins, but you have to be patient at the end of the cooking process because, the cakes need to be cooled almost completely before you peel off the silicone.