A promise fulfilled

If you remember I wrote this post about the promise I once made my daughter many years ago that I would happily make her engagement cake. Tom proposed to her at the summit of Scout Kinder in the Peak District on 11th December last year. We were due to have a family celebration the following weekend but this was cancelled due to the heavy snow we had during the coldest winter the UK has endured for 30 years.

They decided they did not want to miss out on a celebration and last weekend they finally held their party to which I took the promised engagement cake.

Well here it is................

My theme was red hearts on a white cake.

I spent days cutting out a multitude of different shaped hearts so that I could have a play with some designs. I also decided that as well as a central plaque I wanted to make a heart "explosion" which would come out of the cake. I attached sugar paste hearts to wires which I then "corkscrewed" using a pencil. Some hearts were also painted silver with edible food colouring.

Now whilst working on this I had one of those "light bulb" moments and decided that to make a permanent reminder I would add a  special twist to the cake...I would make a precious metal clay silver heart pendant which would match some of the icing hearts I made. I had great fun making this at home, rolling out the clay and firing it with my blow torch.

I then polished it and added a silver jump ring.
Here it is next to one of the icing hearts.

I tied a red ribbon to it and hid it amongst the "explosion " heart spray I made.  I also bought a silver chain to hang it from.









The evening before the party I made up my traditional (and very simple) all in one sponge recipe. It was left to cool overnight and the next morning I sliced it open and sandwiched it together with a thick layer of home made vanilla butter cream and my favourite shop bought raspberry jam. I like strawberry jam with a plain vanilla butter icing but Milly loves raspberry so that is what I used. I never scrimp on my fillings as I like my cakes to taste as good as I hope they look.

I then had the task of putting my plan together.Luckily it all went well and after a few hours concentrated work it was finished.

If you look above you can see the silver heart hidden amongst the heart explosion.

I then put it carefully into a cake box (always essential if you are transporting cakes anywhere) and we drove down to Essex with it in the boot of the car.

Milly and Tom were delighted with their cake and Milly was so touched by the special pendant. We had a wonderful party and everyone enjoyed getting together to celebrate their engagement. I nearly forgot to capture the cake cutting moment so apologies that the photo I took is not brilliant. Tom was wearing a hat as it was a "hat and slippers" party -  it is not his usual apparel! And yes together with that lovely dress Milly really is wearing slippers!

Milly spoke to me the next day and said she had been wearing her pendant on the chain and loved it. I think my idea of a reminder in silver was good as by then there was also virtually no cake left.........she is the biggest fan of her Mum's home made cakes ;0)

Wishing the pair of them a lifetime of love and happiness and here's to 28.7.12

Bye for now,

Jane x

Spring cleaning and planting

As we had such a glorious weekend last week I decided that it was time to start my gardening spring cleaning. My garden is very tiny and most of my plants are grown in pots. That means that come the spring it is time to start thinking about cleaning them.

I am not sure if I am just a little obsessive but I like to give them a good scrub with warm soapy water. Out came the bucket and scrubbing brush and I set to with a few of the pots. And yes I even clean the crocks I use as drainage!

It was good to see them drying in the wonderful sunshine on the path.

This year I have decided to try my hand at growing ranunculus and arum lilies. I have bought both of them as young plants in the past and thought that they would be interesting to try to grow myself. The Internet is so useful and I was able to look up how deep to plant them. I also needed to know what way up to plant the ranunculus. They are very odd little bulbs (they are actually a type of rhizome).

They are like little bunches of bananas and I found out that they needed to be planted with the "bananas" facing down. The lilies were easier as they have "eyes" where they shoot from so obviously these face up.

I was delighted after a few hours to have 2 pots of lilies and 4 pots of ranunculus all potted up. I then put them amongst the sunny south facing border I have and let them settle in. In the background and at the front you can also see my hostas beginning to shoot up. Also the foxgloves are springing to life.

You may also be interested to see how my chilies are doing.

Here they are 2 weeks ago

And here they are at the weekend..I have potted on some of the bigger plants and made some "cloches" out of empty soft drink bottles as they do need to be kept warm until the weather is much hotter here.

So my spring cleaning produced some newly potted bulbs and my planted chili seeds are already decent sized little plants!

Tonight is "The" engagement party and I am just about to start assembling the cake....I shall be back next week to show you how it turned out.
Just to give you a little sneak peak.......

 Have a wonderful weekend enjoying yourselves,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A promise I once made.....

As you will have seen in this post I have made lots of cakes over the years, mainly for my 2 children, now aged 22 and nearly 25. Two weeks ago my daughter came up from Essex for  Matt's birthday tea party and as we were chatting said to me, "Mum you made me a promise years ago....I am going to ask if you will keep to it?" Now that really got me thinking..what on earth was it....did I promise her money, a house, new shoes.....!? Well the answer came, "You always told me that you would never make my wedding cake, as that is just too much to be doing whilst getting things ready for the big day, but you would make me an engagement cake. Will you do that for us?". I do actually remember saying this, she was probably about 12 or 13 years old at the time. You will all remember that Milly and Tom did actually get engaged in December but the planned engagement lunch was cancelled due to the heavy snow. I assumed, what with Christmas and all the celebrations that that was it.
Well  apparently not...they decided they really missed not celebrating their engagement with all their friends and family so they have planned an Engagement Party in mid April and yes, yours truly will be finally making that promised Engagement cake!

I had such fun showing you my old cake creations I made Matt that I thought now would be a great chance to share some I have made Milly over the years. It was a real trip down Memory Lane looking at Matt's old cakes and I must admit these have been the same for me. As before I'm afraid the photos are very poor quality as they are old "developed" photos which I have scanned and put onto my computer. Nothing like the qualitty of the photos from my new camera, which I am just loving playing with.

So here we go..this is not the first cake I made her but it was one of the first themed cakes. It was her 4th Birthday (1990) and Milly always loved Beatrix Potter and especially the Tale of Jeremy Fisher. It was her first "big" party where we hired the little local hall and of course she chose to have Jeremy on her cake.

This was taken before we transported the cake up to the hall. He had a separate fishing rod which I then threaded the line through but unfortunately I never did take that photo- I was probably too busy hosting party games with 20 excited 4 year olds!(You can enlarge any of the photos by double clicking on them to see the little details).

By her 5th birthday she had caught the "Disney Bug" and that year we had "The Little Mermaid" with Ariel the Mermaid on top. I can remember spending hours making little sea creatures out of icing to put round the edge. My Matt was a 1 year old at the time and every afternoon he had his afternoon sleep I would make a few more and show them to him when he woke. I am not sure he understood where they came from at the time!

Birthday number 6 was part Disney part A.A.Milne as Milly has always loved Winnie the Pooh ( and I of course love dear Piglet). We had an afternoon tea scene of them having a party. The food was fiddly but fun to make and the candle holders were honeypots I made out of fondant icing.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast was the theme for her 7th birthday and I decided to incorporate a plaque I made again out of fondant icing. By that age I was working part time whilst both children were at school so time was getting a little shorter for me to made the incredibly elaborate figures. I did make sugar roses to stand the candles in though.

By the time Milly's 11th birthday arrived Disney was no longer so popular and her cake featured my interpretation of her ballet shoes. Milly danced from the age of  2 1/2 and only gave up 2 years ago when she moved from London. She danced through her primary and secondary school years and even through medical school and only gave up when she became a junior doctor. Believe me contrary to what the press may say they work long hours. She did many exams and even danced at White Lodge, home of the Royal Ballet School, London at some of their training days.

Her 12th Birthday was during the Teletubby craze and yes even 12 year olds loved them. I even managed to buy her a Tinkiwinkie doll which at the time were scarcer than hen's teeth! This was such a fun cheerful cake.




So here I am 13 years later designing an Engagement cake for my darling daughter. Where did all that time go...but what happy memories are stirred by looking at some of my old cakes.

I have been busy ordering some new cutters..here is a sneaky peep...

And yesterday I had a play cutting out some hearts using some left over green icing from Matt's cake...

I have played with using textures, different thicknesses and also cutting one heart into another - I quite like this effect.

As you can see I already have a theme and no it's not Disney ;0). I have bought some lovely bright red icing I shall make the hearts for the real thing. I also have an idea for the top but that's under wraps for now.

All will be revealed in due course.






So I will be busy working on this over the next few weeks. I will really enjoy creating something special for Milly and Tom's Engagement cake. It is something I am really glad I did promise to do and also that my daughter still wants me to keep to it..after all that was a promise I made many, many years ago!

Bye for now,

Jane x