50th wedding anniversary cake.

Tonight we are having a family dinner to celebrate the upcoming 50th wedding anniversary of my dear Grandparents Colin and Roberta (Bobbie for short). For the occasion I decided to make a formal-style cake, complete with royal icing, Vienna cream, ribbon and lace trim, and handmade icing roses.

This was my first attempt at making such an elaborate cake. The cake is chocolate layered cake with Vienna cream in between the layers, on the top and around the sides. I then covered the cake in rolled Royal icing, which turned out very bumpy and torn in some parts. I dashed to the supermarket this morning and purchased another packet, and put another layer on the cake. This worked really well and now the bumpy bits are hardly noticeable.

Jamie helped me to make the icing roses. These are just made from some of the left over Royal icing kneaded with a few drops of yellow food colouring. I then arranged them, and with the left over yellow moulded the names.

I trimmed the cake with some thin yellow ribbon and some ivory lace and secured it with a few tiny dressmaking pins (I will be sure to warn people about these!).

Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary Nan and Pop! We love you both lots!!!

Sam xox

Christmas cake.

Last weekend Jamie and I thought it was about time we made our first ever Christmas cake together (well, probably more my thoughts than Jamie's). I had been soaking my fruit for almost a week, every day checking on it and 'feeding' it Sherry. The smell of alcohol was overpowering when I finally took the cover off the fruit. I will definitely not be driving after eating this (what does happen to alcohol after it has been baked in the over for almost two hours?).

When the time came to construct the cake (and I say construct because of Jamie's engineering background - I had to convince him there was a purpose to his participation somehow), Jamie really was a good sport! In between telling me that making a specific type of food for a specific celebration ran against his logical mind, he did an excellent job of mixing the cake!

After two hours of making and baking, we ended up with three cakes, and I have chosen the best of the three to take to my family for Christmas lunch.

Ta-da!

I am pretty proud of my first ever Christmas cake :-)

Sam xox