February 23rd, 2010
But is it true it’s always happy hour here?
And if it is I’d like to stay a while.
Well as cliche as it may sound,
I’d like to raise another round,
And if your bottle’s empty,
Help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time,
And here’s to life.

This weekend, Edinburgh was lucky enough to host Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers on their UK tour. In celebration of this momentous occasion I made this cake for my family and friends to enjoy over the weekend. It is a lemon curd cake and unfortunately I was a bit rushed for time so the decoration is not as interesting (or a polished) as I would ideally like. Still, I think it gets the point across. If you’ve never heard of the Peacemakers before (which I suspect is likely to be the case), I thoroughly recommend downloading these tracks for free. I can’t properly express how much I enjoyed the gig on Saturday and I can’t thank the band enough for all their efforts.
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February 14th, 2010
Tags: cake, chinese, chocolate, cupcake, edinburgh, green tea, misti, pomegranate, red bean, tea
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February 8th, 2010


Just a simple Victoria Sponge cake underneath this icing. The idea was to try out the big, bold ‘garden’ design as a home for my marzipan bugs.
Cost price cakes are sold on a first come, first served basis.
THIS CAKE HAS NOW SOLD
Tags: birthday, bug, cake, cupcake, decoration, edinburgh, flower, ladybird, marzipan, misti, vanilla
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February 8th, 2010

I’m quite excited to have some American Kit-Kats to try. Up until now I have only had the Japanese imports to write about but the wonderful Laurence picked these up on his travels for inclusion in this little adventure. They are miniature, individually wrapped fingers. Perhaps every so slightly shorter than the British and Japanese varieties, but taller. In fact, they are probably the same height that British Kit- Kats used to be before the great snack shrinkage spread rapidly across all biscuits and confections. You know, when ‘wagon wheels’ were as big as your head and ‘milky ways’ were brown in the middle.
These Kit-Kats come in an assorted pack of dark chocolate, milk chocolate and ‘creme’. While it’s somewhat more mainstream than the Kit-Kats I have been trying up until now, I find the monochrome look of them rather pleasing and think that the mixture gives the whole bag more of a ‘box of chocolates’ feel than ‘bag of biscuits’. The dark and milk varieties were as you would expect, although with a very slight aftertaste which perhaps exposes a slight tailoring to the American taste-bud which has been ruined (as far as chocolate is concerned) by ‘Hershey’s ‘. ‘Creme’, however, is not, as I first though, another word for white chocolate. It is much simpler than that. It appears to mean a creamy taste that is rather mild and undefined. Not bad, and they make a pretty addition to the trio.
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January 31st, 2010
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January 28th, 2010

As you may have already noticed, I am quite excited about filled cupcakes at the moment. The idea for this one came about when my fiance ordered a passion-fruit curd pavlova at a restaurant and while I am not the biggest fan of meringues, the passion-fruit curd was tasty enough to start me thinking about making it myself. I guessed that using my trusty lemon curd recipe, substituting 2 passion-fruits for every one lemon and reducing the sugar content a bit would be all it took. Happily I was right and the passion-fruit curd worked first time. Choosing a frosting took a little more thought. After deciding that passion-fruit icing would be a little too much, I looked for something that wouldn’t overpower the relatively subtle flavour of the passion-fruit but that was also able to bring it’s own dimension to the finished cupcake. I liked the idea of using white chocolate frosting for several reasons. Firstly, it has a mild but distinctive flavour. Secondly, it’s creamy/white colour appealed to me as an aesthetic finishing touch to the cupcake, and thirdly, it is a tried and tested recipe so I could be certain of exactly what it would taste like and I imagined the flavours working well together. And they did!
While the cupcake went well with my morning cup of tea, it actually has puddingy qualities that could allow it to work well as an after dinner cupcake. An individual serving alternative to slicing a gateaux.

Tags: cake, cupcake, edinburgh, misti, passionfruit
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January 26th, 2010

Meet Fred – he is the prototype and is in fact made from left over sugarpaste rather than marzipan (it was a little dry so the joins are not as smooth as I would like). Fred was the result of idle doodles and a brainwave to turn them into edible decorations. Others soon followed.



Why, you ask, are the penguins looking askance at their surroundings? Because they have just spotted Nigel and his brethren advancing upon them…

…and they look hungry!
When I get some more free time, I am hoping to increase the collection. I have already made some doodles, I just need to translate them into an edible medium.
Tags: cake, cupcake, decoration, edinburgh, marzipan, misti, monster
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January 20th, 2010
This was amazing! It tastes exactly like washing down a kit kat with a cup of jasmine tea. I am in awe.

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