Naming cake and Birthday rose

Just a quickie, to show you the naming cake and Birthday cake I have made this week, they are the last celebration cakes of 2009 for me!

enjoy x

How to make a teapot cake

I love teapots, its a very big obsession of mine, so big that sometimes I feel like taking one out with me just because they are so pretty but you would look very silly holding a chintzy teapot on a night out, but then I suppose it could be passed off as a bag...mmm, that's something to think about for the future! anyway! so I loved making this cake and was so glad when I got the order, I was planning it in my head immediately. I wanted to share how to make it as its too lovely not to made again by someone!

The sponges.

I used 2 1.1 litre bowl cakes using this recipe:

225g butter or Stork
275g self raising flour
225g caster sugar
5 eggs
1 tablespoon of whole milk

half the mixture between the two oven proof bowls and bake at 170c or 150c if you have a fan oven for 40 to 50 minutes or until its firm and springy to the touch and a cocktail stick comes out clean.

The buttercream part.

When these are baked and cooled, leave them for a day as they are better to work with the next day. Then level off the tops of each cake and sandwich together with lovely light fluffy buttercream, making sure you fill in the gaps with sugarpaste so you create a round shape, cover the round cake shape completely with buttercream and smooth. Place in the fridge to form a 'crust' for 20 minutes.

The icing part

Then take the cake out of the fridge and using a palette knife and boiling water, smooth the cake again to get that final finish ready for your icing.

Measure out your cake and board so you know how much you will need to completely cover it, then roll out your sugarpaste and cover your cake, very much easier said than done, but you can do it!!! smooth it down with cake smoothers and your hands, then comes the fun part... the decoration!

The decoration part

The handle and spout are obviously very important and I would make these with flowerpaste the day before so they can set, just model the shapes (the more ornate the better) you want and then push 3 small pieces of spaghetti into the base of the spout so you can insert this into your cake and it will hold better, make sure you do this when they are still soft though as flowerpaste dries rock hard! You can use cocktail sticks to do this but if you use spaghetti it makes it completely edible which is better I think. Then use some edible glue to stick on your handle, you might have to use something to hold it whilst it dries, once its dry though it will be very secure.

I decorated mine with pink dots and flowers but you can of course do whatever you fancy, hearts, a pattern whatever really. Using a doily on your cake drum looks lovely and very vintagey which is quite frankly right up my street, anything vintagey and I am there!

You can get different shaped teapots of course so you could try 2 round 6 inch sponges sandwiched together to get another shape, I think next time I will go for this shape rather than round, just for some variety.

The eating part

Then cut the cake.. you know what to do here but it will so nice you just can't cut it!!

I hope you will make one yourself and if you do please send me a photo. x

Vintage and Cake wedding cakes

I thought I would share with you the latest wedding cake I have done. I delivered and assembled it to Donnington Park Farmhouse, which is a lovely venue for a wedding.

80 vanilla cupcakes with an 8 inch chocolate top tier, the sugarpaste people are on laptops as the couple met on the internet.

The next cake I am doing is for a 60th, and its a teapot cake so I will be sharing photos about that soon, I have baked the cakes ready so now need to ice the thing! I cant wait actually, I am planning it all in my head, just hope it actually turns out ok!

Then its a naming cake and 12 Birthday cupcakes for a lovely lady with 2 young boys, Timmy the sheep will make an appearance!

I have lots of weddings already booked for next year, lots of cakes and afternoon teas. Its mainly cupcakes and a top tier that people want these days, but they do look so lovely don't they!

Hope you enjoy the photos x

Christmas cakes - exploding crackers, glitter and pink

This week and last week I have been finishing off all of my Christmas cakes for delivery next week and the week after, as Christmas is round the corner, yey! I love Christmas, its just so lovely although I do tend to peak at around this time and then dont feel excited at all on the actual day!!! The cracker cake is one that I have been working on within my sugarcraft course that I do every week, it took a while and is very elaborate, not my usual style but it certainly tested my sugarcraft skills, it was so detailed. The rest of the cakes are for orders and will be delivered next week.

I am spending my 1st Christmas away from home this year so that will be weird, I am going to my boyfriends mums and we will be surrounded by all his nieces and little brother so it will be ace being with kids on Christmas eve and Christmas morning!!

Back to the Christmas cakes... they are all made from fresh ingredients and local where possible, the eggs being very local (our back garden) the flour is from Caudwell Mill and Heage Mill in Derbyshire. I make the cakes 3 months in advance so they have plenty of time to mature and be fed with lots and lots of brandy.

I love making and decorating Christmas cakes its my favourite thing to do, as the smell is amazing, I dont really eat much cake but I will definitely be eating lots of Christmas cake this year. I'm also very excited about the eggnog cocktails that my boyfriend makes!

Cake toppers

This week I have been very busy creating cake toppers. One for a Christmas cake, a naming cake and a wedding cake. All were very fiddly and have still yet to be placed on the cakes but they are all finished at last. I found the people the hardest as they had to be sat on chairs with laptops on their knees, getting this to look good was so hard. The couple that requested this met on the internet, hence the laptops! She didnt really want the novelty cake thing it was her partners idea, they are also having 80 cupcakes with blue snowflakes, which will be lovely.

The sheep cake is for a lovely lady who has ordered it for a naming cake for her two sons, she is having some cupcakes too for her Birthday, I convinced her to treat herself!

Lastly the poinsettia is for a Christmas cake for my family this year, it is to be placed on a 8 inch rich fruit cake soaked in Brandy, yum! I will take a photo of the finished thing in December as it is going to be very elaborate!

I have had lots of wedding cake consultations this week, so many for cupcakes, which is great as they are my favourite to make, although when you have an order of 120 with 120 sugarpaste roses it can be... lets say 'a challenge' I have another consultation at 2pm today, no rest for the wicked! then Ben and I are off to pick our Christmas tree, yey!

Next post will be the finished cakes with maybe some vintage tea parties in between! x

The tea dance is on!

My meeting with The Moorside Grange Hotel went really well today, we met with the lovely Rebecca Massey the events manager and chatted about tea, cakes and dancing! I took along some lovely vintage china to show her and we got a date in the diary for the event. It is to be Sunday 9th May 2010 from 2pm - 5pm, the band will play from 3pm and there will be a dance workshop including The Jive, Quickstep, Waltz, Tango, Cha Cha Cha and many more!!! It will be fabulous. I will be providing china for each table, teacups and saucers and 3 tier cake stands all laden with scones, finger sandwiches plus there will be some classic cakes such as Victoria sponge and coffee and walnut all provided by Vintage and Cake aka ME! Tickets will work out to be £20.00 each and the hotel is working on a weekend deal, so an over night stay, dinner, breakfast and the tea dance with a few more bits and bobs included, details TBC. The hotel is beautiful, the views are to die for, the sweeping countryside is breathtaking on the drive up and the room that the tea dance will be held in is very in keeping with this wonderful tradition. I am just a little bit excited can you tell? I will keep you posted about this event as everyone is welcome!

Tea dances

I have a meeting tomorrow morning with a hotel to talk about putting on a tea dance, I am so excited about it; tea, cake and old time dancing is my idea of heaven. I have just come back from my dance lesson with my partner Ben, we are going to a ball on the 14th December so need to get ready to actually dance 'properly' on the dance floor. We did Waltz, Cha Cha Cha and the Mayfair Quick Step tonight, the latter is so so fast and it felt like an absolute joke whilst we were doing it, we can do it though and we have a few more lessons before the 14th Dec so we should be ok, I hope! Anyway back to the Tea dance... the hotel is interested in putting these tea dances on quarterly, so I have the crockery, the cakes, the band and the dance teacher to provide the workshop; we are pretty much ready to go, this meeting tomorrow will confirm the dates and the cost of the tickets, so I will keep you posted, as all those who are interested in this kind of thing will love this!

Vintage and Cake's first blog!

I have discovered Shabby Blogs and how lovely it is! So I have decided to start a blog separate to my website as that is what all of the blogging type techie people say to do, so here I am. It has been a busy few weeks with Christmas markets and lots of orders. The Fabulous Places Christmas Market was great, its a bit harder for me though as I am selling a concept not just cakes, I really want people to be aware that this lovely tradition is out there, the afternoon tea party. You can sit back and relax and I will set up a beautiful tea party for you with my lovely vintage china, it is all stored in the Vintage and Cake room and ready to go, its not really that organised... its in my loft, all neat and tidy I might add, as if I have an actual Vintage and Cake room!!! I now have some bits for sale too, I have vintage cups and saucers for sale with tasty treats inside. The vintage I have ranges from Victorian to War time and its all lovely. Bye for now I am looking forward to doing more blogging on my new blog!