I am an Amateur Baker and Proud

Greetings and felicitations

Today's blog is going to be colourful and full of pictures - it's all about my journey as an amateur baker over the past couple of years. All pictures are of my own creations, taken by my own fair hand.

I remember when I couldn't even throw a batch of cupcakes that come from a box together without burning them or making them really dry. But now I'm proud to say I can make succulent cakes which make your mouth water with their fluffy freshness. Mmm. I think it is a good job that I've already had my cake fix for today!

My Chief Taster is my Fiancé and at the moment, I am trying to keep my hand in with baking by making some sort of creation every Friday (which is one of the reasons that he is marrying me, I'm sure).

I am going to try and put these up in chronological order, and do a little explanation of why I baked them and pros / cons of how they turned out.

So, this was the first 'celebration' cake that I baked - there wasn't any particular reason, just that I wanted to try my hand to see what I could come up with. to be honest, I don't think that this is a bad first attempt - however the cake inside was really dry and I hadn't yet got the recipe that I now use.

Now this cake was made for a colleague of mine who was leaving his job with us (he is back again now so if he leaves again I will have to make an updated version). As you can see, the boob shape wasn't great, but I had no idea that there was such a thing as spherical pans. To be honest though, that didn't bother him, and he said that he ate the whole thing to himself!

These were lovely little Oreo cupcakes, but I think that although they look pretty, they lacked in taste - I think I was a little too sparse with the Oreos (a complete travesty, I know).

I made these cupcakes for a lady at work before she left to have a baby boy (and what a cute little thing he is!) And I was quite proud of how professional (I thought) they looked. I think the only downside with these was that I used a liquid based food colouring for the icing, which made the icing really runny and hard to handle. It also had a strange after taste because I had to use so much of it to get this colour. I now use gel based colours which I find are far more bright and easy to use (with minimal after taste).

Now these were SO fun to make! I made them with a couple of friends and we all really enjoyed creating the little spooky faces. I must admit, that last year at Hallowe'en I did made some cupcakes for the trick or treaters and they were the biggest hit! I may have to make some icing ghouls in advance this year MWAHAHAHAHA!!

I made this cake for my Mom and Step-dad's anniversary and I really enjoyed creating this - it was the first 'big' cake that I have made and I was really impressed with how it turned out. I'm not too great with icing cakes but I would like to think that I have got better at it. My main problem is not kneading it enough to stop it from cracking.

This cake had a nice sentiment to it, but in the rush I didn't knead the icing properly (you can see the cracks in the white icing if you look closely.)

















Then I had a brainwave... I wanted to make the most colourful cake that I could for my nephew's birthday - needless to say he keeps telling me that I should open my own bakery ha ha!

I really enjoyed making this cake, even though it took me an age to do the pipework around the outside. I was nervous as this was the first cake really that I had made for a special occasion and it seemed to go down well! (Mainly into a lot of excited children's tummies!)

These were white chocolate and strawberry flavoured cupcakes, and I created them for my late cousin Jason (R.I.P.) and they are very special as I made these for him the week before he died. He was really supportive of my baking and he used to call me Cupcake. Bearing in mind he had terminal cancer, his appetite when it came to my cakes never waned!







Occasionally I bake things that aren't cakes - not too often though as I am not great at it (but as they say, practice makes perfect!) The bread is a Paul Hollywood recipe and I must say, it was delicious!

Below are some more cupcake creations, I didn't realise until I started writing this blog just HOW MUCH baking I actually do - I think I have a problem ha ha!

Multicoloured cupcakes (like the larger version mentioned above - and they had marshmallows melted into the top. Mmmmm they were tastilicious!

These were chocolate ganache cupcakes with a secret 'special surprise' filling. Man I miss having those cupcakes in my life.

So, these were peanut butter and jam cakes, the buttercream was infused with smooth peanut butter and then there was a well made inside the cupcake to stuff with a strawberry jam filling.
De-lish-shuz.

Remember the 'special secret' filling? Well here it is... Marshmallows and chocolate ganache. I can almost feel the diabetes swimming around my veins.

Some cute little Easter cupcakes, this one was the most photogenic.

Ok, so now I have shown you all of my projects (bar one) I think it is time to show you the cake that I am stupendously proud of. My sister turned 40 a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to excel myself and make her a really nice cake to celebrate. And here it is...

*Sheds a tear* Man I'm so proud of that cake.

Anywho, this blog took a LOT longer than I expected to write - but I eventually got there in the end (things are getting a bit cray cray with life in general so it's taking me forever to kick out a blog!) and I hope you enjoyed reading about my cakey creations as much as I enjoyed eating them!

'You can't be sad when holding a cupcake.' - Unknown