A week of baking...Vintage floral wedding cake - Day 1

This week I have taken a holiday from work to get stuck into a fantastic project. I am honoured that my friend has asked me to make the wedding cake for her future sister in law, and finally after months of planning the week is finally here! The bride has requested 80 cupcakes and a 6" cutting cake and they will all be arranged on a clear perspex cake stand.

Today I have been working on all of the sugarcraft decorations, including a large open rose for the top tier, butterflies and hand moulded roses. As before with the white flowers I made for my Wedgwood blue cake, I am using the Peggy Porschen Cakes in Bloom book, as it gives perfectly clear step by step instructions to ensure beautiful results every time.

Setting up all of my equipment ready to start. After making the Wedgwood roses and keeping them upright by sticking them into an orange (necessity being the mother of invention!) I bought a polystyrene cake dummy to hold the flowers as I worked, and already it has been invaluable as I know my roses will be safe from knocks and wobbles.

The rose on the right has four petals and the one one the left has 9. These roses have to be made in stages to make sure that the weight of all of the petals doesn't cause them to droop. I will finish them off tomorrow.

The first stage of the roses is complete. They will now need to dry overnight.

I am using a plunger cutter to make the butterflies for one set of the cupcakes. I read somewhere about using a concertina of paper to set them on so they have a more lifelike look, so I folded a sheet of A4 to make a drying rack. I will paint the details with some lilac food colouring and then dust them with pearl lustre once they are dry.

The other set of cupcakes is having hand moulded roses as their decoration. This is a simpler way of making roses that are slightly less detailed, however they still look just as effective. I like the slightly frilly edges of the icing as it gives them a pretty vintage look. Once these are dry they will also be dusted with pearl lustre.

A Crafty birthday present - Fitting and tweaking

For my birthday present this year, my mum said that she would make me a lovely vintage style jumpsuit. We had the first fitting with a toile, and next it was on to the actual fabric!

Once it was pinned and tacked together, we did a lot of fitting in the proper fabric to ensure a perfect fit. We changed the bust darts and also the side seams to provide better shaping. We also lowered the neckline a little more than in the pattern, as with so much fabric and pattern, it seemed to be a little high for my body shape, and I thought it looked much better to show off the sweetheart neckline.

To make sure that the jumpsuit looked as good from the back as the front, mum cut the long parts of the jumpsuit ties so they would be the correct way up when you saw them from the back.

In todays fitting the bodice was attached to the trousers and we edited the fit around the waist. 

The bodice was slightly too long so the trousers were raised at the seam attaching them to the bodice to improve the fit.

The back was pinned to check the fit and I love the way the pattern on the ties is the right way up at the back. I think this gives a lovely luxury touch to a handmade item.

The next step will be to tack in the zip and then check the fit one more time before it is all sewn. It will then be fitted once more before the final stitches are made, then we will confirm the length of the trousers to finish the outfit. I think a lovely jumpsuit like this calls for a new pair of summer wedges...!

A Weekend of Baking...Yardley buns!

This weekend we fancied doing some experimentation in the the kitchen, so I decided to try my hand at something I'm not very confident with, dough!

I love chelsea buns, and they always remind me of carol signing at Christmas, where we were always given the most amazing buns warm from the oven to thaw our frozen fingers on. I had a look through my Paul Hollywood 'How to Bake' book to find a good recipe and found his recipe for Christmas buns. The filling for the Christmas buns called for Apricots and cranberries, however we decided to use a mixture of dried apricots, cherries and raisins and called them Yardley buns after our village. Plus it's far too early to start thinking about Christmas yet! 

I have never had a huge amount of luck with raising dough to extraordinary heights, a loaf of bread I made with my mum when I was younger you could have provided an excellent foundation for a new building, so I have always been wary of it. 

We started kneading the dough using the KitchenAid dough hook, and then proved the dough for two hours.

After the first prove we rolled out the dough to a rectangle, brushed the surface with melted butter and then scattered over the dried fruits, sugar and cinnamon mixture.

The roll of the chelsea bun is very important, and I think mine may have been a little too lose, as I had to poke some of the escaped fruit into the swirls before their second prove.

After their second prove I put them in the oven and waited for the delicious sweet bread smell. Once they had cooked I brushed them all with apricot jam and waited until they had cooled just enough so we could try them!

Unfortunately I found that the buns didn't last very well (both in freshness and in number!) so I think in the future I will have to make them for an event so they can all be eaten at their very best.

A Crafty birthday present

This year my mum gave me a fantastic birthday present which was to make me an outfit for my holiday. We bought the Margo pattern from Sew La Di Da vintage when we were at the Knitting and Stitching Show earlier this year and I fell in love with it the minute I saw it on the stand.

I originally contacted the company to see if they would be able to sell me the fabric that they had used to make it on the cover, but my mum found an equally lovely fabric to make it up in. It is a lovely light and breezy blue cotton covered in lots of different sailing boats, very apt with the America's Cup coming up this year.

Last weekend I went over for a fitting and mum had made up a toile in a striped cotton to test the fit and the style before cutting out in the final fabric. I really liked the stripe (despite it being an old duvet cover!) and I think I may be putting in another order for the short version of the pattern in a pretty stripe!

Unfortunately the photos didn't come out very clearly, but hopefully you can get the gist of the progress, and I will be sure to take some more detailed photos as it goes along!

The striped cotton toile of the bodice to test the fit. We took it in at the bust darts and added a little length to the torso

The Margo pattern with the final boat print fabric

Cutting out in the final fabric

The bodice in the boat print cotton

The trousers have long wide legs with deep pockets.

Beckworth Emporium - Flora photos

Yesterday my friend and I went out to Afternoon Tea at the Beckworth Emporium, a lovely shopping and eating experience just outside Sywell and Mears Ashby in Northamptonshire. 

As it was such a fantastic day it was lovely to wander around the garden centre and see all of the flowers in full bloom. There was a great selection of Dahlias in delicious bright sorbet colours, and heavenly Hydrangea in slightly more muted and vintage tones. They looked amazing in their displays and I couldn't help snapping away.

The garden centre also had some gorgeous accessories such as these lovely pots. I particularly loved the colour range of the Royal Horticultural Society collection, but I also loved the combination of the lovely lilac on the inside of the shells next to the rugged grey of the slate of these large planters.

Metal sculptures - East Cliff Slope, Bournemouth

Last weekend we went for a long weekend to Bournemouth and although the weather wasn't a patch on the glorious sunny days we are experiencing at the moment, we still had a great time.

A view from the slope towards the pier

We were walking up the East Cliff Slope back to our hotel and I spotted these colourful metal sculptures against the railing. I loved the beach and seaside theme and the weathered patina was the perfect decoration to a windy seaside visit.

A Weekend of baking...Terry's Chocolate Orange cupcakes and GU Rocky Road

My last bit of baking earlier this week were Terry's Chocolate Orange cupcakes and Rocky Road to take into work. I used a Rocky Road recipe from the GU Chocolate Cookbook, which is always a hit. 

I think the success of it is mixing a small amount of golden syrup and butter into the chocolate that you mix all of the different ingredients into, then pour melted chocolate on top of everything once it has set in the fridge for four hours. This gives a lovely melting texture, and doesn't feel quite so 

jaw-breaking when you bite into it. I used a mixture of mini marshmallows, digestive biscuits and walnuts to give a selection of different textures.

I have made these cupcakes before, but the last time I used fresh orange juice in the ganache to try and give the orange flavour. unfortunately this made the ganache too runny, so this time I used an orange essence to give the flavour. As I didn't use as much liquid the icing held together much better and I was able to pipe it more successfully. I love the decoration of the Terry's Chocolate orange segments, plus an extra orange and chocolate hit.