Hot cross buns

So it's easter and I've been making bread now for over a year so thought I'd give hot cross buns a go. 
You can find the recipe here; http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2066661/hot-cross-buns

Rising well, so far so good.

 Ready for the oven.

Pretty delicious and not too difficult to make either.

Minecraft cake

My eldest son turned 9 last July. Like so many other kids he is absolutely addicted to Minecraft. Not only does he play the game but he also watches videos of other people playing the game, someone by the name of Stampy Longnose usually. I figured it wouldn't be too hard to make a cube cake to look like a minecraft block. A thousand tiny fondant squares later and I've changed my mind!

First I made the word Minecraft out of fondant.

Then came the cake. It's a vanilla sponge baked in a square tin and covered in chocolate icing. Then it's covered in nearly a thousand brown, grey and green squares. A square cutter is a must if you attempt to make this cake, I couldn't imagine making the squares by hand!

Finally I made a little TNT cake out of the offcuts from the big square cake. This was for the special candle. I bought an 'indoor firework' ( I think that's what it was called ) to resemble the TNT exploding. You can get them from the place at the supermarket where the rest of the birthday candles are kept. They look a bit dangerous so we kept our distance, no blowing out this candle!

Team Umizoomi cake

Last May my youngest son turned three. His favourite tv show at the time was Team Umizoomi so that was what I decided to base his birthday cake on. I made two cakes, one a vanilla sponge and one a lemon sponge. The bottom one is ten inches and the top one is eight inches.  First I made Umicar out of fondant.

Then a Bot to sit in Umicar.

Then I covered the bottom cake in blue fondant and the top in pink fondant, and made a Millie and Geo for the side of the cakes.

The completed cake.

I then had to find somewhere for the candles, so they just went on the top but i think it would have looked nicer if they were in front!

Lemon bakewell tarts

Two of my sister's favourite desserts are lemon tart and bakewell tart so I though it might be nice to combine them. You can find the recipe for these at 

 http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1898650/lemon-bakewell-tarts  

   

They were easy to make and really delicious so I made some more.I wasn't too fond of the lemon peel in the pastry so I left it out. Then to make sure it still had a lovely lemony flavour I made some icing using icing sugar and the juice from a lemon and used that to decorate the top. 

I only have five pastry tins and the recipe makes six so the last one went in a glass ramekin. It would have been impossible to turn it out so I grabbed a spoon and ate it straight from the oven. I think that one might have even been better than the ones baked in the pastry tins!

Raspberry cheesecake brownie

So Faith will turn thirteen next month and to mark the special occasion she is having a disco party. The guest list currently stands at 80 people and i'm doing the catering, gulp!
So naturally I've been busy trying out recipes to feed the masses. This was Faith's first suggestion as she made it once before from the hummingbird bakery cookbook  and said it was very good. Having just tried it I have to agree it's a lovely thing. As you can probably tell from the title it's a layer of chocolate brownie, then a layer of vanilla cheesecake and topped with a layer of raspberry cream. You can find the recipe at http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/433316/Hummingbird-Bakery-raspberry-cheesecake-brownie

 Brownie layer ready for the oven.

Cheesecake and brownie cooked, this picture looks darker than it actually is. It should be golden brown round the edges and pale in the centre. I accidentally made a rather large hole testing to see if the brownie was cooked underneath the cheesecake, but there's cream going on next so I don't mind.

               

 A rather generous layer of raspberry cream. This is my favourite part.

Topped the whole thing off with some freeze dried raspberries and a dusting of icing sugar.

The cheesecake layer seems a little thin to me so next time I'm going to double the ingredients for that layer.

Rainbow-themed Party

My beautiful youngest daughter turned one last march and we threw her a rainbow-themed party. Rainbow balloons, decorations, food and cake. The first thing that I made was rainbow fudge. You can find the recipe for it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwC8oTk8KDY

Rainbow Jelly

For this you just need four packets of jelly; purple, red, orange and green. Make the green ( lime ) jelly as per the instructions on the packet and pour into see-through cups, I used shot glasses, then pop into the fridge for an hour. Repeat for the orange layer, then the red and finally purple.

Rainbow cake

I decided on a simple rainbow decoration for the exterior of this cake propped up on fluffy clouds because the real beauty of the cake is inside. The recipe for the cake came from BBC Good Food as the layers are quite thin so I didn't use my usually cake recipe. You can find it here   http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3028705/rainbow-cake    

I was really pleased with the layers, with the exception of the green which no matter how much green colouring I added it still turned out yellowy!

To go with the Rainbow cake, jelly, and fudge there was also fruit kebabs consisting of strawberries, oranges, mango, green grapes and blueberries, m&ms and jelly tots ( sorted into colours by my boys ) and candy canes.