Cowbridge Fashion Week!

This week is a busy week in Cowbridge. Not only is Cowbridge Music Festival in full swing (I'm looking forward to the Calvert-Turner Duo this evening), it's also Cowbridge Fashion week. Enjoy champagne afternoon teas, lunches and dinners all combined with fashion shows; a fashion parade down the high street on Thursday with late night opening and a champagne trail in all of Cowbridge's boutiques followed by a day of fashion shows in Cowbridge Town Hall on Saturday.

Kicking off the fashion shows on Saturday morning is High Society Bridal. Gowns from Jenny Packham, Alan Hannah, Suzanne Neville, Stephanie Allin, Sassi Holford and Mia Mia will be showcased as well as Mother of the Bride and Grooms attire. We work closely with High Society and we'll be helping to fill their goody bags with sweet treats. Tickets are £5.00 and can be purchased from High Society.

Gillian and Jay's Little Tiffany Box cakes

The lovely Gillian and Jay were married in London a few weeks ago. On Saturday they held a celebratory dinner at the wonderful Llangoed Hall in the Brecon Beacons. Gillian's engagement ring was purchased from Tiffany's and she wanted her celebratory cake to be comprised of elegant little Tiffany boxes, one for each of her guests.

Gillian and Jay chose a classic Madagascan vanilla sponge filled with raspberry compote and vanilla buttercream for the cakes. These little sponge cubes nestled inside sugar boxes built out of hand coloured (to get that exact beautiful blue/green Tiffany's hue) stiffened sugarpaste. The white sugar ribbons and bows were brushed with pearl shimmer to mimic the satin sheen of Tiffany ribbon.

Many many thanks to Gillian and Jay, the new Mr and Mrs Krause! wishing you both every future happiness!

Louise and Jeremy's autumn cupcakes

The lovely Louise and Jeremy were married at the weekend at their local church followed by a reception at the New Cottage Dance Centre in Ystrad Mynach. Louise and Jeremy knew from the outset that they wanted to have a cupcake wedding cake incorporating the lovely autumn colours which abound at this time of year. Louise's bouquet had red roses, orange cala lilies and hypericum berries so we wanted to stick to those rich reds and oranges. They chose four different flavoured cupcakes: the flavour Louise named the Lindt cupcake(!) chocolate cupcakes filled with praline and topped with white chocolate buttercream, vanilla cupcakes topped with strawberry buttercream, blueberry cupcakes topped with blueberry and vanilla buttercream, and caramel cupcakes topped with toffee buttercream. The cupcakes were decorated with hand-moulded sugar decorations: red roses, clusters of rose buds, autumn leaves and orange cala lilies.

Louise and Jeremy chose a chocolate cherry fruitcake for their top tier cake. They liked the flavour so much they decided to have a tier of mini chocolate cherry fruit cakes too!

Thanks so much Louise and Jeremy for being brilliant to work with. It was lovely to speak to you on your wedding day. I'm so glad you enjoyed your cake! Wishing you both all the very best!

Verity and Simon's official photographs

The lovely Verity and Simon have very kindly sent me through copies of their beautiful official wedding photographs taken by the talented team at Dutkowski

I love these photographs of Simon's mother and Aunt with their special gluten/dairy free fruitcakes!

So lovely! Thanks so much again Verity and Simon for sending these images through and allowing me to post them! What a difference from my badly-lit images below!!

Something blue - cookies!

Vanilla cookies hand piped with royal icing placed at guests place settings make lovely favours (excellent for polishing off with tea and coffee after your wedding meal) and are a fun elegant way to incorporate your Something Blue into your wedding day!

Kate and Dominic in the Final!

Congratulations to Kate and Dominic who have made it through to the Final of Your South Wales Wedding's Wedding of the Year competition!!! I made Kate and Dominic's cupcake wedding cake back in April. You can read about it here.

Keeping our fingers crossed for them for the Final!

iced in the Press: Your South Wales Wedding

Four of iced's cakes are currently being featured in Your South Wales wedding magazine!!! On the first page the pink and gold cupcakes (top right) and champage bubble cake (bottom centre) are featured, and on the second page the deco cake and corsage cake (both centre)!

Many thanks to the team at Your South Wales Wedding for featuring us again. Keep an eye out also for the November / December issue where I will be on their hot topic panel answering your cake related questions!!

Verity and Simon's Elegant Ivory Cake

On Saturday 4th of September Verity and Simon were married at Llandaff Cathedral followed by a reception at St Davids Hotel in Cardiff Bay. I had such a great time working with Verity to design her cake! Verity knew from the outset that she wanted something simple and elegant, incorporating the sage green / ivory colour palate which they had chosen to run throughout their day. Using intricate loose romantic hand moulded sugar roses to accent the separate tiers, the cake was structured along simple lines with tiny piped royal icing beadwork to add texture (apologies for the quality of the images, the cake was delivered the evening before the wedding and so the photographs were not taken using natural light).

Verity and Simon chose a base tier of hot toddy fruit cake with the two remaining tiers comprised of Madagascan vanilla sponge filled with vanilla buttercream and raspberry compote. There were a few guests with gluten and dairy intolerances for whom we made special individual fruit cakes:

Many thanks to Verity and Simon! I hope you are having a truly fantastic time on your fabulous honeymoon! Wishing you both every happiness and a wonderful future together!

Siobhan and Daz's Shimmering Shell Cupcake Cake

The brilliant Siobhan and Daz had a beautiful romantic beach wedding in Sri Lanka in July with close friends and family. On their return at the weekend they hosted a wedding party to celebrate their marriage at the lovely Bryn Garw House near Bridgend. Siobhan and Daz wanted to keep the relaxed beach theme running through their wedding party and so they opted for a tower of American style cupcakes, decorated with a touch of blue sparkle and shimmering pearlescent sugar shell decorations which were hand moulded from sugarpaste.

They opted for four different flavoured cupcakes: Lemon meringue cupcakes (lemon sponge cake filled with zingy home-made lemon curd and topped with Italian meringue), Bounty cupcakes (Belgian chocolate sponge cake filled and topped with coconut frosting), Mango Passion cupcakes (mango sponge cake filled and topped with passion fruit buttercream) and Mint Chocolate Chip (Belgian chocolate chip sponge cake filled and topped with mint buttercream). We decorated the different flavours with different shell combinations and produced a cupcake menu so guests could pick their flavour of choice! The top tier cake was Pina Colada flavour(!) a scrumptious moist coconut cake layered with pineapple buttercream. Delicious!

Siobhan and Daz are friends as well as clients so it was really lovely to be a guest at their wedding celebration! Sending them all of my best wishes for a fabulously happy life together!

Helen and Nigel's Little Lilac Mini Cakes

Many apologies, I've got a little behind with my blog posting!! The lovely Helen and Nigel were married two Saturdays ago at the Glyn Clydach Hotel near Neath. Helen wore a beautiful pale lilac gown for the ceremony and the wedding flowers were principally comprised of Calla lilies so we wanted to incorporate the colour and flowers into the design of the cake. Helen and Nigel chose two tier mini Sumptuous Chocolate (Belgian chocolate sponge cake filled with white and dark chocolate ganache) cakes for their guests and a top tier in the same flavour.

It was a real pleasure working with Helen and Nigel to design their cake. I hope they had a truly wonderful day! Wishing them every happiness together!

*N.B. Many apologies for the quality of these photographs: unfortunately my 'proper' camera suffered a malfunction that morning and so I had to use my standby camera, hence the slightly blurry images.

Pretty in Pink Cookies

We were asked to make these pretty pink cookies as favours for Carrie and John's wedding at the weekend. The vanilla cookies were hand piped with dusky pink royal icing and then over-piped with white royal icing and finished with a double white and pink bow. Lovely!

Pink and Gold Cupcakes

I've already posted about the cupcakes I made for my Nana's 90th birthday party but I'm very excited as I have just recieved these beautiful photographs from Portia Morgan who photographed the day for us brilliantly

Absolutely stunning photography! I'm really looking forward to working with the very talented Portia on a cake shoot for the iced website which is going to see a few changes in the near future!

Ifan Morgan and Karolina's Beautiful Berry Wedding Cake and Cookies

Ifan and Karolina were married today with the reception at the lovely Miskin Manor Hotel! Their wedding was planned along the lines of a beautiful romantic country garden party and they definitely wanted their cake to reflect this. Karolina's bridesmaids wore beautiful pale spruce green dresses which Ifan and Karolina wanted to incorporate into the design of the cake. I mixed the colour of the sugarpaste to match the beautiful green colour and then once the cake was assembled brushed it with pearlescence to give the cake a lovely glimmering sheen. The tiers were then decorated with an abundance of hand moulded white sugar flowers, green leaves and berries in a very loose, relaxed formation. I love this Birdseye view of the cake from above with all the lovely berry colours coming through:

The cake was comprised of three tiers of zesty lemon drizzle cake, filled with scrumptious zingy lemon curd and vanilla buttercream frosting, and one tier of zesty lemon drizzle cake filled with lovely lime curd and vanilla buttercream frosting.

Ifan and Karolina also asked me to make lemon cookie favours for their guests using the same pale spruce green colour. Each guest's name was piped on their cookie so that they could double up as place names! Perfect!

I've absolutely loved making Ifan and Karolina's cake and cookies! They have been absolutely lovely to work with! Wishing them a truly fabulous day full of fun and happiness and all of our best wishes for the future!

Clive's 60th Birthday!

Well hot on the heels of my grandmother's 90th birthday, last weekend my father turned 60! Buying a gift for my father is very difficult so my sister, mother and I decided to host a surprise birthday party for him instead. I'm very lucky that my lovely man is not only talented artist himself but his great uncle, who lives in Jersey and is a well known artist on the island, very very kindly painted us a watercolour to give to my father as a birthday gift. Using only photographs John painted the most superb caricature - it was so beautiful we used it for the front of our invitations.

Isn't it brilliant! I had to pay homage in my own small way to the painting by making a representation of it in cake form!!

The party was such a great success, thank you to each and every one of our 94 guests who had travelled from far and wide (England, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden... and of course Wales) to be there to celebrate with us. A big thank you to Serge and his team from the Knife and Fork deli in Cowbridge, they did an absolutely stupendous job with the catering, I cannot recommend them highly enough! But finally thank you to John for his fantastic painting which will always remind my father of his brilliant birthday!

Leanne and Jamie's Clambering Rose Wedding Cake

On Saturday Leanne and Jamie were married at Llansantffraed Court in Monmouthshire. Their marquee was decorated with pretty pink and blue bunting and beautiful candelabra centerpieces. Leanne was looking for a cake which was simple, elegant but with unusual detailing. Her beautiful dress, Cabaret by Ian Stewart had a fabulous asymetric rouched flower detailing on the shoulder and concealed in the skirts of the dress, so I designed a cake which incorporated the style of the dress using hand-moulded open sugar flowers and piped royal icing beadwork to create the effect. Leanne's bridesmaids wore dresses in dusky pink and so we carried this colour through with the ribbon bands which encircled each tier.

Leanne and Jamie chose to have three tiers of scrumptious fruit cake. The base tier was a hot toddy fruit cake, the middle tier a chocolate cherry fruitcake and the top tier a tutti fruiti fruit cake (with apricots and ginger). Delicious!

This cake was an absolute joy to work on, many thanks to Leanne and Jamie! I hope you both had a truly wonderful day! Sending you both all my best wishes for the future!

Hetty's Cupcake Birthday Cake

I don't normally feature birthday cakes on this blog but this one is very special as I made it to celebrate my Nana's 90th birthday at the weekend! We held the lunch / afternoon tea party in the Garden Room / Lounge at the Miskin Manor Hotel - it was a truly special day, celebrating with friends and family.

We decided to keep the colour palate to vintage pink and gold and so the tables were decorated with pink rose petals, the napkins were tied with pink ribbons and each guest at their place setting had a mini pink and gold candle and white butterfly filigree favour box which was filled with white and pink coconut ice and tied with pink ribbon. Everything looked so beautiful and all of the family worked really hard to make everything look so lovely!

I was in charge of the cake and I decided on cupcakes both for their sheer prettiness (and also as they were to be served as part of the afternoon tea, for their fabulous ease of distributing). I made three different flavour cupcakes, vanilla filled with raspberry compote and frosted with vanilla buttercream, lemon filled with zingy lemon curd and frosted with vanilla buttercream and chocolate filled and frosted with coconut buttercream (bounty flavour!). Each flavour was decorated slightly differently with open roses, rose buds, flower posies and leaves, sticking to the lovely pink and gold colours of the tables! The cupcakes were then finished with pretty white butterfly cupcake wrappers to complement the favour boxes!

The top tier was a hot toddy fruit cake so that Nana could keep it to enjoy with friends at a later date! Wishing Nana many more lovely birthday celebrations and here's to hoping I look half as fabulous as she does when I'm 90!

Garden Party Cupcakes

At the beginning of June I had the great pleasure of making Charlotte and Warren's wedding cake. At the weekend Charlotte's parents held a garden party for neighbours who couldn't be present at the wedding and they asked me to make cupcakes to be served to their guests. We decided to keep the same flavour cupcakes (vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling and vanilla frosting and chocolate cupcakes with cherry filling and white chocolate frosting) and the same designs, just adding a splash of colour with the green leaves and green calyx's to keep with the garden party feel! Lovely! Many thanks again to Charlotte's Mum and Dad!

Gemma and Chris's Wedding Cupcakes

Gemma and Chris were married last weekend on a beautiful sunny day at the Marriott St Pierre Hotel in Chepstow. Chris is the brother of a friend and I was delighted when they asked me to make their wedding cake! Their beautiful wedding was designed around a silver / grey / black colour palate and so they chose to have cupcakes in silver cases on a silver mirrored stand. The lovely couple were heading off on honeymoon on a driving adventure around Europe and so asked me for a giant cupcake top tier cake which they could box up and take with them on their travels! The giant cupcake was a banana cake filled with caramel and frosted with vanilla buttercream!

Gemma and Chris chose three different flavours of cupcake for their wedding: Belgian Chocolate cupcakes with a gooey praline filling topped with white chocolate buttercream, lemon cupcakes filled with lemon curd filling and topped with lemon buttercream and vanilla cupcakes filled with raspberry compote and topped with vanilla buttercream. Each flavour was decorated differently, the chocolate with a sparkly white sugarpaste bow, the vanilla with a large white gerbera with a sparkly centre and the lemon with three mini gerberas with sparkly centres, to tie in with the gerberas on the tables and the bows on the chairs.

Many thanks to Gemma and Chris! It was lovely to celebrate with you in the evening! Wishing you both all of my best wishes and every happiness for the future!

Kirsten and Gethin's Lovely Lilac Wedding Cake

Last Saturday the lovely Kirsten and Gethin were married at the stylish Holm House Hotel in Penarth. Holm House is a beautiful design-focused boutique hotel which has an enviable position overlooking the sea. The wedding breakfast was held in the dining room at Holm House which is adorned with shimmering flock wallpaper from Osborne and Little in lilacs and darker plum purples. I designed the cake in a very pale lilac to complement the decor of the room and decorated it with piped white royal icing beadwork in an abstract feathered design. The cake was then topped with hand moulded loose romantic sugar roses!

Kirsten and Gethin chose moist chocolate fruit cake for the base tier of their cake with the remaining tiers Madagascan vanilla cake filled with raspberry compote and vanilla buttercream. Kirsten's father has a gluten intolerance so we made him special little gluten free versions of the main cake:

Many thanks to Kirsten and Gethin for being so lovely to work with. Wishing them all the best for a very happy future together!

Wedding of the Year Competition

We are really excited to announce that Kate and Dominic's wedding has been selected for Your South Wales Wedding's Wedding of the Year Competition! We had the pleasure of making Kate and Dominic's romantic cupcakes and cookies back in April, you can read about the cake and cookies here.

Kate was kind enough to send me some of the photographs her official photographer took of the cake cutting!:

The wedding is going to be featured in the July /August issue of the magazine but voting starts online from the 18th of June. Please do pop along to the website and vote for this lovely couple's wedding!