Kate and Dominic - Wedding of The Year

Back in June the lovely Kate and Dominic entered Your South Wales Wedding's Wedding of The Year competition, which I posted about here. Kate emailed me just before Christmas to let me know that they have now reached the final! Please find a few moments to click here and vote for them! Many thanks!

Iced in the Press - Your South Wales Wedding Nov/Dec

The hot topic for November/December's Your South Wales Wedding Magazine's panel was Family Dilemmas. Planning weddings to please everyone involved can be a little tricky (and, let's face it, sometimes impossible!). Thankfully, as far as cakes are concerned, a good cake maker will always have a few tricks up his/her sleeve! My hot topic was catering for guests with food intolerances:

My scanned copy isn't very clear, but you can see the full 'Ask the Experts' section here and I've typed up my Q&A below;

Q. My fiance and I would love to have a large, traditional, tiered wedding cake for our special day and would like to serve it as a dessert at the wedding breakfast. However, a few of our relatives have gluten allergies. Is it still possible to have our dream cake without having to leave anyone out?

A. Absolutely! This is a question I am often asked, in fact, around 50 per cent of my clients ask me to cater for special dietary requirements. The main concern when catering for guests with allergies or intolerances is cross-contamination, so the first thing you need to do is to find a cake designer that can bake a cake in a gluten-free environment.

Ask to try some of the company's gluten-free creations and remember to compare it to those that aren't. After all, there's no reason why these cakes should be any less scrumptious than any other variety!

If you have quite a number of guests that are gluten-intolerant, it might be worth making one of the smaller tiers of your cake gluten-free. However, if you only have a few guests that require a dessert which is gluten-free, why not serve them miniature gluten-free cakes in individual boxes? Your cake designer can even make them look like mini replicas of your traditional wedding cake, and that will make your guests feel very special indeed!

Becky and Andrew's Elegant Ivory and Black Wedding Cake

The lovely Becky and Andrew held their reception at Canada Lake and Lodge just outside Creigiau after their church wedding on the 5th of December. I delivered their cake on a fabulously frosty Saturday morning, the lake was beautifully peaceful and inside the lodge fires were blazing. It was simply stunning.

From the outset Becky and Andrew knew that they wanted their cake to fit with the sophisticated winter ivory and black theme of their wedding. They chose two flavours of cake - chocolate cherry fruit cake for the base tier and Madagascan vanilla Madeira cake filled with raspberry compote and buttercream for the remaining two tiers. Delicious!

We looked at varying different designs for the cake and settled on an elegant criss-cross quilted design which was accented with tiny piped royal icing beadwork in the groves. We used an opulent thick velvet ribbon to circle each tier and a slightly wider width of the same ribbon for the centre bow.

Becky and Andrew were absolutely brilliant to work with - designing and making their cake was a total pleasure. Sending them both my best wishes and wishing them every future happiness together!

(Andrew owns one of my favourite shops in Cowbridge Number 81 Interiors do check out their website and shop!)

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a very happy 2011! Happy planning for all of those organising celebrations and weddings for next year!

Apologies ...

Many apologies for my shameful lack of blog posting! With one thing and another I have managed to get shamefully behind. There's lots to catch up on, lots of lovely cakes made and coverage of iced in the press all of which will be winging its way too you shortly!