Apologies

I've just found out that my telephone answering service hasn't been recording messages as it should :o( the problem is now fixed but many apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Lilac and Pink Birthday Cupcakes

I am feeling very spring-like this week, the sun is shining, lambs are bouncing around the fields and fresh colours are appearing all around! I made this cupcake tower for Philippa's mother's 60th Birthday celebration on Sunday. My brief was that the cake should comprise 150 British style cupcakes with Madagascan vanilla sponge, topped with fondant icing in lilac colours with half of the cupcakes decorated with sugar flowers and the other half plainly iced with a little sparkle! The top tier cutting cake was a ginger cake filled with lemon buttercream. I iced the top tier using lilac sugarpaste which was then hand piped with royal icing dots in the same colour, I topped the cake with a mixture of loose and tight pink sugar roses which I interspersed with sugar pearls.

The celebration took place in Surrey and the cake was collected by a family member so I don't have any photographs of it set up in-situ but I constructed the cake using half of the cupcakes in my studio to photograph it to give you an idea of how it looked!

The smooth, swirled fondant gives a really pleasing effect I think:

Many thanks to Philippa and her father for ordering the cake from iced (despite being based so many miles away!) and to Mike for recommending iced to them. It was an absolute pleasure to make! Wishing Philippa's mum a very happy 60th birthday!

The Handmade Wedding Collective Exhibition

The Handmade Wedding Collective Exhibition, which is taking place between the 15th and the 20th of March at Craft Central, London, is showcasing 14 fabulous UK designer-makers. If you are looking for gifts for your guests, fabulous jewellry, gorgeous garters or beautiful silk ties for your groom / groomsmen like these from the wonderful Peggy Bamford:

do pop along and visit the exhibition. All of the location, timing and exhibitor details can be found here. Happy shopping!

Your South Wales Wedding Panel

In this months Your South Wales Wedding magazine I was asked about wedding cakes on a budget. A lovely cake is a really central part of any wedding I think (but then I am biased!) the only problem is that they can be expensive particularly if they incorporate a lot of detailed decorative work or if they are structurally complex. If you are working to a budget don't despair, there are many ways to reduce the cost of your cake:

• Serve your cake as a dessert if your wedding venue allows, ask your caterer to provide little jugs of coulis or cream to go with the cake.
• Cupcakes are often a cheaper alternative to a stacked cake. They look beautiful and impressive when set up on a cake stand and each guest receives their own beautifully decorated cake.
• Choose a beautiful diminutive two tier cake and then ask your cake maker to provide extra undecorated cutting cakes which will be kept behind the scenes and cut up for serving
• And of course if you have an excellent baker in the family why not get them involved in helping to make your cake whether it would be making the whole thing start to finish or indeed simply baking the cakes which a professional cake maker could then decorate.