Wow, I haven’t blogged in a while! I have missed it. Since I last blogged I’ve turned 25, visited Liverpool for my birthday weekend, been to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park (I love animals – the meerkats and squirrel monkeys were my favourite) and attended my friend’s beautiful wedding in Essex. With a lot of baking in between!
I’m a huge Beatles fan so our weekend in Liverpool was inspired by them. We went to the Beatles Story Exhibition in the day and to the Cavern Club at night. Two incredible experiences. Liverpool is a very cool and friendly city. People were interested in why we were there and it had a buzzing atmosphere, day and night. Our hotel was fantastic, so if anyone is thinking about visiting Liverpool, check out Hotel Indigo. Very fashionable and well located (two minute walk from the Albert Docks and ten minute walk away from the Cavern Club).
I’m a huge Beatles fan so our weekend in Liverpool was inspired by them. We went to the Beatles Story Exhibition in the day and to the Cavern Club at night. Two incredible experiences. Liverpool is a very cool and friendly city. People were interested in why we were there and it had a buzzing atmosphere, day and night. Our hotel was fantastic, so if anyone is thinking about visiting Liverpool, check out Hotel Indigo. Very fashionable and well located (two minute walk from the Albert Docks and ten minute walk away from the Cavern Club).
As you can imagine, I baked treats in aid of my birthday (which is also my Dad’s birthday so double the reason for treats!) I made a Maltesers cake and mini Snickers cheesecakes from Iced Jems. You can find the recipe here.
Over the Jubilee celebrations I made my very first sugarpaste covered cake. I tried to use skills I’d learned in my cake decoration class and applied the tips I’ve read about in all my books. I think it went well for my first attempt, apart from a mishaps with small holes in the sugarpaste where it had maybe become too dry and ripped. However, armed with damage control knowledge (sometimes demonstrated on Ace of Cakes) you can cover up the mishaps by placing articles over them!
The main inspiration for the cake was the cute cake bunting I bought from Ebay. It was £5.95 from a brilliant and efficient seller. You can find this gorgeous bunting here.
I used Mary Berry’s madeira cake recipe from her Baking Bible and substituted lemon zest for vanilla extract. It had a layer of marzipan underneath the sugarpaste. A very rich flavour, yet so satisfying.
