Pastels and Vintage Lace Cupcakes

We had a long awaited family catch up last weekend (we live up north in Nottinghamshire and Sheffield, while they live down south in Essex, Bedfordshire etc) and don’t see each other as much as we’d like to. Life just tends to take over and as we all know, time flies by! However, I have a car now, so I will definitely be seeing more of them.
 

They have never tasted my baking before, but have said that they’ve ‘regularly drooled over pictures of my baking online’, so I definitely had to provide dessert!

I made some of my best sellers/most loved by family/signature bake, which are my Maltesters cupcakes. I also baked some orange poppy seed cake, which is another household favourite and will get the spotlight in a blog post some time soon.

 It was my Auntie Sylvia’s birthday on the 12th August, so I made her some bespoke cupcakes. I would never trust the postman to deliver a batch unscathed so I was thankful to be able to give them to her in person. It was an absolute delight to give them in person because of her reaction and everyone else’s reactions to them. One of my favourite things in life is to make people smile through my baking and decorating.

 

 

I honestly had no clue how I was going to decorate them. I had a few new tools and techniques that I wanted to try out and the rest would be ad-libbed! It takes one completed cupcake for me to then see where I’m going for the rest. That’s the excitement of starting with a blank canvas. My favourite style of decorating is definitely the elegant vintage lace, with pastel shades and bold flowers. I likened all of that to a very well put together outfit (LBD + Tiffany jewellery + statement scarf) with a flawless face of makeup.
 

What I love the most about cake decorating is how much you can let go of your thoughts. I did not think about anything but those decorations and the task in hand. It was utter bliss, made even better with the perfect play list!

Some break up advice

Trust me I am not a relationship expert, however I know that these points helped me so far.  Even if this helps just one person out there, my work is done.

1) Friends and family – you have to talk it out.  Every little confusing detail.  Don’t ever think that you are burdening them.  That is what they are there for and quite frankly, they really do show how much they love you in times of need.  A good friend of mine said, “Heather, go home to your family, be all warm and snug and let them take care of you”.  You absolutely should.  You may feel like a child by doing that and lets face it, we are adults, but you are their child.  It’s absolutely instinctual for them to protect you.

2) Watch absolute rubbish on TV, maybe something you thought you’d hate, or something your other half wouldn’t have liked you watching.  I now have a serious love for The Only Way is Essex.  It’s so naf, but it helped me get through this very rough time in my life because it took my mind off my life and my heartache.  Plus it was the only thing that could help me fall asleep!

3) Avoid music for the first few days, or weeks if you love and treasure music like I do. My sister told me that.  She told me point blank, “do not listen to John Mayer, do not listen to the Beatles, don’t even listen to Incubus, they’ll be tainted forever”.  Suffer in silence then?! No, of course not.  Music means a lot to me, so I chose my play list carefully, not involving my most beloved artists.  I knew Taylor Swift’s Red is what I needed.  It’s funny how much you listen to something and it’s so fitting to your situation that you think it was actually written for you.  I would like to give Taylor a hug for writing so poignantly.

4) Take time off work if you need to.  There is no shame in that.  I took three days off… I could have done with longer but you can drive yourself mad at home if you don’t throw yourself back into normality.

5) Then, throw yourself into work.  Luckily for me, work was ramped up a fair few notches after my break up which has worked out very well for me.  It’s time to shine.  Hobbies? Throw yourself into those too and find some new ones.

6) Listen to your heart and your most dark thoughts.  Don’t ignore them.  Don’t put on your best brave face, with a copious amount of MAC blush.  It won’t get you anywhere.  Soon enough it would melt off and reveal the real you anyway.  Be the real you from the get go. 

7) In an odd way, soak it all up, feel dreadful, feel sorry for yourself, cry, stay in bed all day if you want to.  You should feel and embrace this in the beginning.  Denial is not nice.  Especially with break ups, sweeping statements such as “oh I’m fine, I knew it was coming, we just weren’t right for each other” – some statements might be true and heavily philosophical, but are you really digging deep into your heart? It’s best to dig deep, let it all out now rather than six months down the line. 

8) Time. Time. Time.  You won’t feel like this forever.  ‘This’ is implied meaning.  You know how you feel right now.  You can’t describe it.  It’s that heavy hearted feeling.  I’m told that time is the most important element for getting over anything in your life.  You may feel like there’s a huge cloud hanging over you all the time and that you’re haunted.  It won’t be like that forever.

Fear is a friend that’s misunderstood

This is not baking related but it explains the last three months of my life. It might even help someone else who is going through the same thing.

Nothing will prepare you for the moment where everything you’ve built comes crumbling down.  Why me? Did I do enough? Did I do too much? The more I tried, the less it worked.

Break ups.  Devastating.  We’ve all been through them and we can all empathise and sympathise.

Once the reality sunk in, I reacted like I was very ill.  As if I had a 24 hour bug and the only thing to do was to get it all out and be left with nothing.  I wasn’t ill though.  But my body reacted like I was.  I couldn’t breathe.  I had moments of sheer panic where I just couldn’t be alone.  I couldn’t sleep.  I cried endlessly.  I lost half a stone.  I was experiencing stress and I always knew in psychology lessons at school, that given the choice of the options: fight or flight, it would always be fight.  Why metaphorically run away and deny?

I locked myself away.  I saw the light of day only when I needed to or when I saw my friends.  I didn’t go out drinking like people tend to encourage.  That would have ended in tears, literally.  I saw my friends and family quietly; we talked about it over and over again, like the same song on repeat.  Forming various flow charts in our heads to try and understand. However many paths they led me down, the end result was always the same.  Powerless. 

I have grieved like this was a real bereavement.  That person is no longer in my life and can never be in it again.  Too much has happened.  He is circa 2006 – 2013.

I gave my relationship postmortem what it deserved.  Time, understanding and respect. I took the time to listen to my head and my heart no matter how conflicted they were.  However, should I have seen it coming? Were the signs there? I just wanted it to work - that’s all I knew.  Nothing like this is logical and straight forward, however much you want it to be. 

What have I learned in this brief three months? Not much as yet.  I am the same person now as I was six years ago when all this begun.  My fundamentals never change.  I always work some moves ahead, like a game of chess.  I like to know where my life is going or at least working towards it.  Some say this is controlling, I prefer ambitious.  My fundamentals is my personal gravity – essential to just being.  What would I do without them? They are my benchmarks.

I have got stronger and wiser from this experience and I now realise I have some serious courage.  I was told I was brave, “I’m proud of you”.  Are you kidding me? You’re proud of me in the state I’m in? I didn’t understand.  But it’s because I had the guts to listen to my intuition, take control and call time on my relationship that could never work.  I had to say goodbye to my first love who I wanted to live out all my fundamentals with.  My gravity was our gravity.  But life isn’t that logical and you don’t always get what you want.

Where have I been?

So I said in my last blog that I would be blogging again soon.  This promise hasn't surfaced. 

My life has massively changed of late and I'm just trying to ride the storm at the moment.

I have experienced bereavement twice since February. The first was the passing of my Grandma. The second wasn't technically bereavement. But it certainly feels like it, even though that person is alive and well. 

Anyway, enough of the cryptic clues. I'll be back to baking when I'm back to normal. However long that will take.

Bye for now fellow baking enthusiasts.

 

xoxo

 

I'm back after a long break

Okay, so here I am, back to blogging! I have been away for a long time and I feel that I need to get the reasons why on a post to explain.  Time flies doesn't it?

It's pretty simple really, I got a new job at the start of December - same company, just a different role altogether.  I was completely ecstatic when I heard I had got it as it was exactly what I needed - a new challenge and a job that would make me think and use my brain.  I get restless in jobs if I can't use my creativity or my brain...

So basically, I've been focussing all of my efforts and energy on my new job.  By energy I mean that on weeknights I'm almost asleep on the sofa at 8pm! It's a tiring job and my mind works overtime.  Or if I'm not falling asleep at 8pm, I'm completely unwinding watching my new favourite TV show, Breaking Bad - has anyone else watched it?!  So baking has come at the bottom of my priorities of late, which will hopefully change.

I thought that a quick post would be best and then I'll post a baking blog very soon.

Look what the postman brought me today!

Art Attack Cake

I was asked to create a cake for my colleague's daughter who was turning three and loved Art Attack and Mister Maker. I jumped at the cake at making an art themed cake, knowing that it'd be a lot of fun to make. Organised chaos sprung to mind!

I was told that her favourite colours were pink and purple - a little girl after my own heart! So I decided to cover the cake in a deep pink colour, with the theme of purple elsewhere. I knew that I wanted the cake to have an artist palette, paintbrushes and paint tubes on the top of the cake.

I used and coloured royal icing for the paint on the palette. I was so pleased with how paint like it actually looked, especially with the squeezed out effect with the peaks. I dipped the end of the paintbrushes in the royal icing that left a really realistic look of paint – looking a little messy and thick just like the real thing. The palette was made purely of flower paste to ensure that it dried hard. 

 The paintbrushes were constructed in three parts. A long sausage shape made out of flower paste with a small amount of sugar paste mixed in. A small rectangle for the metal between the handle and brush and a tear shaped tip for the brush. I coloured the handle with some caramel colouring and once air dried for a short while, I scored it to give the affect of wood grain. To make it look more like wood grain, I made a thin brown paint (water consistency) so it could be painted on to give a varnish affect. It worked as desired as the scored areas were darker and trapped the colouring beautifully.

The picture stood at the side was one of my favourite elements and was inspired by a cake I found online. It was made purely of flower paste and I painted the background of the picture first and then sketched the family afterwards. I thought that this was a endearing addition to the cake, especially because I drew it like I thought a three year old would and ensured that it was a representation of the family the cake was for.

I marbled some of the sugar paste decorations to give it a swirled look, rather than a block colour. I used a swirly embossing sheet and a quilt affect embossing tool to create some the decorations. I loved how they looked once placed on the cake. I think it added just enough texture and creative edge for it to be both girly and arty.

I loved how the paint tubes and leakages looked on the cake. This was the epitome of messy and fun art to me! I was so impressed with how amazing the royal icing leakages looked. 

Peanut Butter Squares

This recipe is taken from Lorraine Pascale’s new book. It’s a lovely book and I’ve made three things so far. Two main meals and this beautiful sweet treat.  I could say many superlatives regarding these morsels of sheer genius, however I just need to stress that if you are a peanut butter fanatic like I am (as you know!) then you must make them.

It’s a brilliantly easy recipe and takes very little preparation – peanut butter, digestive biscuits, melted butter, brown sugar, chocolate, vanilla and chilled in the fridge when all combined. Easy peasy. It’s extremely indulgent, calling for most of a jar of peanut butter, however it does make 16 squares. They are quite large squares too so you could down size even more if you wish. I didn’t want to because they were so moreish and I do have quite a high threshold for sweet things. 

The next time I make these, I am going to cover them in white chocolate instead of milk chocolate. The recipe calls for dark chocolate but I went for milk, simply because I prefer the saltiness from the peanuts against the smooth, sweet milk chocolate – yum! 

I would say that these squares are a hybrid between a biscuit and a Reese’s peanut butter cup. 

Simply fabulous!