Cake Central Magazine

If you don't subscribe to Cake Central Magazine then you will have missed my cake....on the cover. I literally squealed with excitement when I found out. It is such an honour, especially when you see all the amazing cakes in this issue.

The picture is by Rebecca Fennel Photography. 

I have to wait a few weeks until I can share the original photos, so for now, you can see the cover page.

xxx

Ruffled flower tutorial

A wordless tutorial I made on Instagram for ruffled flowers. You can follow my daily antics on Istagram @neviepie.

xxx

The Cake and Bake Show

I spent last weekend at The Cake and Bake Show in Earl's Court. I had a fabulous time and meet lots of lovely ladies at my demonstrations. Thankyou everyone who came and said hello, it made the days very special. I did take some pictures but they were with my phone so they are not great, but I'll share them with you anyway!

This is the classroom area where I demonstrated cake painting techniques. Don't worry it did fill up. And Here am I ready to start.

I bought some Crumbs and Doilies cupcakes which were delicious. Thechocolate are by Paul A Young who is a gorgeous man and his chocolate are genuinely the best I have ever tasted. 

These are some of the cakes entered into the edible beach competition. The one on the left won it's category. I really liked the sticks of fondant rock on the other!

These are two of the many show cakes. The wedding cake is by Rachelles, who I meet at the show and she is lovely. The moody mermaid is by Dan P Carter, she was very rock and roll.

Finally there were loads of lovely goodies to purchase. I bought some cake pop holders to use for my cookies and Edd Kimber's new book, which was a special show preview. I found these butterfly cutters on Baker and Maker's stand for all those who had asked about the cutters I used for my butterfly cake. I didn't get my set from here but they look fairly similar. The sprinkles were amazing but I managed to contain myself!

There is already new dates on the Cake and Bake Show website for the next show which will be in Manchester.

xxx

Book club cake of the month... September

Well, after our unofficial pub meeting, we had our first post Summer gathering. We had read Money by Martin Amis.

 Let me start by saying, I really hated this book!

The book's protagonist is an example of eighties excesses, he is obsessed by money, he drinks, pops pills, abuses women and is the most unsympathetic character I have ever read.

Our group fell into three camps. Those who hadn't finished (and I suspect would never pick up the book again) including a friend going through chemo who had to stop because it made her literally sick. Those who had finished and thoroughly disliked it. And finally, those who hated the first half of the book, but felt that the second half brought redemption and reached a very satisfactory (for them) conclusion.

We gave it an average of 5.5, and with that I have no further wish to discuss it!

Our book club meetings are always a great excuse for fantastic nibbles and this months host did not disappoint, she had made a fantastic roasted pumpkin dish with a gorgeous aubergine dip, as well as the usual cheeses and cold meat platters.(I managed to take a quick pic with my phone and Instagram it before anyone tucked in.) Next months host has warned she intends to lower the bar with some substandard crisps! 

I was pondering what I could make to take to our meeting. I had thoughts of making fondant pills to go on top of cupcakes but then it hit me... millionaires shortbread! I love this sooo much, but my waist line doesn't! So I never make it, but it was the perfect confection for a book about excess. 

There is nothing more disappointing than going to a cafe and having a slice of millionaires shortbread, only to discover it is topped with cooking chocolate...bleurgh. So I made certain I had some good quality chocolate for this beauty. I then used my favourite technique for decoration at the moment. I splashed gold paint all over it!

I have to admit that even writing this post and looking at the pictures is making me hungry!

xxx

Previous official book club cake of the month;
August 2012 (unofficial)

July 2012

May 2012

April 2012

February 2012

January 2012

November

July

June

March

April

February

November 

October

September

Giveaway winner!

Congratulations to Marta, Martinha, Martoca, Martao!!! You have won two tickets to Cake International.

Email me nevie-pie@hotmail.co.uk with your address and I will send it off!

Have a great time!

xxx

A sad story

 I have 24 ballet shoe vanilla cookies that were supposed to be posted to Australia yesterday. However I (or the cookie orderer) did not know that Australia has very VERY strict customs and they would not accept these cookies i

nto the country, even though they are of the highest quality! This is a roundabout way of saying does anyone want to purchase some cookies? They are good until 12/10/12 and should be £4.50 but I will sell them for £3.00 (plus any p&p) I can post pretty much anywhere that is not Australia! email me nevie-pie@hotmail.co.uk if you are interested (you don't have to buy them all!)

xxx

Forty and Free

I had the greatest pleasure of putting together a dessert table for a very close friend last week. She had not only turned forty but had also managed to shake herself free from some very hideous shackles. We decided on a butterfly theme to symbolise a new life and as she is a lady with expensive tastes we added some gold too.

As she is a special friend I wanted to create something fabulous for her cake. Only the top two layers are actual cake but I kept on adding more dummy layers until the cake was suitably spectacular! There are forty butterflies (I counted three times but I still may have got it wrong so don't check!)

On the dessert table there are lemon drizzle cupcakes with fondant butterflies decorated with real gold leaf, sloe gin truffles, salted lavender caramel sharing pots with gilded cookie spoons, chocolate pots with chocolate dipped cookie spoons and gold splattered meringues.

The early evening light was just perfect while I was taking my photographs!

After setting up I raced home, put on my dancing shoes, and partied the night away to an Abba tribute band. It was a fabulous night, and I must admit to getting a little tearful and emotional with so many good friends there to help the birthday girl celebrate.

xxx

Giveaway time!

It's time for a fabulous giveaway. Yeah!

Cake International have very kindly given me two tickets for their show in Birmingham. So if you love cake decorating, learning lots of new techniques, seeing amazing cakes or increasing your stock of 'absolutely must have' tools and can get to Birmingham on the 9, 10 or 11th November then you should enter!

All you have to do is leave a comment at the end of the post telling me what you would be most excited to see at the show.

Let me know if you are a follower and you can have an extra chance. I will also give you extra chances for blogging, facebooking or tweeting about the giveaway, just leave me a comment letting me know what you have done.

I will pull a name from the hat next Thursday 20th September.

Ruffle cookies

As well as my Instagram fixation, I am now also obsessed with covering everything that stays still long enough in ruffles. I even managed to sneak them on to my kidlet's birthday cake (pics soon, I promise!).

So, when I was trying to think of a present for the goodies bags at a recent bloggers event I attended, ruffles were my go-to style. 

But I think these cookies would make gorgeous wedding favours, don't you?

xxx

A week in Instagram

I'm afraid I am still in the grip of Instagram fever. There are too many enticing filters, and the blur tool, it's just sooo fancy! (I may have slightly over filtered Peggy Porschen but it was getting a bit dark too!)

Anyway here are some snaps from my week.

My Instagram tag is @neviepie if you want to see what I get up to. And please give me your recommendations for who I should be following! I like to see cake and pretty things on my feed.

xxx

Unofficial book club cake of the month...August

We decided not to have an official book club meeting in August as so many of us were away on holiday at various different times. But we agreed to meet at a local pub for a drink and a catch up during the summer. Anyone who wanted, could read the unofficial book and we spent a few minutes discussing it.

It was, as I'm sure you've guessed, Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.

Do I really need to go into a description of the book? I'm sure you have either read it or heard of it.

Needless to say there were various opinions. The best being that it was an enjoyable, if badly written, pacey, holiday read  with 'it was terrible and I didn't finish it' at the other end of the scale! However we were all skipping the sex scenes by the end, as they became tedious. We didn't mark it, as we weren't the full group, but I would personally give it 6.5.

I didn't have chance to make the cookies for our meeting then but we did have an official meeting this week, so I brought some extra goodies along to represent fifty shades of icing! I did really mix up fifty different shades although the effect is quite subtle (unlike the book). 

Have you read it? What did you think.

xxx

Previous official book club cake of the month;

July 2012

May 2012

April 2012

February 2012

January 2012

November

July

June

March

April

February

November 

October

September

Bar Mitzvah cake

I made this for a work colleague of Mr LD. His son is celebrating his Bar Mitzvah.

This is the first Bar Mitzvah cake I have made but I've a sneaking suspicion that it is not a very traditional version!

There were very specific instructions as to the design and fortunately Mr LD is a big fan of Family Guy so I knew who the characters were.

On a different topic, I had some very exciting news this week that I can't share for a few weeks, but I'm bursting to tell.

xxx