Mother's Day cake and craft

I can still remember getting up early and picking a bunch of daffodils from the garden. Putting them in a vase and using them to decorate a breakfast tray which I would carefully carry up to my Mum who would still be in bed as a Mother's Day treat. Maybe it's the daffs, or the primroses or the crocuses but for me, Mother's Day always has a yellow hue. So when I was trying to come up with an easy project you to make for your own mums I knew that it had to be yellow.

At the same time that I was mulling this craft project around my head, I was asked by Waitrose.com if I would like to try out one of their recipes to give as a Mother's Day present. They have some delicious sounding recipes for you to make, coffee and walnut, rhubarb and ginger tart (this is a recipe I will keep for Father's Day!) and victoria sandwich. However it was the lemon drizzle recipe that really caught my eye, I thought that this would be perfect for my project.

I tinkered a little with the recipe, I baked the cake in two tins (for speed), and I doubled the quantity of mascarpone. I then added four dessert spoons of poppy seeds to the mascarpone, and four dessert spoons of ready made lemon curd (I'm sure the homemade version in the recipe tastes divine, but I really had no time) I filled the cakes with the mixture and also added a layer on the top. The recipe includes a really good tip which is to add the lemon zest while you are creaming together the butter and sugar, this releases the lemon oils into the cake. I will always do it this way from now on. The cake tasted gorgeous! All it needs now is some decoration.

To make the paper wreath

I used three different patterned craft papers, each was double sided and they were all yellow, of course you could use a different colourway if you prefer. Cut out 24 large petals, 30 medium petals,12 small petals and 18 leaves. 

Make a slit in the middle of each petal. With a glue gun glue one side of the petal.

Fold the other side of the petal over the glue. Trim the edges.

Glue the petals together. Use five medium petals to make the centre group of the large flowers and the medium sized flowers, and six small petals to make the small flowers.

Glue six large petals on the outside of four of the medium sized flowers.

Make the centre of the flowers by cutting a strip of paper. Then snip slits along it's length, but not quite to the end, about 3/4 of the way across. Roll the strip around itself.

Glue the roll into the centre of the flower and fan it out.

Cover florists wire with green florist tape and make a circle large enough to fit on the top of your cake.

Glue the flowers onto the wire then glue the leaves onto the bottom of the flowers, this will sandwich the wire in between the flowers and the leaves.

Trim off any threads of glue that are hanging off the flowers and place the wreath on top of the cake.

Give the cake to your Mum and watch her eat it up!

(This is my lovely Mum!)

The bonus to this project is even after the cake has been gobbled up, your mum still has a pretty wreath to hang up!

You can find the recipe here, and you can download the template for the flowers here.
Waitrose.com have a special page dedicated to Mother's Day gift and homemade food ideas, they also have a sweet app where you can share your  #thanksmum messages which help form a giant flower installation at Kew Gardens (and enter to win a prize). You can find the page here.

Thanks to my Mum for being the model for this project!

Happy Mother's Day!

xxx

ps This is not a sponsored post but I did receive Waitrose vouchers to buy the ingredients for the cake.