Bit of a catch up

Once again, it seems like time is passing so quickly and I barely have time to blog, (not sure anyone's even reading it actually) lol!
I've been busy baking cakes for the requests I've had, a couple 21st cakes and others. Pics available at Cakes and Bakes by Christine , so feel free to have a look and let me have some feedback (constructive of course). As I'm new to the cake decorating mullarkey, I always ask my customer's what the cake was like, as for me, it's not just about how it looks (although it obviously has to look good), it is about the taste.
I've been using the same recipes for a while so I'm hoping I get some spare time soon, to try a few different ones and also bake some cookies. I also need to start planning my Christmas cake and how I'm going to decorate that.
I'm booked on a cake decorating course which starts early next month and as there is sooo much to learn I know I will learn lots, but there will still be tons of knowledge and skills I need to gain. It is the Cake International at the NEC also early next month and I'm hoping to have a whizz around that and spend all my month's salary in one go!
I also spend a lot of time looking at other cake bakers websites and admiring all their work, they are all just so talented.

On another, completely different note, not much stargazing been going on as it has been so cloudy, although you could see Jupiter very clearly for a few nights as it is very bright. Hopefully with the colder weather on the way, we may have a few clear nights for skywatching and keep your eyes peeled skyward for the ISS passing over - it is usually around 7.15pm at the moment and travels from West to East, it is well worth a look, I promise. ;)

Cakes and Meteor Showers

Haven't blogged for absolutely ages, as I've been really busy baking cakes. I've had lots of commissions during September including two 21st cakes AND a wedding!!

I was very nervous doing the first 21st cake as it was a particular commission, but it turned out quite well and my client was very pleased and I had good feedback on not only the look of the cake and how it was decorated but also the taste.

The wedding cake was cupcakes and a topper. The bride wanted a lemon flavoured topper and I found a recipe that I'd never used before and tried it out the week before. It was really nice. I actually delivered the cakes to the wedding venue and set them up. I had a message from the bride the week after the wedding that the cakes were lovely and that she had some nice comments about them. I was so relieved as I was very nervous as I felt that it was such a big responsibility. I had a lovely e.mail from the bride's mum as well.

I've now set up a FB page for my cakes called Cakes and Bakes by Christine so please feel free to have a look at all of the photos I've put on there. I've also had lots of cupcake orders over the summer, but this week is a quiet week so I thought I'd catch up on lots of things that I've neglected and plan some things for the festive season.

Have a good week everyone and don't forget Saturday 8th October, if we have clear skies, there should be a fantastic meteor shower.

Food for Thought

Haven't blogged for a while, but here's a little food for thought:

'Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace, divinely mysterious, he is inaudible. Thus, he is the master of his enemy's fate'. Sun Tzu - The Art of War

I'll leave you with that thought, I really like it - don't know why, I just do.

Be back soon ;)

Catching Up!

Well hello everyone, I wish I could say it is a lovely sunny Sunday morning, but nope it's definitely not, although gotta say at least it's not raining (yet)!!!

Haven't written anything for a while as I haven't been up to much, but have some exciting news. I've just ordered my chicken coop and I'm hoping to re-home some poor but very lucky ex battery hens next week. I can't wait, it's something I've wanted to do for such a long time the poor little ladies have had a horrible life so far, so giving up a little space in my garden is no hardship to me at all. I'll bore you all and post pictures when they arrive.
What I have been doing though is baking and decorating lots of cakes. I had my very first commission which was a 30th Anniversary cupcake tower with a topper. My customer wanted it to be very elegant and quite plain but I have to say she was overjoyed with it and it was really nice being at the party and listening to the compliments her guests were giving about the cakes. I was very pleased with it myself and my customer told me they were gorgeous to eat as well as lovely to look at. I have included a photo of the whole cupcake tower and the topper and also the a photo of the individual cupcakes. There were 30 of them. I made all the flowers myself and each one has a tiny pearl sugar sweet in the centre (the only reference to the 30th anniversary as my customer doesn't really like pearls). I couldn't have done this without the help of the lovely Kim from Angels Cupcakes and the tuition she gave me at the cupcake workshop. Sadly/disappointingly though, I haven't had any more commissions since, although did have another cupcake order but nothing since. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, unless the people who are giving me positive feedback aren't being honest and my cakes are really awful and they don't like them at all!! I also made a birthday cake for my daughter in May and also just made last week a cake for my other daughter's work colleague as a gift. I'll have to post those photos later as haven't uploaded them onto laptop yet - doh.. thought I had. Be back later with more photos. Have a lovely relaxing Sunday x

Sadness

Hi

I've just learned this morning of the sad death of a young man who worked with us at LJMU a few years ago. He very sadly took his own life. One can't even begin to understand how tormented he must have been to take such drastic action, but he must've been very unhappy.

He was such a lovely, vibrant and very popular young man and always made us all smile with his stories. My heart goes out to his family (although I realise this is a little late) and can only imagine the torment and grief that they must be going through.

I hope wherever you are now Luke that you are at peace. xx

Skywatching / Astronomy

As the weather here as been so awful for what seems like forever, there has not been a clear sky for such a long time. Not even nice enough to go and look in between all the clouds as it has been windy and rainy nearly every night. I'm hoping that the weather will improve soon, even just stop raining would be an improvement on how it has been! Makes me wonder is that nice weather we had a couple of weeks ago our Summer, wouldn't be surprised as in the past when the weather has been nice during April it has usually been followed by an awful Summer. Oooh I sound like the voice of doom and gloom.
The shuttle that was delayed from about a fortnight ago is due to take off tomorrow not sure what time our time, but one of my Astronomer friends from Twitter is a font of knowledge so hopefully he'll tweet some information either later or tomorrow. Apparently we should be able to see the shuttle around about 15 minutes after take off not long after the main fuel tank blasts away from it, so may see two bits! How exciting would that be??

Decorating Skills

Sorry still not uploaded any photos for ages, but will in a minute. But first I want to tell you about the fabulous cupcake decorating course I attended last Sunday via AngelsCupcakes over in Wirral. What a great day I had and cannot believe just how much I learned in such a short time and can't believe how quickly six hours flew by.

Kim was a fantastic teacher and with the patience of a saint I must add. The lunch was lovely and her lovely Mum deserves a mentioned as she worked just as hard keeping us all supplied with refreshments all day.

I have my very first commission which is to be a 30th anniversary cupcake tower with a cake topper. I've been practising making the flowers for the top and also for the cupcakes. I'm feeling quite confident at the moment, I have another couple of weeks to practice so hopefully, (fingers crossed) should be okay. I'm finding this whole thing very expensive at the moment as all I seem to be doing is buying more equipment etc, but hopefully I won't have to buy much more. I suppose it's like every hobby it can prove to be very expensive, I suppose I could use cheaper ingredients, but I like to think I make them to the best of my ability with the best ingredients as that is what I like to eat.

Some of the photographs I'm going to upload in this blog were decorated by my own fair hand using my new skills including making the flowers etc using Floristry Paste. I'm not very artistic but I even impressed myself!!

I'm going to be baking and decorating a chocolate birthday cake for my eldest daughter's birthday cake which is this week and I'm really looking forward to making it. Although I really must try and not eat any. :( I've also volunteered to make some cakes for somebody in work, so will make cupcakes in a few different flavours. Will post pictures of those as I'm going to be using my newly acquired cupcake tower stand.

Not sure what's happening to this post as not sure the photos are sitting correctly within the blog, but hope you all find it okay to read. Back soon with more cakes and pics. A couple of cake pop pics also which shows a trayful of these delightful little treats waiting to have some gorgeous chocolate coating on them.

Easter Weekend

I can't believe I baked over the weekend as I had visitors coming for Sunday lunch and I was that busy I forgot to take photographs! Nooooo and guess what? Yes they've all gone! I baked some gorgeous Caramel Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery book, but actually got the recipe from Catherine a colleague, fellow baker, Twitterer and blogger, who found it on the Waterstones website on their members pages.

They turned out really well, but came across what I think is an error with regard to the amount of baking powder. In the recipe it stated 1 tablespoon of baking powder, well no way does that sound right. I contacted my fellow baker Catherine via text, the Pink Whisk, Angel Bakes and Angelcupcakes via Twitter and the general view was that the likelihood was between 1 and 1.5 teaspoons. (Invaluable help from you all - thank you! :-) I actually ended up adding 3 teaspoons and they worked out fine and tasted delicious so they didn't last long. I passed some to my neighbour as samples as she has asked me to do a cupcake display for her and her husband's 30th Wedding Anniversary get together at the end of May. I'm both excited and nervous as I've never done one before although I have baked dozens and dozens of cupcakes my decorating skills need lots of honing. I'm booked on two cupcake decorating courses - one at the beginning of May and one at the end of June, so hopefully the one at the beginning of May will set me on my way!

I also made a traditional Simnel Cake, but instead of putting the 11 marzipan balls on the top, I coloured some paste and made some flower cut outs and leaves to go on the top to try out my new sets of cutters. I was a little disappointed with this cake as it was a little dry, but certainly not inedible - I and my youngest daughter adore fruit cake so that didn't last that long neither. My healthy eating sort of disappeared over the weekend. I'm still to load up the last lot of photos I took of the cake pops I made but will soon!

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Cakes and creativity (or not in my case)!!

I promised photos of my last creations a few weeks ago, but haven't got around to loading them onto the laptop yet. I thought I had but just checked for them to add them to blog, but hadn't done it :( Will load them soon and post on here. I've made some Red Velvet Cupcakes today from the Hummingbird Bakery book. They are not very red they look more like a chocolatey colour to me rather than the red. I followed the recipe to the letter and when I was making them was going to add a little more food colouring but they looked very red, but not red enough when baked so if I made them again I'd add a little more colouring.

They taste very nice and especially as they have my favourite frosting on which is the cream cheese frosting. I've also made a chocolate cake in readiness for trying out some more cake pops tomorrow night. I'm thinking of try to sell some in work, as they went down a treat last time when I took some in as samples. So I've decided today that I'm going to give it a try and I must say I feel a little more positive now I've made the decision.

I've bought some more lovely ribbon etc and I'm going to wrap them up with nice cellophane etc. The most scary thing that happened today is that my neighbour has asked me to do a 21st Birthday cake for her son!!! Luckily his birthday isn't until September so I have plenty of time to practice. It's not the baking I have problems with but the the decorating. As luck happens I have booked myself onto two cake decorating courses in the next few months, so fingers crossed that I can improve my skills. Surprisingly I already have an idea for the cake for my neighbours son, so will talk it through with her in a month or so.

Must go as TOWIE is on soon - will upload photos soon.

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Liverpool ONE flash mob

Haven't blogged for a few weeks, been really busy planning and stuff. Haven't even done any skywatching for weeks, it's been rather cloudy. That said, my other half thought he was pointing Orion out to me - er nope. Think he just saw a bright star and that was it. He obviously knows even less than me, thank goodness!

Anyway, will be blogging soon with some photos.

Here's some photos of the cupcakes I made the other week, again recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. The Marshmallow cupcakes didn't seem to have enough frosting to coat the marshmallows, so if I made these again, I'd add a little more frosting or use less mini marshmallows. My daughter says these are her very favourite cupcake that I've made so far. The pic is a bit blurred really, but here is a pic of a single cupcake. I also made lots of others, some chocolate, some vanilla and some lemon flavour ones.

I've also been enjoying making some biscuits these particular ones are called 'Melting Moments' and the recipe came from a Mary Berry book. They really do melt in the mouth and once again the team in work seemed to enjoy them and my family definitely do like them, so they will become a regular in my repetoire.

Anyway, still haven't found out what the mega moon is but I'll be back with an update.

Blog

Thought I'd update my blog. Been doing lots of baking and have taken lots of photos, quality not too good (the photos not the cakes)!! I'm still going to put photos on in case anybody is interested in having a quick look.

Cupcakes and cake pops are what I've been baking, also a couple of banana loaves and also a 'Blondie', this is a Brownie but with white chocolate instead of dark/milk chocolate. The cupcakes and banana loaf recipes are from the 'Hummingbird Bakery' cook book and the cake pops I actually Googled to see what they were. I follow Angelcupcakes1 on Twitter and they posted about making Cake Pops. After looking at the photos they had posted, I did a bit more research and came up with lots of videos on You Tube and some other sites, showing exactly what they are and how to make them.

So last week my first crop of Cake Pops was created. First I baked a plain old chocolate victoria sandwich cake, let it cool then broke it up into pieces. Then I added some vanilla flavour frosting mixed it all together then let it cool in the fridge for an hour. After an hour, the mix was then formed into balls and then put in the freezer for a couple of hours. I then added the sticks and decorated with white chocolate and milk chocolate.

I took them into work the next day and I must say they went down a storm. I asked everybody for constructive feedback as I'd never made them before and was pleased with the comments, although one person did comment that dark chocolate would be a nice contrast with the sweetness of the cake inside. Obviously, there are lots of ways to decorate them and lots of different flavour cake you can use, so I'm going to be experimenting a bit more.

On a different note, keep seeing mentions of a 'megamoon', so I'm off to try and find out what it's all about. When I have found out what it is, I'll let you know.

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It's been a busy few days. I've been mostly baking and general boring household stuff, although enjoy the baking. It really takes me away from everything and I focus completely on what I am doing and nothing else. I'm still honing my skills and I've a bit of a plan on the go which I hope will soon come together, but at the moment it's not looking too hopeful, but - fingers crossed. I really need to practice decorating skills, but I'm a bit impatient and don't really like fiddly things, but if I want to continue it is something I'm going to have to learn.

I baked two lots of cookies and three different types of cupcakes on Friday and then today I baked cookies and marshmallow cupcakes. Luckily, I don't happen to like marshmallows so I can keep away from them very easily. The cookies are going to work with me tomorrow, hopefully to get eaten. I've kept some aside for other half and daughter to eat otherwise I'd never hear the end of it. I've taken some photos of everything I baked, but I'm not happy with the quality of the photos so I'm still deciding whether or not to upload them.

I feel like I'm cooking and baking the same things all the time, I seem to stick to my tried and tested recipes that have been successful, but I have loads of cookery books and baking books by lots of different people I start and be more adventurous and try new things. I wish I had more time to do the things I really like!


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Healthy Eating

Bit of a contrast to my last couple of posts, but I do eat very healthily most of the time, having been following Slimming World plan for over a year now.

I love this site Slimming Eats, the young woman who publishes it is excellent and syns everything that she puts on the site. Plenty of ideas for healthy, different and exciting recipes (and photos). So if you're bored with your usual food and even if you're not following any particular healthy eating plan it's definitely worth a look.

Rather bizarrely (well I think so), there is a bloke who makes videos of himself making Slimming World recipes and publishes them on You Tube. Just type in Slimming World in the seach on You Tube and loads of videos come up for you to look at. One of the recipes I saw was for chicken cooked with Diet Coke, again sounds a bit odd, but I'm going to give it a try at the weekend, think it might be like a barbecue flavour or is that a bit optimistic?

Error

Hi again, bit overkill today, but just realised there's an error in the first sentence of my last blog (Catherine thought I'd put this on before you notice it)!! Ha, ha.... x

Cupcakes

So here we have the the Red Velvet Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I'd like to say that I baked these, but can't be that dishonest. My daughter made them and again very nice they were too. The inside spongey bit was more chocolatey colour than red, so would use a little more food colouring next time.

They are covered with my favourite topping, that is the lovely cream cheese frosting. So moreish, think I could just eat a whole bowl of the stuff. Then I would obviously feel very sick, but frankly I wouldn't care.

Whilst talking cakes, the other photo is my latest creation baked only earlier this week, it is a Walnut layer cake, covered in lovely fondant icing. Not sure the fondant icing was a great success as I was a bit impatient waiting for it to thicken so it was slightly sloppy but still tasted great. It must have tasted okay as it's all gone. I do keep saying I'm going to bake some cakes and take them into work, but they just don't seem to last that long. Back soon with more blurb.

Yay, it worked... well here we go then, this is a very belated photo of the Christmas cake I baked and decorated Christmas 2010 (oh and I'm ashamed to say I ate most of it as well)!! Decided to go for the 'less is more' with the decorating as my imagination didn't stretch much beyond this. Not perfect by any means, but I don't think it's too bad for a first attempt. What do you think? Oh sorry you can't taste it, there's none left - ;) Perhaps I may make two this year and let you all have a taste.

Cakes and other stuff

Haven't written anything for a while, I'm not having much luck with the website links and the uploading of photos of cakes I've baked. I'm going to have another try in a minute to see if I have better luck tonight. I wouldn't mind, I've done it before without any problems, so not sure what I'm doing wrong haven't figured it out yet. Be back soon with links and photos.... fingers crossed :)

Busy week so far, only three (oh no only two) yay! to go to the weekend.

I wrote a post before and tried to add in some websites but couldn't get them to work again, I had the knack last year after months of trying but they weren't working so gave up. Will have another go soon. I was also going to upload some photos but they weren't working either, must've been doing something very basic wrong. As you will see I have been successful in loading up photos before so not sure what I was doing wrong. Perhaps I'm not concentrating properly.

Will definitely have another try as blog will be even more boring without a few snaps.

Another busy day ahead tomorrow :( but would rather be busy than have nowt to do.

2011 Continues..

Looking for something interesting and different to do with my spare time this year, any ideas?

I have several thoughts on this but haven't come to a firm decision yet. I need to do something where I'm meeting new people and interacting with new people. Also something that isn't going to cost a lot of money. I enjoy trying new things and new experiences, but feel a bit stuck at the moment.

A new location may be a start?

2011

Well happy new year to one and all. Haven't been around for quite a while, life hasn't been as straightforward as it should but I'm going to try and get back into the routine of posting on my blog.

I did a fair bit of baking before Christmas making:

White Chocolate and Cranberry Cupcakes, a huge Christmas cake also decorated this myself, lots of fruit cakes and a delicious Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cheesecake (that recipe courtesy of Nigella Lawson). Oh and not forgetting the sugar cookies I baked and decorated with different coloured glittery icing.

Today I baked Fork Cookies, courtesy of the lovely Mary Berry.

Inbetween all of this, I've also been trying to keep up with my stargazing and following lots of others who are interested in Astronomy on Twitter. Particularly, @Virual Astro and @ProfBriann Cox. There has been a lot going on in the sky since early December with the meteor shower (can't remember the name of it) early in December, during which I managed to spot five meteors so I was really pleased with that. Last weeks meteor shower proved a bit of a let down as it has been cloudy in the North West for what seems like weeks. Forecast tonight is for clear skies so will go out later and have a quick look to see what I can see. Will be back. Take it easy.