Teddy Sleepover Cake

The latest birthday cake request from my darling charge Mr F, who was having a build-a-bear party (absolute nightmare - avoid at all costs) followed by a sleepover. A red velvet cake in the shape of a bed with teddies on it. Should be straightforward....

Pirate Ship Cake

So my darling youngest charge, little C, had her 4th birthday last week. As you can probably guess from the picture, she is more than a little obsessed with pirates. After much teasing about her having a princess party, I finally caved and made her much requested pirate ship cake! I must admit, it turned out a lot better than I had hoped. I'm rather proud of this one!

Sushi for kids

As ever, trying to keep packed lunches/teas interesting is not such an easy task (especially when your darling charges require 3 of them a week). So after asking the advice of a gardener (you'll find I've already exhausted all my nanny friends' ideas) I came up with this. Exceptionally tasty and child-friendly sushi!

Last minute card

Just a quick post here to show how handy it is to have letter stamps around the house. I slightly panicked this morning when I remembered that little C and I had a very important birthday party to attend, and I hadn't bought presents or a card. Oops! Fortunately, thanks to an obsessession with improving my (somewhat lacking) organisational skills - we happened to have a few presents stashed around the house. With five minutes to spare little C and I put our crafty skills to the test to make a card that was both simple enough for a 3 year old to do and pretty enough to keep me happy! Here's the result:

Quite pretty huh? Simple letter stamps, 2 different inks and plenty of space on the inside to create pirate inspired masterpieces - (who am I to say whether these go down well at a princess party or not?!)

Pancakes!

Who doesn't love pancake day?! 3 very excitable charges today, not least because the day started with pancakes and consequently a shedload of sugar! Although to my slight horror I discovered that these pancakes had been produced from *GASP* ready made batter!  Pancakes are little C's favourite things ever to make, and so that no-one else (Penny O'dwyer) stoops to store-bought pancakes again, here is our twist on scotch pancakes for you. (Variations suggested by C, F and P - they know their flavours!)

Carrot Cupcakes

These are a sound favourite of little C's to make, and a favourite of P and F to eat. These work really well with either cream cheese or vanilla buttercream, but I prefer to leave them plain and let the little ones have them as an after school snack.

Vanilla Cupcakes

No photos to go with this but thought I ought to put up some recipes while I remember. Anyone that works with, or has children, or even just loves to bake should have a simple cupcake recipe and this is one of the easiest. This supposedly makes approx. 15 regular cupcakes, or approx. 7 large (muffin case size) cupcakes.

School Cake Sale

Here are some standard cupcakes that I bring out for the school cake sales. With 3 children in different years, these come around fairly frequently!

Present Cakes and Teddy Cake

Here are a few photos from my eldest charge's most recent birthday. The teddy bear cake was the cake orginally intended for P's party, the present cakes were an addition brought on by P's mum knocking on my door at 8pm asking very politely (and slightly panicked) if I would mind creating a cake for P's other party (at 9 am the next day). I must admit I'm quite proud of the present cakes, although ~I would have liked to spend a little more time making them look perfect. 

Chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and coloured sugarpaste. As you can probably  see from this photo, the stripes are not quite as neat as I would have liked, but the little square shapes make very effective presents.

Castle Cake

Well hello everyone! There is a first time for everything, and me attempting to be computer literate is one of them. And as such I thought that the first time I blogged, I ought to show you the first really fun cake that I baked. The cake that got me hooked - on decorating, I have to admit I'm not a fan of cake myself, but they sure are good to have fun with!