Chocolate Lattice Cake

We went to Australia for four weeks in July to visit family and friends. It had been over two and a half years since we had been home.

My Mum threw a huge family party so we could catch up with everyone. There are over 90 people in my Mum's family so this is much easier than trying to catch up with everyone individually. I offered to make a cake for the party to help with the catering.

There was quite alot of chocolate left after the strawberries had been dipped so I had a little play and criss-crossed the remaining chocolate on some grease proof paper and used the resulting lattice on top of the cake. I was really very pleased with the end result. It gave the cake a wow factor without much effort at all.

Nicky and Simon's Engagement Cake

I offered to make my friend Nicky's engagement cake. She asked for chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.

I decided to decorate the top with fresh lilies. I cut the flowers to the length I needed, wrapped their ends in cling film and arranged them on the cake. I would have liked to use a professional florists foam meant for on the top of cakes but at the time I wasn't sure where I could get one.

I sift all my ingredients before I add them to either my cake batters or to icing mixtures to be sure there are no little lumpy surprises in the end product. It wasn't until after I had iced the cake (before I did the piping) that I noticed a patch of icing with little lumps of cocoa showing in it. I was SO annoyed. It was too late to do anything about it so when I delivered the cake I made sure that side was facing the wall. No-one noticed thankgoodness!

Pink and Sparkly

A friend asked me to make her daughter's birthday cake. She asked that it be a chocolate cake with pink icing and swirls. I had some cake icing powder so I added a little for some extra sparkle.

Just an excuse for more icing really..

I had seen an new icing technique on the Internet and I wanted to try it out. Now my icing bag nib collection is a little on the sparse side so I chose one that was the same type as the one required but it was unfortunately quite a bit smaller. I hadn't anticipate the hand strength required to force icing out of a nib that was too small, or perhaps it was the icing that was too thick! In the end I gave up and just squeezed as hard as I could and hoped for the best. There were no complaints from the peanut gallery as any excuse for more icing is more than acceptable in this house.

Christmas Candy Cane Cake

I came up with this cake design for my Christmas article last year. It is a chocolate cake layered with peppermint icing. I made two more of these and gave one each to the staff of the two schools my children attend.

It is funny the things you notice; I don't often purchase candy canes but I needed quite a lot of them to make three of these cakes. I found it very difficult to find red and white candy canes in Guernsey so in the end I had to settle for these pink ones. I was told they tasted good despite of their lack of true Christmas red :)

Rainbow Piping

My daughter wanted a rainbow cake for her birthday. I made her a chocolate cake, which is her favourite and came up with rainbow icing. I simply filled the icing bag with blobs of different coloured icing and this was the result. Next time I would add alot more yellow as that seems to really 'pop' and less blue as this is a bit too dark.

Chocolate on Chocolate

I made this cake for a friend to share at her work.

It is chocolate cake with chocolate icing. I am using alot more cake boards now so I don't have to remember who has all my cake plates.