Vanilla choc chip cookies

Very simple, but very tasty, here are some vanilla choc chip cookies...

I roughly chopped a bar of dark chocolate rather than using choc chips,
as then you get nice big chunks of gooey chocolate.

I also added some chopped brazil nuts, almonds and hazelnuts
for added crunch and flavour.

Pizza cake for Lucy

You might not believe it, but this is a birthday cake.

Yep, a birthday cake.

As savoury and meaty as the toppings look,
I promise they're all sweet.

Big thanks to Pinglewood for hunting them down.

And as if the whole thing wasn't disturbing enough,
we served it up in a pizza box. Cheers Il Bacio!

Here's birthday girl Lucy cutting the cake with a pizza wheel...

Eating a slice...

And there goes the last one.

Polka dot cakes

For no real reason I made some vanilla polka dot

cakes at the weekend...

Maybe it was because I had just been to see Alice

in Wonderland...

which was brilliant, by the way!

Sandra's 50 lemon cupcakes

So my boss Sandra recently commissioned me to make
50 cupcakes for her 50th birthday!

She's a big fan of my vanilla sponge with lemon buttercream cupcakes.

Because I piped the icing I had to make more than usual and
managed to get through 1.5kg of icing sugar.

But I used half-fat creme fraiche, so that evened things out.

It being a big birthday, I thought edible gold

glitter and stars were in order... which fitted in
well with the general children's party atmosphere.

I think Sandra ate her way through one box of cakes,
while the rest of the office devoured the other...

...pretty quickly.

Best of all, Sandra gamely posed with a lovely pair of cupcakes.

Big thanks to Catrin Cullen for the photos.