Catrin joins the shoe club

Now Catrin loooves shoes... we all know that... so what

better birthday treat than double chocolate dancing shoe cookies?

You make some chocolate-rich cookie dough, chill it in the

fridge, then roll it out and use a shoe-shaped cookie cutter.

Then you bake them, let them cool, and slather them with
melted chocolate. 85% cocoa if possible...

Then the fun part... who knew you could dye caster sugar

with food colouring? Thanks "Cupcakes Cheesecakes Cookies

By The Australian Women's Weekly". And thanks to Jez &

Tanya who bought me the book for Christmas!

You add some strategically-placed silver and gold balls,

then the coloured sugar... and then... because I'm obsessed

with edible glitter and sparkling vampires and they weren't

quite ridiculous-looking enough... I scattered a whole load of

holographic glitter all over them.

Catrin was very pleased to finally be a part of the shoe club...
And check out those Louboutins!

Thanks to David Reffell for the marvellously surreal pics.
Check out his other work here.

Lily's 1st birthday cupcake party

Scott and I were very excited to receive an invitation to

Lily's 1st birthday celebration... a cupcake party no less.

I went for classic vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream

icing, but loaded each one up with different colourful toppings.

After eating a few savoury snacks, our hostess was keen to get her

chops round a cupcake, so pretty much stuffed one in whole.

Toppings included fruity jelly beans, dolly mixture, mini

marshmallows, jelly tots and lots of glitter, but Lily's favourites

were the glittery foam ice cream cones.

Yum.

The devil eats food cake: Arthur's birthday

Arthur is a big chocolate fan, so a rich devil's food cake was

the perfect choice for her birthday...

You have to cook a huge chocolate cake, whose 'secret' ingredient

is chocolate custard, then leave it to cool... before cutting into

layers. Next, mix up a huge batch of chocolate icing and then

cement it all together...

I wasn't sure if that was quite enough chocolate, so I added

some dark chocolate shavings for good measure.

The cake weighed about 4 stone, but I managed to transport it into

the office intact before it was attacked with Sandra's scary knife.

Most importantly, it went down very well with cake face.

Zomby cake

So Pinglewood was interviewing reclusive music producer

Zomby for the Fader, and it turned out it was his birthday...

...so I made him a cake.

We made the icing look like Zomby's Kate Moross-designed logo.

Here's Zomby having a slice - thanks to Leonie Purchas for the pics.

Check out her website here.

The cake even got a mention in the Fader!

"As part of a monumental effort to get Zomby to show up for scheduled

sessions, photographer Leonie Purchas and writer Scott Wright enlisted

Wright's girlfriend to bake a cake frosted with black and white,

interlocking triangles, an image Zomby has repurposed as a sort of logo.

After exchanging 250 emails and text message (she counted),

Zomby and Purchas finally met. He liked the cake."

You can download the whole issue here.

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.

Chocolate chilli cupcakes

I made these for Lindsey's surprise 30th birthday party.

Mini chocolate brownie cupcakes with a big hit of hot chilli powder.

I added the red sparkles for extra dramatic effect.

As you can see, Catrin was so taken aback (and loaded with Prosecco),

that the camera shook a little when the box was opened.

Pinglewood biscuits

Old phone pic no. 5

Here are some little shortbread biscuits made with my awesome 101 cookie cutter kit.

They were soon eaten by a nasty faceless blogger man.