As promised a picture of Frank meeting the real Frank Connolly on his 66th birthday! Luckily Frank was able to be saved from the top of the cake and now has a new home with his doppelgänger.

Happy 66th Frank!

I thought I would share some pics of my latest cake which was for a friend's dad's 66th birthday. The brief was to model her dad, Frank, seated in his recliner chair wearing a suit and gold slippers. Being Irish the colour scheme had to be green!

The topper was the biggest challenge as I don't often make character cakes. I mixed fondant with flowerpaste to get a nice, pliable texture to the paste. I built the chair first then added Frank's throws over the back and side of the chair. I then made Franks body seated in the chair and dressed him in a green suit and white shirt. For the head and hands I tinted some white colour paste to give it a flesh tone and placed some wire glasses on his nose and the TV remote in his hand. Royal icing gave Frank a moustache and hair. The slippers were sprayed with edible gold spray paste but attaching them was tricky as the kept falling off so I had to stick some wire into Frank's legs and pin the slippers on!

For the main cake I stacked up vanilla sponge with buttercream and jam then covered in white fondant. Green fondant stars decorated the cake with the colours fading as they moved up the cake towards Frank. The iced board featured 'Happy 66th Birthday' written on stars and a green ribbon finished the design.

Watch this space for pictures of Frank with Frank!

Last night I made 2 little icing slippers for my latest cake topper. I need to spray them gold so I left them on my dining room table to harden up over night.

I came down this morning with my daughter and as I was making her breakfast I noticed her chewing on something...

I now have to make another slipper!

My goddaughter/niece Emily turned 5 last week and I bought her a cupcake making kit.

Today Em tried out her first bake with help from her glamourous assistant/mum George. The recipe was chocolate cupcakes - an excellent choice.

I am sure you will agree these action shots show a master baker in training and I love the pink mouse apron!

Good job Em! X x

Friday I was trapped indoors as the carpet fitters were in so I had to make do with the ingredients I had in the cupboard.

Luckily I had 3 bananas which were seriously ripe and needed eating. This is the perfect time to make banana cake as the bananas need to be really ripe, almost black. I mashed them and added to self raising flour, sugar, butter, milk, an egg and cocoa powder.

I popped them into cupcake cases and baked 170 degrees for about 30minutes.

The cakes rose really well and had a lovely chewy, moist consistency. Eloise seemed to enjoy eating the mixture more than eating the cakes!

My stepmum Yvonne's parents celebrate their Golden Wedding anniversary this weekend and Yvonne asked me to help her make their cake.

They were after a simple iviry iced cake with gold flowers on top. Yvonne and i baked a moist vanilla sponge filled with 2 layers of jam and buttercream. We the iced with ivory fondant and finished with sugarpaste roses sprayed gold, ribbons and an iced board. A diamonte 50 crowned the cake and gave a touch of sparkle.

It had the classic, simple style Tony & Val were after and tasted delicious. Congratulations, here's to 50 more!

Sorry for the break in blog posts. I took my daughter to Spain on holiday and whilst there got to enjoy one of my favourite Spanish customs - Churros!

Churros are Spanish doughnuts which are fried until they become crunchy. They are long tube like shapes which can be straight, curled or twisted. They are traditionally served with super thick hot chocolate for dunking or sprinkled with sugar. The surface of a churro is ridged due to having been piped from a churrera, a syringe with a star-shaped nozzle.

In Spanish markets churros are often sold by street vendors, who fry them freshly and sell them hot covered in sugar. For 1 euro you get a huge bag full of greasy, hot, sugary doughnutty goodness. They always reminds me of the doughnut sellers on Brighton pier but half the price for twice as many!

Personally I only like churros hot as they are very chewy once they cool down. Eloise didn't seem to mind what temperature they were and scoffed most of our bag.