Remember a few weeks back Chris made me a chocolate orange cheesecake? I still haven't worked out what he was buttering me up for but another cheesecake arrived which had peaked my suspicion further but for now let's focus on the food...

I still don't know what he's after/done wrong/preparing me for but I'm happy to live in blissful ignorance with my cheesecakes...

I thought I would share this snap of my workstation during cake decorating.

I use this large green non stick board to roll out my icing. It is an expensive tool but invaluable. You can get smaller sizes but for rolling out large pieces this is the best size.

I have my cake up on a turntable so I can continually move it around to see it from all angles. This means there is less chance of dropping the cake!

I mixed up a variety of green sugar paste to decorate this cake and I keep the different colours wrapped in plastic so they don't dry out as I am working.

I roll the icing out using a little trex vegetable fat. This makes it easier to roll without loosing the vibrancy of he colour which happens when using icing sugar.

I used star shaped cutters on this cake and stuck them onto the cake using edible glue.

And finally hiding in the box at the back is the cake topper I made earlier! I keep them boxed up so that I don't damage them whilst making the rest of the cake.

I should point out I am only sharing this picture as i was having a tidy moment and thought I should capture it on camera! Usually my kitchen it a sea of madness with a pristine cake in the middle!

I am off for a girly night with my NCT friends tonight and i have just whipped up some mini sponges dipped in ganache to take along with me. 

Here is a picture of them mid production. Once the ganache had firmed up I popped them into mini cupcake cases and sprinkled with silver shimmer dust to finish them off.

I hope the girls enjoy!

I have discovered a new product which has made my life a little easier. My husband Chris HATES it when i sprinkle icing sugar as he finds a fine film of icing sugar covering everything in the kitchen.

To complete the look of the vintage Victoria sponge stack wedding cake i need to dust the top with lots of icing sugar. As this will be done on the day after i have stacked the cake in situ i had visions of covering the whole recpetion in icing sugar!

Then to my amazement i discovered this little gadget in Tesco. Whitworths have revamped their icing sugar shaker into a twistable version which works really well.

You take the lid off then turn upside down and twist the unit like a salt/pepper grinder  It is very easy to control so you can slowly build up your decoration and you won't end up with half a cup of icing sugar on your cake by accident!

At £2.25 for 250g it is quite expensive and from what i can see it is not refillable but it is very handy for portable dusting situations and to avoid angry husbands!

It has been a while since i last posted as i have had my little girl Eloise and have not had a lot of time for baking!

My NCT group love cake so i thought i would make some raspberry muffins for one of our coffee mornings. I thought i'd attempt to shift some of the baby weight by using Splenda, an alternative to sugar, in the cupcakes. The box said to subsutuite by volume not weight. So 1 cup of Splenda equals the same as 1 cup of sugar.

BIG MISTAKE!

They looked amazing but tasted awful, chewy and tasteless... i re-made them as i thought i'd done something wrong but no, it really does make the cakes taste bad.

They were binned :-(