Fold in the Flour ...

I can't believe that our little fella turned one yesterday. I have no idea where the last year has gone, but I know that what I have at the end of it makes me very proud and a very lucky mummy. I tried making Sam's birthday cake and then decorating it with sugarpaste - this is the first one I've attempted. I made my normal chocolate cake (find the recipe here ). I crumb coated it using some chocolate buttercream, then used some coloured Regalice in turquoise and orange to create a present effect. Sorry - couldn't get to it to take a decent daylight photo before it was eaten! I was pleased with how I managed to smooth the blue over the whole cake - as long as I used patience and gently smoothed it into place it didn't break. I made spots for the 'paper' and a matching bow and gift tag, which I then painted Sam's name on. It's not perfect I know, but for a first attempt I was really pleased with it and so thought I would share...

This month's Random Recipes challenge, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen , has joined forces with Tea Time Treats via Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked . The idea was to randomly pick a tea time treat to cook and then blog about. So for me, the book that this challenge fell to was 'The Tea Time Cookbook' by Valerie Ferguson (although Amazon have it under a different title). It's in some ways an odd little book, with a mixture of recipes covering cakes, cookies, pies and tarts, breads, jams and jellies and then a section on decorated party cakes. Recipes are contributed by a number of authors, including Angela Boggiano, Roz Denny and Jeni Wright. Some of the content seems a bit dated - it was first published in 2007 - but I guess, though, that you'd be spoilt for choice when choosing something for tea. When I opened it, the recipe that the book chose for me was one for Chocolate Profiteroles. I was pretty pleased with this. I ...

Apparently, it's cupcake month. Well, according to Food Network and a few others. (I must be a bit odd then as it seems every month is cupcake month in our house.) Anyway, I came across a new recipe the other day that I wanted to try, as it involved toffee and caramel. Two of my favourite flavours. But it was the salted caramel that really caught my attention. It's something I've always wanted to try making but have never got around to it. I had a bit of a nudge the other week though. Now, I suspect like anyone else that is interested in baking, I have been hooked to the latest series of Great British Bake Off , currently on BBC2 . It's hard not to sympathise with the contestants when they are put through their paces on one of the technical challenges, or are under the pressure of having to produce a showstopping bake against the clock in an unfamiliar oven. Last week's episode had them making cremé caramels for the technical challenge, and there was muc...

It was pretty horrible and grey in Cardiff last week. The rain seems to have taken on an unseemly persistence which is guaranteed only to break as the boys head back to school next week. Mooching about the house looking for something to bake, I decided to try and bring a bit of citrussy zing to the table to pep everyone up. These little cakes are based on a recipe for a larger bundt-type cake. But I wanted to do something a little different with it, and so decided to use some cardboard Baking Moulds from Lakeland to make some little individual cakes. I hadn't used them before, but a couple of weeks ago, I had one of the cutest little lemon cakes in one (at my fab local deli, Deli a Go Go ) and when I saw them in Lakeland thought I had to give them a go. You could always use ordinary cupcake liners though. The recipe is adapted from one of my 'cookbooks of the moment', Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman (I love this little book as it has such delicious sounding r...