Prepare for the festivities.

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Hello, unless you live under a rock you will know Christmas day is only two sleeps away and Christmas means food. I'm going a bit over the top this year as we are having Christmas day at our house as opposed to my auntie's where we usually go. Tomorrow it shall be full steam ahead preparing the desserts as I wanted them to be as fresh as possible. This year I'm baking mince pies (I'm only using ready made pastry and filling out of a jar due to time restrictions), a yule log (see previous post for recipe), chocolate truffles and mini vanilla and chocolate cheesecakes as well as shop bought Christmas pudding and Christmas cake. You can expect to see posts on all of these dishes including a mince pie competition between my cousin and I, which is not to be missed. However in the meantime, I thought I would show you how we have decorated the table.

Firstly, these cute crackers are from Marks and Spencer's. They were supposed to be £9.50 but they were having a 50% off sale so they were only £4.75 for 12. The name place cards were free from Microsoft office templates and I wrote the names in Edwardian Script ICT and finally the napkins are also from M&S but I folded them into crown shapes from a youtube video.

Merry Christmas and check back soon for more recipes!

Birthday hockey pitch cake.

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For my friend's birthday on Wednesday I made a hockey pitch themed birthday cake. It was so simple to make but it looked really cute and the colours were really vibrant.  Here's what it looked like:

Method:

1. To start off,  make a chocolate cake using the recipe in my standard sponge cake post. Bake it in a spring roll tin (the cake type) in order to create the rectangle shape of the hockey pitch. 
2. Once baked and cooled, cut in half width-ways.. 
3. Make chocolate butter cream (see previous post for recipe) and sandwich together. 
4. Cover in vanilla butter cream (100g of butter, 100g of icing sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla extract and green food colouring) 
5. To create the hockey pitch, make some icing of a thick consistency. Put into a piping bag and draw on pitch markings. 
6. OPTIONAL Add some red food colouring to this and draw on the desired number (it's the number on the back of her hockey shirt, not her age) and cover in sprinkles. 
7. Used leftover chocolate butter cream to create hockey sticks and leftover red food colouring to draw balls.
8. To finish off, I use black writing icing also to write a birthday message!

I hope this inspires you. Enjoy!