The wedding season is here, hooray! Now all the sketches in the book can come to life, and here is the first I’m blogging (need to catch up).

Being in London means I (or we) get to deliver wedding cakes to all sorts of different venues, some are stately, modern, simple, ornate and sometimes we’re even lucky enough to only have to deliver 10 minutes away to The Grand Connaught Rooms in Covent Garden. With it’s high ceilings, gorgeous chequered reception floor and beautiful chandeliers, The Grand Connaught Rooms is a popular space for weddings.

The cake included two tiers of Rich Chocolate and one tier of Vanilla bean and Berry Italian meringue buttercream. The design is vintage inspired, with white lustre lace appliqué over an ivory base.

To incorporate the bride and grooms colours into the cake, large purple roses and blue filler flowers match the satin bow.

The lighting and elegant chandeliers were the perfect backdrop, and the bride was one a total pleasure to work with from start to finish.

What a great start to the year. Keep your eyes peeled for more purple cakes, more exclusive London venues, and even more cake!

I never did share all the photos so now that its spring, here they are!

The cake was based on some beautiful strawberry variations I’d seen online while I was doing research, a few variations I came across had pink flowers.

Strawberry themed cake with pink strawberry flowers

Strawberry layer cake with berry Italian meringue buttercream

Strawberry and Apple cupcakes with berry Italian meringue buttercream

Red royal iced sugar cookies (I had some strawberry pop ones I never got round to taking photos of, look at my little pic up in the right hand corner and you can see a child eating one!)

Pink mini meringues

Chocolate dipped strawberries

To check out the tutorials for the Wild Strawberry cake and other inspiration check out A Little London Wedding.

I wanted to do a classical style 5 tiered cake, and you can’t get any more classical than a cascading rose wedding cake.  I added some lilies, peonies, ranunculus, and some fantasy flowers to make it a little bit different. The pearl dot piping gives it a bit of texture, and a teeny weeny bit of vintage.

These were my first lilies, and with most things I do I didn’t use a cutter, I hand cut the flower paste using real lilies as a guide and worked from there. After drying, dusting, and painting, they were wired together and finished off with the cool stamens I moulded.

I could have just done pink roses, or even white and it would have just fine, but I think that peach is such a neglected colour these days. I think its still trying to shake off the 80′s.

This beautiful cake can be found in the window of Mia Sposa, the central London wedding dress specialists in the Hatton Gardens. If you’re a new bride and you haven’t picked up your dress yet,  book an appointment and get a taster in too!

I did actually make it and attached it but it didn’t look right so I opted for a fabric, ruffle type flower and the addition of stars.

The ‘Roll Up’ was hand-cut and stuck to the plaque which was then embellished with extruded lengths of sugarpaste to give it the look of a mirror, or frame.

So who’s going to be ordering a funfair themed wedding cake then?

This cake was created for a shoot showcasing Louise O’Mahony’s new bridal range.

I knew her cake would be something special, and after going through the inspiration photos and description, we came up with the 3-tier rockabilly cake featuring the jubilee colours. It a cute tattoo style cake that is pretty alternative, and I have a thing about rockabilly weddings.

The swallows were taken from the stationary and the tattoo heart and scroll were hand-cut, hand-painted and layered. The cakes were all Vanilla bean, one tier with a Caramel Italian meringue buttercream, another with a Chocolate Italian meringue buttercream and the third with a Raspberry Italian meringue buttercream. How good does that sound?

Turns out cake wasn’t the only thing that didn’t go to plan. To read the full story of how Gwenda and Drew had to pull the wedding together in just 4 weeks click here.

All of these brilliant photos are courtesy of Martin Hobby Photography

This is not an after dinner drink, this is dinner! After I have this I can’t fit anything else in. And that is truly a feat of the most epic proportions.

The recipe is supposed to serve two, but I can’t finish a mug so would say 3. If you’re feeling a little chocolate boost in one of those little turkish coffee cups you can stretch this thing out to like 6. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Recipe:

100g good quality dark mint chocolate bar
350ml whole milk
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Method

1. From the measured amount of milk, reserve one tablespoon in a small bowl or cup.
2. Add the cornstarch to the tablespoon of milk and stir in completely to form a slurry.
3. In a heavy bottomed pan on a low-medium heat, melt the chocolate down and sieve in the cocoa powder.
4. Slowly whisk in the measured milk to the chocolate mixture for 3-4 minutes.
5. When it starts bubbling up, slowly whisk in the cornflour slurry. Its ready to serve as soon as it thickens, so around 30 seconds.
6. Divide between 3 large mugs and serve. Move fast because it does form a skin.

Or leave it till the skin forms if you’re into that sort of stuff, I’m not the judging kind.

For an even richer drink (if that’s even possible), top it with some whipped cream and a sprinkling of cocoa. For a normal cioccolate calda, replace the mint bar with a dark chocolate (72% min), omit the cocoa and add sugar to taste.

Ciao!

I drew up the sketch on the computer and let her make any corrections or modifications at the consultation. She added the swag piping and gold detailing which made it even more regal.

The top and bottom tiers were Vanilla bean cake with berry Italian meringue and the middle tier was dark chocolate with a caramel Italian buttercream.

The swags are piped by hand with Royal icing I coloured with a navy paste. I don’t use any markers for the length or width like pin marks, I’m pretty good at guestimating. Now that I’ve said that, I’ll probably have a piping disaster *roll eyes*. I also cut the waves and mini Russian domes by hand.

It was pretty handy in this case to have a blue bedroom, totally suited the cake! This is probably my favourite of the year, for a good few reasons. One of which is that it’s the first I did (mostly) alone in my make shift work room, and another is that it has a strong identity. We all love downloading cake photos off the internet or cut them out of magazines *cough pinterest, cough*. It’s also nice to have an imaginitive bride, who’s not afraid of being different, to think up some original ideas and get me to turn them into a cake. Its work like this that I really love.

Final words from the bride:

Thank you very much for the beautiful cake! It worked out exactly as we have agreed and it looked spectacular. It tasted great too with the dark chocolate tier disappearing before me or the groom could taste it:)
 
Thank you very much!
O & N

A firm ganache is exactly what truffles are,  and if you use a good quality dark chocolate they’ll taste just as good (if not better) then what you can get from the shops. So when you have some firm 2:1 chocolate ganache left over, just scoop, roll in cocoa powder and eat.