Show us your Cakes for the Big Cake Heaven Giveaway!

I feel generous anytime of year but Christmas is that time where some folk could really do with winning something! I want to encourage all the bakers out there to keep baking and smiling because when I bake it reminds me of my Mum and coming home to that wonderful smell of cakes in the oven! So here’s what you have to do to win this fantastic prize – 1000 ideas for Decorating Cupcakes, Cookies and Cakes – worth £15.00, by Sandra Salamony and Gina M Brown. 

 

This exciting 1000 collection presents glorious full-color photographs of delicious, decorated desserts. From extravagant wedding cakes and clever birthday cakes to cupcakes and Cookies that are miniature works of art, these delightful delectables will provide endless inspiration for anyone who loves decorative baking and entertaining. An appendix in the back of the book includes basic recipes for cakes, frostings, and fondants. 

All you have to do to be in with a chance to win is to post a picture of your best cupcakes, cookies or cakes (UK only) and get your friends to Like your picture by sharing on your facebook wall. The person with the most likes on their cakes picture by Monday 12th of December at 9pm will win the book! Share the competition on Twitter too! All the best everyone x

Bargain Cakes – Yes please – err no thanks!

Rachel's offer

Recently a fellow baker signed up for a Groupon Deal to sell her bespoke Cupcakes at a discount price. The cupcakes normally costing £26.00 and made by Berkshire based ‘Need a Cake’ were offered to Groupon customers for £6.50. Rachel Brown the owner, soon found that her dream deal rapidly turned into a nightmare as Need a Cake received a staggering 8,500 requests as a result, substantially more than its usual production level of about 100 a month. Rachel was faced with meeting the overnight demands of that many customers wanting their cakes delivered.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-15791507

Groupon offers discounts on things such as meals in restaurants and spa treatments

 

Need a Cake, which employs eight people, had to bring in agency staff to try to meet the upsurge in demand. Ms. Brown estimates the extra costs of staff and distribution could be up to £12,500, wiping out profits for the year.

She said: “We had thousands of orders pouring in that really we hadn’t expected to have. A much larger company would have difficulty coping.” She even had to turn away other customer orders as the phonelines jammed, and at one point had twenty five people working in her bakery.

Thankfully the worst is behind her but it serves as a stark warning to other bakers. I’ve not participated in Groupon myself, but another deal recently and thankfully my orders were manageable. However the huge discounts offered by companies like Groupon sometimes mean that the bakers have to absorb the cost of posting the cupcakes which I can verify costs £9.95 with Royal Mail to dispatch PLUS the cost of packaging at £1.50 per box. So if Groupon are taking their 38-50% of the share of £6.50 you can see who comes off worst – the bakers!

Printed with kind permission of Rachel Brown, Owner of Need a Cake, Berkshire.

 

 

Cake Heaven at Cake International NEC, Birmingham 2011

Ok so this was my first time visiting Cake International and I was SO excited because I was looking forward to catching up with some twitter Cakey friends and seeing some of the action at the Cake show. If you eat, sleep and breathe cakes then this is the place to go! There’s no shortage of stalls to buy the latest equipment, latest gadget or icing or mould from and I saw a few poor husbands weighed down with armloads of cake boxes and looking utterly fed up as their other halves trawled the stand looking for bargains or the latest cutters etc. Others who were used to the amount of shopping at these exhibitions had those collapsable crates brimming with their purchases so it was easier for them to contain it all! Yes, there are hundreds of women who descend on the place and sometimes the popular stands are a few people deep with Cakesters wanting to watch a demo or see their favourite Cake Celebrity promoting their latest book.

As well as the usual buzz of demos and workshops the main excitement was the Cake Competitions organized by PME and the British Sugarcraft Guild where Judges in full kitchen whites scrutinize entries such as Tiered wedding cakes, Masks, Figurines, Novelty cakes etc. to award Gold, Silver and Bronze as well as Merit in each category.

 

I had some personal favourites and as I love Novelty cakes so much I was in awe of how much work went into some of them, with some entrants travelling over 6,000 miles to be here and enter the competitions with their incredible cakes.

                                                                          No doubt about it – cakes rock! There were several Alice in Wonderland Cakes and an abundance of dragons which amazed me. There is the usual nail biting of course where cake makers have entered the competitions and wait to see if they have won. Behind the scenes there are exhibits of students work in each of the various guilds and the ladies of the British Sugarcraft Guild (BSG) keep the art and craft of sugarcraft alive and kicking. So plenty of fun to be had, and yes I did spend too much money but am looking forward to putting some of my new products into practice and am definitely booking a return visit to the NEC next year.

Here’s a selection of my favourite cakes this year – most of them got Gold awards in their category.

Vintage…retro…what shall it be?

I really love all things Vintage and this weekend has been a wonderful one beginning with me getting in the Vintage feel and experimenting with Vintage Cupcakes. My friend Nicola Hargadon runs a fabulous company called Millie Green and I so often admire all the delightful Retro/Vintage style goods she gets in and it made me realize how much it reminds me of my Mum and her love of Vintage too. So I thought I’d marry my two loves together in baking Nicola some Millie Green Vintage Cupcakes. Perhaps we really are seeing a return to ‘The good old days” where folk celebrated in a community sense and enjoyed life in a more laid back way. I do believe sometimes we need to slow down and appreciate each other more. Many people say that we always return to era we felt most comfortable with.

Today I visited Boscombe Vintage Market http://www.boscombevintagemarket.co.uk with my friend Barbara and we were amazed at the wonderful array of memorabilia on for sale and we felt like we’d entered a different time zone as all the stallholders got into the Vintage feel by dressing up. The market takes place on the first Saturday of every month at the Crescent in Boscombe.  It was certainly very chilled at the market today and everyone was smiling and friendly – such a change from other markets – we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and picked up a few bargains to boot!

Here’s my attempt at Vintage on my Vintage Montage showcasing my cupcakes which all my friends enjoyed thoroughly!

Bring on the Vintage I say!

 

Warning – contains nuts!

It’s not often I rave about a recipe for flapjacks but this one really takes the biscuit – literally! It was one of those experimental recipes where I threw everything in and then found out it actually worked!

Try and resist drooling over my pics long enough to quickly jot it down and I guarantee that your family will want you to bake these babies every day! As I have a hungry husband to feed who hasn’t a pick of fat on him and two equally slim boys I believe these flapjacks contain enough goodness and energy in them to keep them all going and satisfy their appetites. I may however have started an addiction in them to my flapjacks, but hey – you only live once so enjoy eating and baking them and remember it contains nuts (me) and a couple of pecans to boot!

Ingredients:

170g/6oz. of butter

170g/6oz. of Light brown sugar

50g/2oz. of sesame seeds

100g/4oz. of pecans

75g/3oz. of sunflower seeds (optional)

100g /4oz of apricots – chopped

226g/8oz of rolled oats

2 tablespoons of honey

Pre-heat oven to 170 degrees. Put pecans and sesame seeds on a baking tray and toast lightly until sesame seeds are golden (about 5 minutes). You can substitute walnuts or almonds if you don’t like pecan nuts. Allow to cool. Melt butter and sugar in a saucepan over a medium heat stirring continually until sugar is melted and you get a toffee mixture (do not bring to boil!) Add in honey, pecans, chopped apricots and oats and mix until everything is  combined. Press into a square brownie tin and bake in oven for 25 minutes until golden brown. The flapjacks will be soft at first so gently mark out 12 pieces and allow to cool. Eat and enjoy once cooled!

If you can resist eating them all at once, they will keep in an airtight container for about four days.

How much are you worth?

I was recently asked by a wonderful fellow Cake Maker to help her cost up her cakes and give her some guidelines about costings. Now I believe I’m no expert on costings however there is a vast difference between a supermarket cake and a cake made with love and attention to individuality.

 

Whilst it may be easy for sceptics to say “it’s only a bit of  sponge love” – I have to disagree with them. Being a Cake Maker is not for the faint hearted! Through trials and errors we have worked our way through countless recipes to provide for you –  the cake eating public, a perfect madeira sponge or cupcake recipe, freshly baked and decorated to your design.  We bring a wealth of our experience and creativity to provide the WOW! factor on your special day be it a Birthday, Wedding or just “Love me” day.

If I was a plasterer or an architect you would want me to quote you for my work and my expertise according to what you felt I was worth having looked at my portfolio and got recommendations etc.

In the same way as Cake Makers we sometimes feel guilty about charging for cakes because we never truly cost up our time and expertise. I can guarantee that in the current trend in home baking, that very few have taken the leap of faith from a hobby to a business. But for those of us who have made that step, then it’s because we have invested time in ourselves and weighed up the cost of what we do.

I appeal to all bakers out there when you go to cost up a cake – please consider the rest of us who have the scars of being cheated on price, but in many ways we only have ourselves to blame for underselling what we do. Fear keeps us from asking for the fairest price. We have taken the cheaper option and undercharged, which in effect does not pay your bills. Neither does it do any favours for other bakers who are struggling to survive these days against the bigger giants who can afford to take a hit because of mass production.

I say this as someone who has lost an entire business in the last few months because of this recession and many other factors. It was an expensive lesson and I would rather get it 100% right next time, but if I had never taken risks I would never have enjoyed the wonderful world of being in business.

What do you think? 

 

In the mood for luuuurve!

Have you ever noticed how Valentine’s day seems to creep up on you from nowhere? I’m noticing Valentine Cards and cakes wherever I go and ideally would love to be one of those super-organized people who don’t leave it till the last minute rush to get a Valentine Card for my husband – what you mean to tell me that you are not one of those kind of people? Yes –  you’ll catch me in the supermarket aisle giggling away to myself at all the funnies in the Valentine Cards section – I have no shame! But hey life is too short to waste a good giggle!

 

There are varying opinions as to the origin of Valentine’s Day. Some experts state that it originated from St. Valentine, a Roman who was martyred for refusing to give up Christianity. He died on February 14, 269 A.D., the same day that had been devoted to love lotteries. Legend also says that St. Valentine left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter, who had become his friend, and signed it “From Your Valentine”. Other aspects of the story say that Saint Valentine served as a priest at the temple during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Claudius then had Valentine jailed for defying him. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius set aside February 14 to honour St. Valentine.

Gradually, February 14 became the date for exchanging love messages and St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. The date was marked by sending poems and simple gifts such as flowers. There was often a social gathering or a ball.

Valentine’s Day started in the time of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia. The lives of young boys and girls in those days were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl’s name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry. Awwww!

For me Valentine’s Day is the one day in the year where lovers can afford to be lavish with one another – splash each other with gifts, cake, cards, Cake, flowers, cake – actually have you noticed I’m obsessed with Cake? Particularly Valentine’s Cakes!

No my husband won’t be buying me any cake as I bake for him every day! However for those of you who love to drool – here are my Valentine Cakes – just dripping with hearts and flowers (red roses and chocolate – what more could you possibly want?)

you can order them from Cake Heaven – right on time for Valentine’s Day!

http://www.facebook.com/cakeheaven

Photos compliments of http://www.andreapittam.com