Happy Birthday Mum!!

So yesterday was my mum's birthday.  The cake I made her was a chocolate cake (not the vegan one that I was going to use) filled with orange flavour buttercream and finished with orange flavour buttercream.  I cut out some sugarpaste chocolate flavoured circles which gave it a contemporary look.

The inside....chocolate yummyness!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all.  I am full of optimism for 2012 having had a not so good 2011.  I resolve to blog more regularly-I was really slack last year-and to have more commitment and determination to push DBC further and further.


It's my mum's birthday in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to make her cake.  I will be making her a vegan chocolate cake-I have used this recipe a few times and everyone vegan or not have loved it.  I will  be decorating it with Vegan buttercream using either Trex/Vitalite/Pure as my butter alternative, have to experiment and see.

Pics will be up when done.  I've also started up my taste testing club again for this year and in a couple of weeks they will have the pleasure of trying fat free fruit loaf and white chocolate and cranberry biscuits.

Reunion Cake and Cake Bites

Friday (18th) was my school reunion.  It's been 20 years since I left secondary school, though it does seem it was only the other day.  I decided to bring a special Reunion Cake and my new favourite thing Cake Bites:

The cake itself was a 4 layer vanilla sponge with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam.  It was covered in white sugarpaste and decorated with the school badge.  It went down very well and disappeared fast.

These also went down well :

Choclate Cake with vanilla buttercream, formed into balls and topped with mint chocolate candy coating and decorated with white candy coating.  So moorish!!

My one and only Christmas Stall will be on Saturday 17th December at Kat's Whiskers Christmas Cracker in Crouch End.  For more info Click Here

Cakes and Bits

So September was a bit of a busy month for me
I made what I call an abstract cake for my friend's birthday.  The cake itself was chocolate cake with carmel bits in.  Topped with Chocolate Ganache-which is my favourite thing now and decorated with random pieces of coloured white chocolate.  It's really different.

And I kinda like it.

I also made a cake for my cousin's 21st.  It was again a caramel chocolate cake but this time topped with malteasers and melted white chocolate

Making recipes for my tasting testing panel, I had some left over dulce de leche left over so looked on the internet and found a recipe for duce de leche biscuits:

Very moorish mmmmm

So I'm now getting ready for Christmas . I've got my list of what I will be making and baking, looking forward to it!!

Back for Good

Where has the time gone!? Now in September, all the talk is about Christmas.  It's been a crazy couple of months.  The London Riots in August was the most heartbreaking thing for me, especially as I spent my early years (15 of them) growing up in Tottenham.  The whole thing was and still is surreal to me.  A benefit gig was organised to help those affected by the riots and I played my part by selling cakes.  All the proceeds went towards the fund set up to help those affected by the riots.  In total over £1500 was raised.

So what's happening with me?  I've still been looking for full time work-yes 15 months since being made redundant.  I had 2 interviews last week, didn't get either of the jobs.  I'm also finding now that many employers are only offering 3-6 month contracts with not guarantee that it will be extended...

I'm still going on with DBC, the officially launch now is looking like February 2012-my birthday month.  I'm working towards that date.  In the meantime, I am testing different recipes on my taste testing panel.  Each month they get a selection of cakes/biscuits from my and give me their feedback. I shall be blogging about them each month.

My latest cake was for a good friend of mine.  She always makes me laugh and it was so nice seeing her as we don't get to see her that often.  I made a simple sponge cake filled with lemon buttercream and lemon curd.  I covered it in lemon buttercream with some sugarpaste accidents.  I also added some Vanilla Premier cupcakes which will form part of my range.

Cakes Ive Made: Star Cake and Flower Cake

So these past  2 weeks Ive made cakes to take with me to celebration BBQs.  The Star cake was a 2 layer sponge cake sandwiched with lemon curd and lemon buttercream.  I love this sponge mix as its so easy...just put all the ingredients into a bowl, wisk and then bake.  The decoration was more tricky as I was using Silver Spoon sugarpaste which is soft anyway, but due to the warm weather made it even softer.  I battled with it and won (just).  I then decorated with start cutouts:

The flower cake was again my sponge mix filled with lemon curd and covered with lemon buttercream.  I decided not to cover with sugarpaste this time, so I smoothed out the buttercream and added sugarpaste flowers in blue and pink-perfect as the celebration was for 3 year old boy and girl twins.  I loved how it turned out:

The Future

When I first started out with this blog, the situation was that I had  been made redundant and that while I was following my ultimate dream of setting up my own cake business, I was still looking for full time work.  Well, a year since being made redundant, I am still looking for full time work.  Today I got rejection emails from 2 jobs which I could-I'm not just bigging myself up-do with my eyes closed.  I have GCSE's, A levels, a Honours degree and 14 years admin experience but obviously this is not enough.  I know the job climate is not good at the moment, but how frustrated am I?

I have even been applying for retail work which again I can do, have had several interviews, but again no job offer which I suspect is due to me not having retail experience.

During this time I have also been working on DeniseBakesCakes (DBC) as this is ultimately what I want to do.  I guess with having no luck in finding full time work, the cosmos is saying that this is my destiny and DBC is all I will need.

I have set up a taste testing panel and I'm baking cakes etc at the moment.  Very excited about it!! Pictures will be this week.