Good friends need tasty treats

I have a good friend, to whom some really bad things have happened.  On the day that her mother went into hospital for a radical double mastectomy to counter the breast cancer with which she had been diagnosed only 3 weeks prior, my friend was told the results of her biopsy - also breast cancer.  Not surprisingly, her daughter is going to have genetic screening soon too.  And her son has been ill since birth, and possibly spent more time in than out of hospital. 

So to try to cheer her up, I offered her the pick of our menu.  And she chose...  Mars Bar Slice. 

Yet despite all this, she remains as cheery as possible and is even having her hair cut (in advance of losing it with the chemotherapy treatment) as a fund-raiser for two local charities that are very dear to her, Charlie Kean's children's cancer fund and Maggie's Centre, Dundee.  Here's a lovely, smiley photo of her with her kids and long blonde hair, at our Ice Arena with very special guest...

And here's my brave friend, after the chop - still smiling away and looking as stunning as ever.

I'm just happy that our glittery bake helped her feel better, if only for an hour.  And including our donation, a mutual friend tells me that this friend has beaten her fundraising target of £1000!  Outstanding!

Aspire2be creative photography, birthday cake pops and us

Our good friend Jill is a photographer over at Aspire 2 be creative (and on Facebook too) who loves to take photos, including of us and our food.  And we love her photos!!  We popped by after school today, to take her and her son some treats from yesterday. 

I had made cake pops yesterday but ran out of melted orange before I ran out of prepared cake pops.  Here are the prepared pops, cooling in the freezer while I melted the candy...

And here's the candy before I melted it..

You use a little of the melted chocolate to stick the sticks into the cake balls, hence the dot of orange on them all. 

This morning, Mini-2 and I finished off the remainder.  We had some green melts, donated by our friend Paula, left over from the last time and they should have been enough to do the job.  But no matter how long we tried, or how much vegetable oil we added, we just couldn't get the consistency correct.  So, Mini-2 ate some of that mix while I moved on to another colour, sunshine yellow.  These ones were by Wilton and melted much more easily.  On the back  of the pack it suggested adding a touch of vegetable shortening (rather than oil) to get a runnier mix, et voila!  It worked a treat - hooray.

And so to decorate...

Mini-2 wanted to do one by herself, but found it tricky to hold the bowl and turn the pop around.  She preferred the next step, adding the sprinkles, instead.

And so we had this as the result...

And again, photographed by Aspire2be creative

7th birthday cake pops

 Cake pops, up close and personal

 The interior of the 7 cake (actually, this was all that was left 24 hours later)

Our lovely sous-chefs.

Happy birthday Mini-1

Our darling Mini-1 was born 7 years ago today, and - as is our wont at Becca Bakes - we intended to make a fuss.  She had some specific cake requests though - it had to be vanilla, and have vanilla icing, be green and perhaps also yellow, turquoise, red and pink.  Oh, and she wanted one in a number 7 shape and one round, and some mini-Smarties on the shaped cake.  And something to do with Moshi Monsters too please Mum?!  I duly noted all this down, and got my thinking cap on.

Was it to be covered in fondant, or buttercream?  Was I going to make my life easier and mark out the number 7 in the actual Smarties themselves on a cake, or actually try to shape one?  Was I going to layer the cake and thus try to get in some more colours?  Was I going to buy a Moshi Monster cake topper and just pop it on top?  And so on and so forth.  In the end, I decided to go for two differently coloured layers, with red jam in the middle, green buttercream icing all around and cut the cake into a number 7.  I know that you can buy shaped tins, and some places actually hire them out (though no idea where those places are) but I had a book that I received for my last birthday that gave hints on how to bake and cut.

I knew I would need time for the cakes to cool before I could assemble and decorate them, so had to start baking in the afternoon.  Luckily, Mini-1 wasn't too interested to see what I was doing (unlike Mini-2, who loves to help) so she didn't really notice the first yellow or the second green cakes cooling near the oven later on.  Phew!

I know they're not pretty, but keep reading...  Next up, after slicing off the rounded tops to make them flat for layering, was to mix up the buttercream to get it all green.  As you can see, it's also not pretty, but I'm getting there, promise!

Then on to the task of separating out the mini Smarties.  Honestly, the things we do for our kids - they really won't know how much we love them, until they have kids of their own!

And finally to the finished product, ta da!

The little figurine at the bottom of the cake is a Moshi Monster that she likes, called Cali.  I bought it off eBay because none of the images we found for cake toppers were attractive.

Here we see Mini-1 herself with her eyes covered so that I could get the cake onto the plate, place in the figurine and candle, and bring out the cake pops.  The silly girl had pressed too hard when covering her eyes, and couldn't see straight when she first took her hands away.  She absolutely loved the cake and pops though  :)

Here are the cake pops.  As with last time, they're not fabulously round, or even particularly spherical.  But they taste better this time because I used some cream cheese to help mould them, rather than all icing.  And the girls couldn't eat them fast enough, result.

A new year, another birthday

One of the school mums got in touch after the Christmas Fayre, to order some cupcakes for her daughter's 9th birthday, lucky us!  The brief was pink and purple, with 9's and initials of the guests and the rest was up to me.  This was similar to Dea's 6th birthday last summer, so would be fun, as in this case it was maxi, rather than mini, cupcakes, thus allowing more space for the decorations.

About a week ago, I received an email changing the details slightly as not all the invitees had replied yet.  So the 'named' cakes would just have the birthday girl's name and age on them, and the rest decorated accordingly.  No problem.

I baked them all vanilla, and washed up while they were cooling.  Then on to the icing, making sure that I separated the batch exactly in half to get the correct amount of pink and purple to ice all the cupcakes.  I had made the initials and number yesterday, in order that it should solidify in time, and got all the decorations I had prepped and planned ready on the table.  I felt butterflies, flowers, stars, hearts and glitter would suit the occassion, and really hope Mother and Daughter love their cakes...

P.S.  They loved the cakes!!  The Mum wrote on a Facebook craft group page 'Just collected 9yolds birthday cupcakes from Becca Bakes. They are fantastic! One v happy girl (who is also planning how she will reuse the lovely packaging too). Would recommend :) — with Becca Bakes'  and this is how they were displayed for the party... just lovely.