Merry Christmas.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas.

Reindeer christmas cake.

I have just finished this cake yesterday. It took a lot longer to decorate it than i originally thought but i am very happy with how it turned out. This cake was a gift for my mother-in-law and she loved it.

Snowmen cupcakes.

Yesterday was the last day of school for the children and as always they wanted to take something in to share with their friends. Last year they took cookies so this year i decided i would make some cupcakes for them to take instead. Eventually after much thought i decided to make snowmen cupcakes.

These were such a lot of work, in fact it took me a full day just to decorate them. I made around 50 altogether. They were all dusted individually and the eyes were all hand painted with edible ink, each also had a little orange carrot nose that was made out of fondant. I also made a few for the office staff (as shown in the top photograph). Everyone was very happy and all of the children loved them.

Busy busy busy

Wow i haven't written anything for a whole week. I have just been soooooo busy busy busy preparing for the festivities. I can't believe it is only 5 days until Christmas day and in true Sassy style i still have about a million and one things to do (as always). Anyway my new years resolution is to become more organised (again). Hopefully this time it will last slightly longer than 5 days.
Well last week it was my birthday (another year younger) but not necessarily any the wiser, i guess only time will tell. I had a really lovely day. My darling hubby took me to the cinema to see 'The day the earth stood still' i thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to people. My husband on the other hand was not so impressed, oh well. A trip to my old favorite Pizza hut followed where i indulged in a meat feast cheesy bite pizza. It was very tasty....yum!! Then it was back to planet home where i got to put my feet up and do absolutely nothing for the rest of the day, heaven. I think the funniest thing about my birthday is i didn't have a birthday cake. I was so busy making cakes for other people i didn't have time to make one for myself. I will have to make myself a belated birthday cake in the future.

Christmas cookies

Here are some Christmas cookies i have just made. These are a practice run for some cookie bouquets i am making in a few days as Christmas gifts.

Chocolate Truffles.

Well Wednesday night was the last night of college until the new year. We had a little bit of a party near the end of the night and we all took something in to eat. I couldn't decide what to take and since i had a little bit of time on my hands on Wednesday day i thought i would have a go at making some chocolate truffles. I had never made them before so anything could happen. As it turned out they were really easy to make and i was very pleased with the results. Here are step by step directions of how to make them.

First of all weigh out 4oz of chocolate.Break the chocolate into pieces and place it into a bowl and then melt the chocolate.









Beat 4oz unsalted butter, until soft and creamy.













Add 10oz icing sugar and 2.5ml vanilla essence to the butter.












Add the melted chocolate and stir. Beat well until everything is combined.












Chill for approximately 45 minutes until the mixture is stiff enough to roll into balls. Use a small teaspoon to scoop out a small amount of mixture and roll into ball shapes.










Choose which coatings you would like on your truffles. For example: Caster sugar, icing sugar, cocoa powder, chocolate flakes, chocolate strands etc.

Coat each ball in your chosen topping.

This truffle is getting coated in caster sugar.








This truffle is getting coated with chocolate strands.








This truffle is getting coated with pink sugar sparkles.








Lastly place each coated truffle ball into a paper case and you can either arrange them on a serving dish/plate. Or why not give them to someone as a present. Just put them into a gift box of your choice and you have got a fantastic looking homemade gift.

Cherry and Coconut cake.

Here is the recipe for a really scrumptiously yummy Cherry and Coconut cake. It is everything that we dream of in a cake, it is simple to make, moist, tasty and delicious.

The recipe given is for a loaf tin but i just adapted the recipe to suit the size of cake i required. If i remember rightly i doubled up the recipe for an 8" round cake.

Ingredients.

170g/6oz Baking margarine
140g/5oz self-raising flour
140g/5oz Caster sugar
100g/3 1/2 oz desiccated coconut
170g/6oz glace cherries, quartered
3 medium eggs

1) Preheat oven to 180c/350f/gas 4, grease and line a loaf tin with baking parchment.
2) Beat the margarine and the sugar together until creamy, then add the eggs one at a time (beating well between each addition)
3) Sieve in the flour and fold in.
4) Fold in the cherries and the coconut.
5) Pour the mixture into the cake tin and place into the oven.
6) Bake for 1 hour.

Happy baking........Enjoy.

Handbag cake.

This is the handbag cake that the icing shoes were made to go with. The handbag was made from delicious Cherry and Coconut cake which i will be adding the recipe for shortly. The cake was covered in sugarpaste and decorated with pale blue fondant flowers. The bag fastening clasp and the top of the handles were also sugarpaste that was dusted with gold edible dusting powder. Once again sugarpaste was used to make all of the makeup, cosmetics and jewelry that accessorize the bag, these were also dusted with edible dusting powders to give a slightly more realistic look to them.

A few cakes i have made.

I thought i would include a few of the cakes that i have made so far. Some are from earlier this year whereas others are more recent.





This is the cake i made for my brothers Birthday earlier this year. He works in the music industry and is also in a band, so it just had to be a musical themed cake. The cakes and board were covered in sugarpaste, the music notes around the bottom cake are edible images and the guitar on top was made with Mexican paste. I remember the guitar gave me the hardest time of all.




I made this pirate ship for my sons birthday which was also earlier this year. This was a large cake. Just to give an idea of the size of this, the red table that it is standing on measures 22". Everything is sugarpaste apart from the sails which was rice paper, the railings were mint matchmakers and the sand was light brown golden sugar.




This is a cake i made more recently it was for a friend of mine whose son was turning 13. Once again everything is sugarpaste except for the footballs on the topper they were made from mexican paste and were painted by hand with edible colour.













I loved making this cake, granted Wallace was quite difficult to do, especially trying to get his expression right but i was really pleased with the results. I think i will definitely make more Wallace and Gromit cakes in the future.








One of my friends sons was 13 at the beginning of this month and she asked me to make a cake for him. This is what i made, he likes Leeds united so i incorporated the colours into the cake. The trainer is a bit on the chunky side which can only mean one thing......................more cake!!!

Wedding bears

These wedding bears that i made at college were so much fun to make. Both the bride bear and the groom bear are made out of sugarpaste icing. I would definitely have another go at making these. The picture does not show it clearly but the bride bear has a full length veil on that was embossed in the same flower design as the flowers she is holding.

Icing shoes

Well every girl loves her shoes.......especially her icing ones. Yes that's right this week i made icing shoes for the first time. They took a few days to make from start to finish to allow for drying time in between the different stages. I made these ones from a 50/50 mix of fondant and petal paste. These particular shoes were made to go with a handbag cake i am making (which i will post later on).Although they are not perfect i don't think they are too bad for a first attempt. Plus i had so much fun doing these shoes and believe me when i say i think i am hooked. Making icing shoes may have just become a new addiction. I can see in the future many many many more icing shoes to come.

Hi I'm Sarah but my friends call me Sassy. I love to bake and to decorate cakes. My cakes are nowhere near a professional level yet, although i hope one day that they will be. I would love to make and decorate cakes for a living in the future. At the moment i am a self-taught amateur cake decorator. I have recently earlier this year joined a college course for sugar craft and cake decorating, i absolutely love going but i do sometimes wish it was more often than 2 hours per week. I am going to look into maybe doing a more full time and/or city and guilds course for sugar craft and cake decorating in the new year.
I guess the first time i ever took an interest in cakes was a couple of years ago when i was due to be married and i was looking for my wedding cake. I found a cake decorator in my area who i liked the sound of and she made an appointment to come to the house for a cake tasting (yum). Anyway she arrived, the cake tasted beautiful and it was then that we needed to decide on how we wanted the cake to look. She took out a massive album and when she opened it to display loads of different cakes she had made, all i could think of was wow!!!! i want to do this. That was the first time cake decorating ever crossed my mind and i have never looked back since. For the last year or so i have been making cakes for family and friends which i love doing. Yes sometimes it gets stressful and sometimes things don't always go to plan but the end result and the smiling face of the person receiving the cake far outweighs the traumas i have endured to get to the finish line.