*/SO MANY CAKES!!~

Nb - I didn't make this pearler, it was in fact my birthday cake from my marvellous sisters! August 2012 - for my 16th birthday If you know me, or follow my main blog, 'brianscox', then you'll know that I'm not only a baker, but I'm also, majorly, an aspiring physicist and young astronomer.. So I love space. Although not particularly accurate, it was the most wonderful gesture and so much effort and love went into it that I couldn't resist putting this on the blog. Lets just say the cake matched my presents, including various physics books and Paul Hollywood & the 3rd series GBBO book. Thank you so much Emily & Sophie, my wonderful big sisters!

August 2012 - 4 hours - for Sophie's 21st birthday As expressed, my sisters love Lulu Guinness. Bags, brollies, make up vanities - you name it, they've got one. For Sophie's 21st, her boyfriend bought her the red snakeskin lips clutch - (sounds more dramatic when you add the £350+ price tag). She was over the moon, she'd coveted and begged for one for years and he'd finally given in. To commemorate such a landmark in her collection, I decided to theme a cake for her, creating a stencil true to size of the bag and doing my best to copy the snakeskin detailing onto the icing. Obviously the copy isn't exactly alike, but it took foooooking hours to calve, ice, detail and finish. It was a tasty cake in the end and she was so ecstatic on how it turned out. I'm glad she liked it!

Handbag biscuits - 4 hours - August 2012 I love making sugar 'cookies' as the Americans will call them (I call them iced biscuits, but you can see why they are named SUGAR cookies). I used a basic vanilla biscuit dough, rolled it out to about 1-1.5cm thick and using the Lulu Guinness website, traced images of the most iconic bags and clutches. My sister, (post to follow) got a Lulu Guinness lips clutch for her 21st birthday off her boyfriend so I was gearing up for her birthday cake, which is a lips cake. Making templates out of stiff cardboard, I cut out the dough with a knife and baked them until firm and golden. I made up about 4-5 colours of royal icing - black, white, red, blue and pink and using a fine tip nozzle drew white outlines for all of the patterns. I then used the flood fill technique to fill in blocks of colour into the design and then further decorated the biscuits. They were tiny, fyi. Perfect for eating loads and not feeling guilty! Bags - Black studded lips clutch, union flag lips clutch, American flag lips clutch, Wanda bag and Sophie fan clutch. (Lulu Guinness is a British designer and is AMAZING okay?)

July 2012 - around 2 1/2 hours - for Woody’s birthday. Woody, first off, is my eldest sisters boyfriend and he is now officially a Doctor of materials chemistry (since like January). It was his birthday last July and Emily came to me with a proposition - make her a cake for Woody’s birthday focused on chemistry (Emily is also a chemist, currently doing her PhD). So this was the result - using plastic test tubes (which are not used in proper chemistry <HARRY>) and an adorable little sugar paste Dr Woody. 
I thought the idea to flood fill, as you do on a biscuit was a token idea for a cake as to look like a chemical spill but not to go everywhere. Emily was majorly pleased, and helped a great deal with this cake, and I taught her a lot for decorating and modelling which she was great at! Woody loved it too.

I call it 'Catching a Whopper'. July 2012 - around 2 hours - for Dale's birthday All Sophie's idea, if I'm honest - she bought a tin off eBay, baked a cake and then wanted my expertise to decorate. We used chocolate buttons for fins, white giant milky bar buttons for eyes, strawberry laces for the fishing line and then I made the fisherman cake topper, in typical fishing gear. I think it was cute and a really well done design.

For my sisters graduations - July 2012 - 3 hours Me and my sisters love the designer Lulu Guinness and her brilliant handbags and clutches... And everything. The only downside is that she's expensive and I couldn't really afford to BUY them Lulu Guinness' bags for their graduations.. So I made one... Out of cake! Now it doesn't look amazing, I know that - it's a little frumpy and not specifically a Lulu design but it was my first go at a handbag cake and with my limited tools, it was a fucking good go. My sisters say the things they love the most about my cakes are that when I use sugar paste, I don't do it thick - I make it perfectly thin which means the cake to icing ratio is much easier to digest and overall makes for a nicer balance and taste. The worst thing was trying to do the handles on the bag - NIGHTMARE without any hardening products!

For the Jubilee - 3 hours - June 2012 I subscribe to 'my cake decorating' as those with a discerning eye may be able to tell. As a special edition, they did a jubilee copy with jubilee goodies, like a crown cutter, hard diamond gem sweets, cupcake wrappers, flags, stencils etc. Well, when in Rome... Lets just say I went a bit mad... And a multitude of crowns, butterflies, flowers, cakes etc were made. The most special thing about this was that the biscuits were entirely lactose free, as my sister is lactose intolerant - and it makes no difference!!

June 2012 - 2 hours After all my exams finished last June, I was a bit stuck for things to do (this was literally the first day after I finished my last exam) so I thought I'd start experimenting with flavours. This was an almond and vanilla sponge with a salted caramel buttercream. HEAVEN. As per usual, I scoffed at least 3.

Okay - so strictly speaking this isn't a cake, but I did make it and I painted (My art GCSE was worth something!) my name and a pretty little cake on it for my leavers day at the end of May in 2012. All of my friends had decided to do little motifs of what they're famous for, so I did cake, Jess did a tuna baguette, Laura did excessive writing, etc. I really liked my leavers shirt, it was a really good day and I got lovely messages from friends, people I went to primary school with and my favourite teachers (particularly Mr Bell, Mrs Allday, Mr Daley, Mr Forrest and Mr Bennett [although I wish I'd got Mrs Garner to sign it as well!])

My teacher, (if you follow any of my other blogs, I've mentioned him before a few times) absolutely loved them and asked me whether I'd done ones of people's initials, which I hadn't.. But he was like 'Oh I'll have Beryllium because Be is the beginning of my (last) name so it's mine'. He even got a cheeky picture with it, which made me laugh.

And ladies (and possibly but doubtfully gentlemen) that is why I bake.

Preeetty easy really.

I called them 'easter nests' - but why a bird would put her eggs on the grass I'd never know.

TAAA-DAAH, one rather delicious, cheap and cheerful (we added loads of alcohol) Christmas cake.

Basically, I come in from (I think) some after school thing and my sister has made some fairy cakes, so we decorated them with just those little like gel/icing pens with bats and ghosts and stuff. Yeah, nbd.