A very English Tea Party

Buttercream and Dreams were lucky enough to be asked to help the lovely Fizz and Paul plan their fantastic wedding day. The wedding took place at the stunning Red House Barn in Stoke Prior. A truly beautiful venue. Old barns but with a fantastic contemporary interior. I would highly recommend it. http://www.wedding-venues.co.uk/redhousebarn

Fizz wanted to create a relaxed atmosphere with a vintage theme. We chose to decorate each table with vintage cake stands and tea cups filled with avalanche and spray roses in pale pinks and creams. The top table featured hydrangeas placed in to tea pots and milk jugs. With the tables set in cream and lilac the finished effect was a mixture of old and new, just like the barns themselves.

At the end of the meal the cake stands were collected and returned brimming with pretty cupcakes decorated with sugar flowers and blossoms. We made the cupcakes in a variety of flavours including vanilla, lemon and autumn fruits. Yummy!

I do love a good wedding tea party!

Whoops! The Whoopie pies went wrong...

And then they went oh so right again! Having been baking cakes and cupcakes for many a year I decided it was time to give the whoopie pie a go. You would think it would be easy given that they are quite simply two mini sandwiches of cakes filled with delicious buttercream. How wrong could I be! The first batch was an unprecendented disaster and I had no idea why. I stood in my kitchen and puzzled how what should be lovely plumb chocolate chip pies had descended in to what can only be described as a splodge! I was not going to give in and so put in another batch, this time a salted caramel flavour. And they worked, hooray! I discovered that the trick is to have the oven completely up to temperature so that they don't have time to spread and instead cook straight away. The oven obviously hadn't been hot enough the first time and so the now infamous splodge disaster occured. This week I have finished baking another batch of the chocolate chip whoopie pies, just to prove I could do it! At least the disaster cakes didn't go to waste. They were swiftly munched by my husband and his friends after an afternoon of ruby and drinking. Glad to see they aren't fussy!

Choo Choo!

This week I had to make a first birthday cake for smiley little Lucas. I wanted to design a cake that was suitable for a little boy but still retained my favourite pastel colours and styling. The result was a birthday train in pale blues and greens. The train was inspired by one of my favourite cake blogs http://www.cakejournal.com/. Always amazingly beautiful cakes and so so pretty. Happy birthday Lucas!

How make pretty flower cupcakes

Now I am obviously a big advocate of cupcakes of the eating variety but today I thought I would share with you my lovely cupcake decorations made with flowers and not flour! They are so simple but so effective. Beautiful on a vintage cake stand to brighten up your table or even just your day. Once you get the hang of them they can be made with any flowers you like from bought flowers to flowers from your garden. I would recommend using flowers with quite a strong stem as you don't want them to break when pushed in to the oasis. Small flowers such as spray roses or daisies work best but there is no reason why you couldn't replicate with one or two larger flowers. Obviously you can make as many or as few as you like but in the spirit of baking I will make one dozen.

List of ingredients:

12 tea lights in silver metal cases (the ones you get in big bags from Ikea)

Block of oasis

Bunch of spray roses

12 cupcake cases

Method:

1. Soak the oasis in water until water absorbs through the whole block.

2. Remove the tea lights from the silver outer case. These can be put to one side and kept for another time.

3. Cut a thin strip of oasis, about the same thickness as the depth of the tea light holder.

4. Press the tea light holder in to the oasis so that you end up with the silver case filled with oasis.

5. Cut the spray roses from the bunch so that they have 1-2cm of stem.

6. Push the roses in to the oasis starting around the edge and finishing in the middle.

7. Place in to pretty cupcake cases and voila!

Happy flower baking!

A New Home

A new year and Buttercream and Dreams has a new home! Its all been a little bit busy here as we settle in to a new house and most importantly a new kitchen. And it is a very lovely kitchen indeed! Plenty of space to create wonderful cakes and the cupboards are now full to the brim with cake tins and glitter and ribbons and sprinkles. Its cake baking heaven (well for me anyway!). Now that we are all settled I shall be keeping you updated with all the latest adventures and maybe even sharing a few of my cake secrets with you!