My Mum's 60th Birthday Cake

My Mum was turning 60 and on of my Aunts decided to throw her a surprise party! So I offered to make the cake.


I decided on a 2 tier, as I was having to transport it from South Yorkshire to Scotland so anything bigger and I don't know how I'd have managed it.


Bottom tier was fruit cake, the same recipe as the fruit cake tier from my daughter's christening cake with an extra ingredient of cranberries.

Wet ingredients, butter, sugar, treacle, eggs.

Mixing in the fruit and the spiced flour

Fresh out of the oven

Cooled and levelled ready for marzipan

Once the cake was cooled and levelled I then rolled out a sheet of marzipan and covered it with it.  I left the cake for 24 hours before covering with the fondant icing.

Covered with Marzipan

Covered with marzipan and fondant

Put that cake to one side and started on the top tier. Madeira cake (plain sponge).  I had to make 2 of this tier as the 1st one went soooo wrong, It bowed in the middle and then was still liquid inside - even though I had done the skewer test etc very weird! Ended up binning it and starting again. 

Recipe I used was: 5 eggs, 315g self raising flour, 155g plain flour, 315g butter/soft margarine, 315g caster sugar, takes an hour to cook.

Baked, cooled, levelled, halved, filled with jam and butter-cream

Covered with fondant

Rolled out the coloured icing and cut circles our with circle cutters

Rolled out the coloured icing and then cut into equal strips with my ribbon cutter and a ruler

The finished article :-)

James Martin Chocolate & Cherry Cupcakes

OK so a bit of a cheat, don't normally use packet cake mixes as I much prefer to follow a recipe and make them myself but on this occasion I thought why not - it was on offer in Tesco!


Basically just an add egg and butter job and mix.


This is what came out, they were really yummy but I still prefer making my own!

Jodie's VW Camper Van Birthday cake

I decided to make a cake replica of my friend Jodie's pride and joy - her VW camper van! This was a surprise for her birthday.

Firstly I baked 3 Madeira cakes in loaf tins. I used a Nigella Lawson recipe which you can find here

Then I carved them up into the shape of the camper van - not the easiest part of the process I can tell you!

What a mess lol

The rough shape of the van

Once I got it to the right kind of shape, I then stuck all the bits together and covered the whole thing with butter-cream!

Then I carefully lay my rolled out fondant over the top (after leaving the cake in the fridge for about 30 mins for the butter-cream to harden a little - makes it easier to lay the fondant over and doesn't slip around everywhere. 

Once the cake was covered in white fondant i set about the challenge of putting the detail on.

 I used blue colouring to paint the windows on with a black icing pen to outline everything in. I used silver sugar balls for the wing mirrors, wheels and headlights.

It wasn't at all bad for the first time I had ever done a shaped cake. Jodie loved it too which is the main thing!!!

Jaffa Cake Cupcakes

2 of my favourite things in the world of sweet things:

1. Jaffa cakes 
2. Cupcakes 

So it seems fitting and only right that I try and combine the two and make a batch of Jaffa Cake Cupcakes!!


How to start this then, do I put a whole Jaffa cake at the bottom of each cupcake, do I make my own orange jelly like substance to go in the middle..... Nahhhh there is something much easier than that... good old fashioned MARMALADE!


So I baked a batch of normal plain cupcakes then cut out a small hole in the middle of each of them and filled them with shredded orange marmalade! 

Straight out the oven

With the hole cut out

Filled with marmalade

Then I iced them with a chocolate frosting and decorated with a Dr. Oetker Orange & Lemon Slice 

 - Absolutely divine, all the guys at work thought so as 36 of them vanished without trace in the space of a day and a half.

Transported to work in the cupcake courier!