Curly Wurly Christmas

Firstly apologies for the blog break; I have had to knuckle down to my studies over the last couple of weeks.  As my first term comes to a close I have found the time to go Christmas cake pop crazy!! 

I knew that I was going to experiment with a reindeer cake pop but couldn’t think of what to use for the antlers….

When I was little, at this time of year; I would stop off at the sweet shop for a Curly Wurly on the way home from school.  I would wait until I got home, sit in front of the fire, and dunk the Curly Wurly into a warm mug of orange squash until all the chocolate melted (the thought of this now is quite strange!)

After half completing the reindeer cake pop I went to bed leaving Rudolf ‘antlerless’ Suddenly out of nowhere I thought of a Curly Wurly! I thought if I cut them up correctly, they would make perfect antlers and here is the result!

I faced a similar stumbling block with the snowman’s hat!

A Rolo and a large chocolate button worked perfectly

So here’s my Christmas line up…

May I take this opportunity to wish a very Merry Christmas to all my family and friends that have supported me in my new venture, especially my husband (who tonight took the time to accompany me to a 60^th birthday and diligently set up the cake pop tower x)

A big thank you to everyone who has placed orders with me over the past 4 months.  It has been a great 2011 and I look forward to taking ‘Make Mine a Cake’ into 2012

   

 

 Merry Christmas x 

Home & Away

Remember remember the 5th of November.....tonight we celebrated 'Bonfire night' at home and it brought back fond childhood memories.  Making a guy fawkes with my brothers (penny for the Guy!) Mum in the kitchen preparing a feast of soup, jacket potatoes and hotdogs! Dad in his old black jacket heading down the garden with the fireworks secured in an old Rover biscuit tin (the tin was all that remained from the previous Christmas where a strict household rule was always enforced of one plain and one 'fancy' biscuit per person!)......miss you Dad x

Home with the Bradfords we celebrated on a smaller scale but it was a good effort!  Hot dogs (cooked on the barbie of course)  Tomato soup, sparklers and fireworks (no metal biscuit tin in sight!) Making memories....

Away from it all (too far away) missing Grandma Dee and Grandpa JB just to let you know we are thinking of you both....some Koala Pops especially for you x

Happy Bonfire Night!

Boden, Baking and Bolton Uni

Busy, busy, busy! I have had a very eventful week.  As usual it has involved baking (when doesn’t it!) This week I played hostess at my first Boden Party.  For those of you that don’t know Boden it is a fabulous mail order/online clothing range which plays a big part in my life! 

You can imagine it was hard to focus on other things when there were rails and rails of clothing crying out to be tried on!  I was very restrained and I didn’t ‘unveil the rails’ until I made sure there were plenty of ‘Make Mine a Cake’ goodies ready to whoo my guests.

I themed my cake pop display around Boden’s 40’s flower design.  The colours are rich, and vibrant but particular warm and seasonal. I love the design and colours and I’m finding it hard not to buy the ‘Silver 40’s flower eBook case’ which is for a Kindle (which I don’t have!) My Christmas list this year (including a Kitchenaid Mixer, a super duper flash new camera, a new laptop and now seemingly a Kindle to go with my must have Boden eBook case!) Is getting a bit out of control me thinks!

I used the colours inspired by the 40’s

flower design to create

                                       these........

Of course I had to throw some cupcakes into the mix so I used love heart sweets to depict the moment.

 

Make Mine a cake aside, my Bolton Uni post grad teaching course is in full swing and I did my first full day of teaching by myself this Thursday.  I think I need to knuckle down to my studies now as the work load is increasing rapidly!

Today was a great way to end the week when my fab husband whisked me off to a day of pampering at The Mere Spa, Cheshire.  We were celebrating our 6^th Wedding anniversary and it couldn’t have come at a better time.  I feel much more human and ready to face another busy week of baking, studying and school runs!!

Happy Anniversary Hun x

 

Pudsey Pops!

Children In Need Friday 18th November 2011

For those of you who are not familiar with the UK’s Corporate Charity ‘Children in Need’, allow me to introduce you to Pudsey Bear! Pudsey Bear is the charities official Logo.  Pudsey put in his first TV appearance in 1985 and the following year he was changed to the yellow bear with white and red spotted handkerchief that we have come to know and love. 

For most of you, he is a childhood icon and although he had a revamp in 2007 to introduce some more vibrant colours to his spotted handkerchief, he has remained the same.

The charity works very hard to raise well needed funds for Children that need help.

Introducing my newest Character Cake Pop ‘Pudsey Pop’ ...........

Thank you for the requests I have received from companies who wish to sell Pudsey Pops at your fundraising events.  I am in the process of checking with Children in Need to find out where I stand with regards to costings, I will be in-touch shortly.

Every penny counts.

It's Black & White!

This weekend I was busy working on a 40^th birthday party package.  The lucky recipient was a Birthday ‘Boy’ but I wanted to avoid the stereotypical blue so I suggested a more mature classy black and white theme with a bit of silver thrown in (gotta have a bit of bling!).  The choice of celebration cake was my triple layer carrot cake (always a winner!)

I set to work on creating a silver cake pop tower using the three bucket creation see previous post. 

I made individual black and white cake pops with various designs.  I also made some ‘40’ pops to place at the front of the tiers. 

To fill in the gaps around the tiers I used a mixture of black and white liquorice allsorts.



 

          

To quote Michael Jackson 'it don't matter if you're black or white'.....they're all gooood!

I was very pleased with my new 5 tier Classikool black acrylic cake stand. I used this to display the black and white cupcakes









Thank you Lorraine for giving me the opportunity to ‘do my thing!’ I hope you managed to embarrass Paul (just a little!)

For party packages please e-mail me at tracy@makemineacake.com



Dinopops!

Jude has been invited to a dinosaur party tomorrow so I thought what better gift to give than a 'herd' of dinosaur pops!  So I set to work and here are the results.....

'Spotasaurus'

Dressed to impress!

Cute little fellas!




In Judes words.....'with their rain coats on'!!

 

Happy 3rd Birthday Louis x

Place your orders for Dinopops now e-mail me at tracy@makemineacake.com  

Tickled Pink

Tutus, tiaras and twelve ribbon twirling ballerinas, this weekend was Tamsin’s 5^th Birthday! It took some organising but with lots of sugar, sprinkles, sparkle and ribbons we pulled it off!  Angelina Ballerina was the theme.

  

I wanted to make a personalised cake pop display which I had made previously, except with Tamsin’s name having 6 letters, finding a cake pop stand that had 6 horizontally placed holes proved impossible (unless I wanted to order one from the States which would have blown the budget) so good old IKEA came to the rescue!

I bought this great rectangular shaped cream tin planter.  I removed the draining tray and filled it with flower oasis foam.  I covered the oasis in cling film as it can get quite messy and I didn’t want this to come into contact with the cakes.  This gave me a nice firm base to position each of the lettered cake pops, I then filled in the gaps with mini pink and white marshmallows and voila…

Whilst in IKEA I was inspired to buy these 3 pink plant pots…….

 

I filled the two larger ones with the cling wrapped oasis and placed one on top of the other.  I then placed the third smaller plant pot on top of the medium sized pot.  I strategically inserted each cake pop into the oasis around each plant pot and then arranged the remaining cake pops free standing in the smaller pot to create a tiered affect.  To incorporate the theme I roped in the help of my glamorous assistant ‘Grandma Dee’ to make a Ballerina Tulle Tutu to go around the largest bucket….the result, a splendid Tutu adorned pink cake pop tower!

No party would be complete without a cupcake tower with a mix of vanilla/vanilla, chocolate/chocolate and chocolate/vanilla cupcakes (of course with some pink icing) I decorated them with random sprinkles of pink hearts, marshmallows, edible glitter and sugar dragees.

For the finale:…..The Birthday Cake: Angelina Ballerina in her full glory!

Thank you to my wonderful (and semi-patient!) husband Graham for setting the scene and creating a ballerina haven.  Thank you to the two Grandmas for all their help especially Grandma Dee for painstakingly sewing silver sequins on Tamsin’s Tutu, I’m sure she noticed, honest!  

 

'Ballet Angels'

Happy Birthday Tamsin x

  

 

Top of The Pops

For those of you that have not yet entered into the world of Cake Pops you don’t know what you’re missing.  If you have children and are not ofey with the Cake Pop, wake up and smell the sugar it is the new kid on the block and I’m loving it!

Yet again another craze adopted from the States the Cake pop is a big hit and its popularity is growing by the day.  Little mini cakes of heaven consisting of sponge and butter cream covered in chocolate on a stick, what’s not to like?

The best thing about Pop world is the diversity of design.  It is the perfect sweet thing to include in party packages.  They are visually impressive, perfect for favours, kids’ parties and celebrations.  They can be themed to suit almost any occasion.

For those parents out there who have bought a cupcake for their child to allow you 10 minutes of peace whilst out and about and spent the next 10 minutes removing icing from their face and clothes, the cake pop is most definitely the way to go….far less mess.

I recently made a mix of blue and pink cake pops for a 5^th Birthday and they are a thing of beauty when they are individually wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon.

I decided to personlise the cake pops as a centre piece for the display



Gone are the days of unravelling a squashed piece of birthday cake from the bottom of a party bag and picking off pieces of party napkin!  It makes far more sense to serve the birthday cake as dessert and send them home with magic on a stick!     

 YUM!