Ben 10 Cake and Lavender Bakes

After meeting Audrey a couple of weeks ago (a very pretty blonde haired angelic little girl) I was surprised when I was asked to make her a Ben 10 cake for her 4^th Birthday! The most important part of the cake was getting the wording of the Logo correct (trickier than it looks and took far longer than it should of!)  To make the ‘splattered slime’ I used piping gel and coloured gel paste to make it green, it was most effective and now I am finding lots of uses for my rather large tub of piping gel (namely sticking every loose piece of icing down to ensure there are no mishaps during cake transitions!) It came in VERY handy when I made my daughters Rapunzel tower cake (that’s a whole other blog!) Here is the finished result:

 (adding glitter (and a bow!) was my failed attempt to make it just marginally girlie!) 

Meanwhile I am loving my little baking job at the Lavender Barn.  It is really great to be able to get back to some good old fashioned baking.

I had forgotten how much I love to bake and it is great to experiment with lavender; something I have not used in baking before.  I am really starting to develop a taste for it! The constant taste testing of new recipes is not good for the waistline and extra penance has been necessary at the Gym!  So far I have found the best sellers to be lavender scones, lavender shortbread, gingerbread men and lavender cupcakes (my Banana tea bread was also a hit!)  This week I trialled a new recipe: mini lemon and lavender Madeira cakes.  They looked fab (even if I do say so myself) they smelt great and the sponge was lovely and moist.  I resisted tasting them as I was aesthetically pleased with them; so fingers crossed they tasted as good as they looked!  I used Sainsbury’s mini loaf cases they were really sturdy and peeled away a treat! 

I will have to wait until Friday to see if only crumbs remain!  I keep forgetting to take pictures of my bakes so you’ll have to use your imagination! Here is the recipe for 'Lemon and Lavender Madeira cakes' well worth a try!  Next week: Halloween goodies, chocolate chunk flapjack (Thanks Farah for the recipe!) Lavender fudge (chilling as I blog, very sweet and very tempting!) and Mum’s sticky ginger cake! Oh and a one day photography course for me....hopefully I will learn how to be more creative with my new camera, its about time I moved off the automatic setting!