Those of you who weren't focusing on the generous size of my shot glasses in the previous post, may have noticed the bright primary colours of the bun cases and smarties. Nice, bright, spring, rainbow shades are where it's at with my home baking at the moment.
The bun cases are re-useable silicone ones, from Amazon, Lakeland and John Lewis. You need several sets, becuase no matter how much care you take they do occasionally get thrown away by accident. And there's nothing worse than having eleven bun cases.
Today O wanted to make a big chocolate cake from her own recipe book. She reminds me so much of my little sister sometimes, who at this age (and probably still now) thought the best thing to do with a long Sunday afternoon was to bake a chocolate cake. Who can argue with that really? O also has a ballet exam tomorrow morning and thinks that a slice of chocolate cake would be just the thing to have when she has finished.
So she made a chocolate cake, with only a very little help melting the chocolate, and then got stuck into my box of sprinkles.
I had been muttering to myself for a while about the dull, pastel shades of all the cake decorations for sale in the supermarket. I suspect because of some anxiety about additives, they had started to use natural food colourings. Normally I'd be all in favour of removing additives and artificial colourings from food, but I don't think cake sprinkles are the right place to come over all wholemeal and healthy. Cake sprinkles should be nice and bright. That's the whole point of them.
I admired the cake decorations that Dragonfly used on these cakes she made, and she pointed me in the direction of Make A Wish, which has pages and pages of vividly coloured sprinkles, sugars, glitters and other decorating delights for you to buy. I stocked up a few weeks ago and O was very pleased to find new things on the baking shelf this afternoon.
Oh, and in case you think we're only about the chocolate cakes and damson vodka here, there's a picture below to show you that we also have herbs and a loaf of wholemeal bread to see us through the week. Very nutritionally balanced.
I'll tell you what annoys me about the natural colourings - Smarties now leak their colour all over my icing and look rubbish in about half an hour. I'm sure the old shells were giving us all terrible illnesses but I do rather miss them for cake decorating!
ReplyDeleteI am so pleased that Livvy enjoys cake making too...the chocolate cake looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad my niece takes after me with her chocolate cake making skills!
ReplyDeleteThe cakes all look delicious. I think I must invest in some new brightly coloured sprinkles! I am glad to see that your diet is balanced by the addition of herbs and wholemeal bread!!!
ReplyDeleteLoving the food, realy loving the food. But also loving both vertical and horizontal tables!
ReplyDeleteI just bought some silicon cake cases from M&S - they were great value but came in red, cream and black, the red's alright but I'm not crazy about the other colours. I think I need to get some more in those nice, bright colours you have! Thanks for the link to that cake decorating site too, will definitely be checking that out.
ReplyDeleteR x
bright decorations are the only type worth having, my current faves are lime green and bright blue sugar sprinkles.
ReplyDeleteWell, if you've got herbs, that makes everything fine!
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