More baking fun at home!

I love cake. That's a given.

But I love cake MORE when it's fun and you can't get more fun than funfetti cake! Whilst you can't buy funfetti cake in the UK (boo) I'm sure a lot of people have dabbled with colours/sprinkles in cake so I thought you'd like to see my efforts after a fun filled baking session with my son.

We decided to make a simple one layer cake as we just wanted to feed the family. I came across this blog a little while back and decided to give the listed 'White Cake' recipe a go. When you see a US recipe that calls for 'shortening' then you can use Trex which is available in most UK supermarkets now but if you don't have any to hand then just substitute for butter.

The recipe is really straight forward and produces a nice moist white cake. My advice would be to make sure you have some strong coloured sprinkles to add to your cake as the classic hundreds and thousands or pastel sprinkles will just get lost in your cake. I happened to have some really bright sugar strands to hand and they produced a really nice effect in the cake and completely melt away so no crunchy pieces in your cake!
I topped this cake with a really basic chocolate buttercream and my son generously sprinkled on the decorations! I hope you like our efforts.

Baking fun in the school holidays

Here at Star Bakery we love to find an excuse to bake - and the school holidays is the perfect one. I love baking with my son for two reasons:

1. He loves to make (and consume) anything we make together and especially likes an excuse to get messy in the kitchen!
2. It's a cheap way to pass the time and have some proper one-on-one fun with my boy :)

Quick update and hello!

As mentioned in my previous blog post we are no longer able to fit in any orders until after 1st October 2010 but I thought you still might like to see what we've been up to behind the scenes as cake is never far from our minds...

You can see all our latest work here and find out all our latest news by becoming a fan of ours on Facebook.

Normal blog posts will resume again in September so in the meantime please don't hesitate to drop me line at liana@starbakery.co.uk or leave a comment on this blog and I can get back to you.

Hope you're all having a great summer so far and I leave you with some images from a few weddings I have baked for recently - hope you like them!

These are a few of my favourite things

Hello my lovely blog readers! Thank you so much for bearing with me over the last few weeks of 'no posts', although I am still pretty swamped with all things cake related I thought it might be nice if I post a few pics from recent cakes that I thought you might like. They may not be accompanied by much chat from me, but hey who doesn't like to ogle cake??

UPDATE: The posts on this blog might slow up a little while we enter our busy season but don't forget we are no longer taking on orders between 1st July and 30th September. All existing bookings are of course being fulfilled but do get in touch if you have any cake queries outside of these dates. We'll do our best to get back to you but our current email waiting time is 5 workings days so bare that in mind!

We're still here!

Well, you can tell we're officially entering wedding season. It's been 8 days working straight through this last week and I have now decided to take 24hrs leave! Well, when I see 'leave' I mean catch up on emails of course...

Not that I'm complaining - I love this job and I've had so many fab clients these past few weeks it's just hard to say 'no' to work. And boy, have we had some fab requests and cakes to make recently! Peppa Pig, Handy Manny, Star Wars, shark cakes, giant cupcakes you name it we've made it. Don't forget you can view all our work on the website or see our full portfolio on Flickr.

Newsletter - May 2010

Just a quickie to let you know our May edition of the Star Bakery newsletter is now available! You can view it by clicking on the image below OR if you'd like to have it delivered safely to your inbox then just drop us an email to newsletter@starbakery.co.uk and we'll do the rest.

This edition features our newest gift box inspired by the lovely weather we've been having. I hope you like it and as ever, don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries.

Happy caking everyone.

Gift boxes - changes to pricing

Just a quick one today to let you all know we have now decided to make ordering our cupcake gift boxes even easier.

From Monday, 26 April ALL gift boxes will now be one price - £20 inclusive of delivery to any NG postcode!

You can view all of our gift boxes here. All of our gift boxes are made to order but we're happy to recreate a previous style if you see something you like in our gallery. And as an incentive to those clients who'd prefer to collect from our premises in Hucknall then you get your order bumped up to 12 cupcakes for the price of 9! That's right, 12 of our delicious cupcakes for the price of 9 - what more could you ask for? Drop me an email today liana@starbakery.co.uk to place your order.

Yuuummmmmm dolly mixtures.....

The sweetie cupcake is fast becoming one of our most popular cupcakes this season! That and Red Velvet cupcakes are our two most ordered flavours. And it's easy to see why with it's mound of sugary goodness topped with sweets that remind me of my youth :)

These cupcakes were part of a larger order for a hen do and these were my favourite: lemon cupcakes, drizzled with homemade lemon syrup and topped with zesty lemon buttercream. Perfect for this lovely weather!

And in case you missed it I put out a question to all our lovely followers about what flavours you'd like to see on our menu. We had some GREAT suggestions including:

• Key lime flavour: lime sponge filled with lime filling and topped with cream cheese frosting
• Mocha choc chip
• Cardamon and honey
• Eton Mess
• Vanilla fudge
• Retro sweetie cupcakes: incorporating 80's style popping candy!

You'll have to keep an eye out for our newsletter which will announce the May special sometime soon but in the meantime if there's a flavour YOU'D like to see then leave us a comment and we can add it into the mix!