Bridal Shop Cakes

There is a really nice bridal shop called Wedding Belles in our lovely village of Holmes Chapel, run by an equally lovely lady named Pauline. She invited Holmes Chapel Cakes to be part of their special sample sale event by making a couple of cakes to add to their window display and providing cupcake samples to give away in a goody-bag for each bride. Here are some pictures of the wedding cakes that we took and also the little sample giveaways.

Do me a favour!

I thought I'd show a few of the wedding favours that Holmes Chapel Cakes is now offering, starting with some yummy buttery sugar cookies.  Cookies make great favours and are so verstaile- here are a few suggestions...

Colour coordinatied with your theme or cake?

Matching the design on the bride's dress?

...and not forgetting the groom too!

Little cookie wedding cake replicas?

Place settings for your guests?

They are delivered wrapped and finished with coordinating ribbon ready to be set out at your venue.

Something a bit different?

We have just discovered the joy of cake truffles here at Holmes Chapel Cakes!  They are little truffle-sized bites of rich, moist cakey-ness in almost any flavour you can imagine, dipped in dark, white or milk chocolate and decorated to suit your theme.  They make great petit fours for your guests to nibble on at the end of their meal with coffee!

Double chocolate and peppermint flavour- mmm.....

They look great either presented in clear bags finished with ribbon or in truffle boxes.  Truffle boxes are availble in a variety of colours and can even be personalised with your names and wedding dates. 

See more pics at www.holmeschapelcakes.com/favours.htm

Pretty Pictures

I know I'm at risk of posting too many pictures of this cake, but I just HAD to put up these gorgeous photos that were taken by the professional photographer at this wedding. 

His photos of the wedding are really stunning- you can see his work on his website http://www.davidnelson.com/ He is incidentally also a fellow scientist and has some cool pics of sciency people in his portfolio (There is not a cheesy "white coat and thoughtful-hand-on-chin" shot in sight!).

Thank you to Dave for sending me these pictures! 

Weddings and Watercolours

I realised that I haven't updated this blog in a while so here is a little catch-up. Firstly, here is a 3-tiered wedding cake that I did for a wedding at Cranage Hall, in Cheshire. It's a simple, elegant and classy ivory cake covered in a pearlescent shimmer, which doesn't pick up too well on the photos. Each layer was trimmed with a silver chain of diamantes and finished with satin ribbon and a diamante brooch. The flavours were lemon drizzle (with lemon curd and lemon buttercream), ginger with orange buttercream and carrot cake with a lightly spiced cinnamon buttercream.

Next up was another wedding cake. This time it was a 4 tier (lemon drizzle, 2 x chocolate fudge and carrot cake), which had to survive a 200 mile journey to Quendon Hall in Essex!! The black and white design on this cake was so intricate that there would be no time to re-do if the cake didn't make the journey. Here is a picture of the cake before I piped on the design.

Here is the finished article, finished with fresh roses and black feathers (provided by the couple's florist, who did an AMAZING job of the flowers). The cake really suited the couple and the venue and as you can see, it survived a long motorway drive just fine (even with my somewhat erratic driving!).


The bride and groom did their Bachelors and PhDs in the same department/university (that is also how they met each other and how I know them), and as a little nod to this I wrote a bit of computer code* discretely on the back of their cake.

* in a non-specific, generic language.

Lastly, then I'm up to date, it's my Mum's birthday cake. She's likes doing a number of things (gardening, cooking, walking) but she really likes watercolour painting so I made her a watercolour-themed birthday cake. Everything in this photo is 100% edible and made out of sugar, even the "paintings", which I feel I should point out are a grave injustice to my Mum's paintings!

If anyone wants to order a cake like this, I'd charge about a trillion pounds since it was so labour intensive, but my Mum's worth it ;-)

Tracey

Holmes Chapel Cakes Rocks!

So a while ago I had an order for a guitar cake, but no ordinary guitar, oh no! This is Billie-Joe's guitar from the band Green Day and he obviously like to put stickers on it. Lots of them.

This cake was a deceptively large amount of work since the stickers had to be hand-painted on with food colouring, but I love a challenge! I also love how this guitar looks so well-used and worn, like an over-loved teddy bear. It was unusual to make a cake look aged and a bit battered (!) rather than obsessing over a flawless, smooth finish!

Here is the cake version of Billie-Joe's guitar (without the neck, that would have been a BIG cake!). The aged look was achieved with a bit of diluted brown food colouring and a sponge!

Happy 21st birthday, Alison!!!

Swinging Sixties

This has been a swinging 60's week with two 60th birthday cakes! The first one was a lovely moist chocolate fudge cake basket- and the "chocolates" on the top are actually cake too!

I actually think this would make a great Mothers Day cake too! I have just started making these little "cake bites", they're a mix of crumbled cake mixed with a flavoured buttercream and dipped in dark chocolate. The cake bites for this cake were mint chocolate flavoured and toffee/fudge flavoured. I shall post more "cake bite" pictures later in the week.

The second cake was for a sixties-themed 60th birthday party in Warrington.

The bottom tier was vanilla sponge with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream, the second tier was chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling and the third tier was, of course, this...

... complete with purple vanilla buttercream filling!

This week, I'm making a replica of Billie-Joe's (from the band, Green Day) electric guitar for a 21st birthday. I can't wait to do this one, it's totally going to rock!

What did that chocolate cake become?

First off, I did a sticky toffee sponge and coffee buttercream cake this week for an engagement party ordered by a lovely lady for her Sister (and new Brother-in-law to be). It was the first time I'd made the recipe for this sized cake- and I think I made too much! Not only was the cake bigger than expected but there was enough left over for 14 cupcakes! Oops!

(Excuse the bad picture, it was taken in 6am light before I was rushing out of the door!) It was more shimmery silver than dull grey in real life.


What became of the chocolate cake?

A quick reminder...

well...

.. you know where this is going...

... et voila. It's a bustier/corset cake for my awesome friend, Andrea's, hen night. It was a debauched affair comprising pole dancing lessons (which I am still very sore from, that is a SERIOUS workout!), a 'fireman' called Fernando ( I suspect that wasn't his real name) and burlesque/moulin rouge fancy dress. This cake, therefore, fit the theme perfectly and incidentally was surprisingly to-scale for our stunning hen!!

See, I did say it'd become something a whole lot more interesting!

p.s. this chocolate cake has magic hangover-curing abilities!