Happy New Year!!

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful holiday time and so far so good for 2012! Wishing all the very best to all of you! For me, January is a time to answer emails, but this January is also a time to be on holiday! Yes, away i go from this chilly, windy, wet, and generally driech northern land, and its a wee trip to a slightly warmer land- where no doubt unseasonal weather will set upon us!! Ha!! No! Indeed i am packing my bucket and spade so lets hope for the chance to use it.... So while i will try to stay on top of emails this month, please forgive any late replies. I shall catch up properly by the 1st of February, and if you haven't heard back from me by then, please do chase me up!

So, this December time was great fun for me. I was able to make some cakes and have a go at making Gingerbread Houses for the first time. I found alot of inspiration on the web... Wow! Don't people make wonderful things- and you even get to eat them afterwards! I made a big lump of gingerbread dough, which i rolled thin and thinner still in the quest to find out the secret to how thin or even thinner it actually needs to be. It does need to be pretty thin if you are making something small i discovered... Also, important to note the thickness of walls when sizing a roof! AND, trim it when its warm! AND, royal icing doesn't like to stick to crumbs, AND it doesn't take as long as you might think in the oven at all, (note that gingery burning smell....), AND more practice needed to make see thro sugar windows.....

Here was my first attempts at making something out of gingerbread... you can see my progress from left to right, and how tight my roofs were- they needed more overhang! In the end i successfully made a mini birdhouse, mini house and a bigger house. I had LOTS of spare bits and test bits, but they proved good for munching on while pondering that roof issue...

 The mini birdhouse went onto a mini cake, for my bird loving Uncle. I was going to put robins all over it, but thinking about it i decided a jolly festive flamingo would add a dash of bright colour and maybe raise a smile or two. Plus it would look cute in a scarf and hat.

The big gingerbread house was for my Uncle and Auntie and family, and it I made up as i went along. I think next time i may try and make one which is more cartoon like, or with either just pastel or primary colours. I would have liked it to have been more dramatic! It turned out a bit Hansel and Gretel i think and perhaps needed a chimney....!!

The last cake i made was finished on Christmas Eve for my folks, and this one i had been thinking of for ages and as it happened was the one i had least time left to spend on. I wanted it to be a bit nordic looking, with red and white and reindeer! I had looked on etsy for colours and pattern inspirations and had a lovely ribbon picked out!

Also i had aquired a fine collection of cutters which i was determined to use. Have you spotted that TK Maxx always have a random selection of cake decorating equiptment and bits and bobs these days?  PME and Wilton among the brands you can find there.

After discovering this I had set my Mum on the hunt for PME holly leaf plunger cutters. Dedicated Mum that she is, three TK Maxxes later she found them! (not all in the one day of course, this took her weeks, with various other cutters bought along the way!! lol!, plus she lives in 'civilization', so the TK Maxxes were closer together....) So of course my folk's cake had to make good use of all the cutters, although not the holly leaf ones- they got used on everything but!!

So, it's been a full cake Christmas for me this year. It's really the only time of year i experiment a bit with some cake making and sugarcraft decoration. In years past i used to work as a cake decorator where i made about 3 or 4 cakes in a working day, whew, i was always sticky!! Ha!! So these days i reserve the kitchen chaos and sticky floors to December only. Well, more or less...

I hope you have had a wonderful cake filled Christmas and New Year, and here's wishing you and yours all the best and more of the same in 2012!! xxx