A very vintage affair

Today has been such a lovely and fun day down at the Bristol Harbourside Vintage Fair. The Cakery was there with a stall brimming with vintage inspired cakes including Lime Meringue Pie, Triple Chocolate, Apple Pie, Mocha, Lemonade, Vintage Victoria and French Toast cupcakes. Not to mention the most decadent quadruple chocolate gateaux (yes that's right I said quadruple!) and a rainbow triple layer vanilla cake surrounded by beautiful butter cream roses. I think my favourite part was talking to all the friendly customers and seeing their faces light up when they saw the array of cakes. Everyone was so complimentary and there is nothing more pleasing than people who think my cakes look and taste good. I have to say I always get the fear when someone takes their first bite, oh lordy what if they don't like it I think, but lucky for me (touch wood), this hasn't happened and I only get big smiles and lots of 'mmmmm' noises. Hurrah, everyone loves cake as much as me! So with weary feet and a face that hurts a little from all the smiling I will retire to the sofa and plan my next vintage fair menu. 

Oh and before signing off I would like to say a massive thank you to Mamma Lee for not only helping today but for also making these rather fetching Cakery aprons and matching bunting. Who matches there aprons to their bunting? The Cakery do that's who! 

Pastel Hearts

The last couple of weeks have been crazy busy, I haven't blogged about cakes because I've been too busy baking them! The bank holiday weekend was great, the sun was shining, the birds were singing and my days started at 7am with the smell of cakes waking Bob up. Not a bad wake up call if I do say so myself, the only thing that ever wakes me up is Biscuit jumping on me at 5.30am or my annoying phone alarm (oh and that person who rings me at 2am thinking I'm someone that is actually awake at that time. Reality check, I haven't seen 2am for a at least a year now. I.Am.That.Rock.N.Roll) 

So my favourite thing to have come out of the recent bank holiday are these cute heart cupcakes, perfect for a summer wedding or vintage tea party. I made both chocolate chip and vanilla sponge with contrasting buttercream (little tip: if you use condensed milk in your butter cream it tastes amazing) along with beautiful pastel fondant hearts. When you make a large batch of heart cakes like this they look great together and really stand out on a cake table. I would definitely have these at my wedding but with a larger souffle case decorated with vintage lace and pearls. Now enough with this chatting, I'm off to plan my menu for this coming Sunday's vintage fair at the Bristol Hotel. The Cakery will be there selling a variety of scrummy cakes, I just need to work out which ones...

Mighty Mint

I have a confession, I am slightly addicted to mint choc chip. Give me an After Eight and I'm a happy girl, a mint Cornetto gets devoured within seconds and my home made frozen mint choc chip whoopie pies send me over the edge. I can't get enough! The strange thing is mint chocolate also make me sneeze, I thought I'd hidden my weird affliction until I was on a filming shoot years ago and the cameraman noticed that every time I ate an after dinner mint I sneezed. Cue 10 more mints, a lot of sneezes, a slight sicky feeling and some very amused colleagues. I don't care, I will continue to eat and sneeze and sneeze and eat. These mint choc chip cupcakes are no exception, the dark chocolate minted sponge, dark choc chips and mint buttercream are so moreish I can easily eat three in a row (in between sneezes of course). Bring the Kleenex, I'm going back for more...