Fairy Cakes - The Final Chapter

I am aware that I must repent both for my lack of posts and what appears to be an obsession with fairy cakes. And so I shall bid the beauteous buns farewell in this valedictory entry.

First - may I present to you a creation that I had intended to call "The Towering Inferno" - but then the sparklers refused to light so it was less conflagration, more damp squib. We got there in the end, although the stress temporarily affected my ability to capture the moment on film, hence a picture with strange and inactive grey sticks dotted about the buttercream. (They are sparklers I tell you, sparklers...)

I had puzzled long and hard over what to make for my mum's special birthday. I wasn't sure she'd want a Peppa (current speciality - see earlier entry). Nor a monkey come to that. I wasn't convinced that traditional royal icing would make it 200 miles up a motorway unscathed, although I am (if memory serves me right) a dab hand with a bit of lattice work so perhaps another time.

And so this is the end result. As you can see - it went down a treat.

My final foray into fairydom is a gift for a reader of this blog. I had promised to make something for her and the birth of her second beautiful son seemed the right occasion on the basis that new babies = lack of sleep = lack of energy = need for calories.

Honourable intentions perhaps, but making them half asleep on a Wednesday evening proved that the old adage is true:

S/he who bakes when not awake is likely to leave the sugar on the scales. (And let me tell you - cakes without sugar are rank...)

Take two - and this time success. White chocolate buttercream whipped up between breakfast and the nursery run. A treat for a new mum - and a day spent removing hundreds and thousands from the far reaches of the kitchen for me (will I never learn..?)