People who know me well will know I am a bit of a flake. I like to think I have achievable plans, aims and ambition but really my only true ambition is so completely out of reach it may as well not be one. So, I bounce from job to job, get bored around the golden 12 month mark and move on. There’s really no rhyme or reason behind the jobs on my CV other than I fancied it at the time. I’m a little rubbish like that.
I have very few constants in my life. I like to mix things up. I will almost always be game for going somewhere new and meeting a new crowd when my fiscal situation permits it. When my bank manager says “No, you can’t go out this week”, I have limited options for amusing myself. When the pinch sets in, I normally head straight for the baking utensils. As the pinch happens fairly regularly, I have become quite good at baking.
My show cake is a Victoria sponge with jam and butter cream icing in the middle. I make them as birthday cakes mostly. Depending on how nice they look will depends on if I cover them in icing. Here’s my classic ‘sprinkle of icing’ Victoria sponge.
Recently, I have ventured from fairy cakes to cupcakes. Then I branched out into Icing the cupcakes. Here’s a batch of my first attempt. They were iced with a piping bag and star shaped nozzle.
The first issue I came across was getting the butter cream icing the correct consistency. You need to make it a little softer than you would if you were using the butter cream as a filling. Initially, I made the butter cream far too firm and ended up having to add milk in order to thin it out. Once the consistency was correct, the decorating began! They were a bit squiggly in places as I hadn’t used a piping bag for donkeys years but, overall, a very good attempt. I heard only good reviews about them. I also over baked the cakes a little so resolved to not make the same mistakes twice. Roll on the second batch.
The cakes were much better baked, but I made the icing too firm and felt too lazy to empty the piping bag again.
In summary, I think I’ll bake cakes for a living if everything else goes wrong.
Lincs to London 