AGood Morning and Happy Easter to everyone!!!:)

Maisie, glad your little one's getting better and your cake is gorgeous!!! :) and I'm sure pigs in the mud cake is going to be fab too!!!

Siany, Sugarluva and Barbara, all your cakes are fabulous!!!

Natt, glad your cake sale went well!!!

Hi, Gray!!! Nice to see here after a long time!

And Lisa, welcome to the thread!!:smile:

AHappy Easter everyone.

Is your kitchen up and running yet Bashini?

AHi Barbara, yes, it is!!! :grin: I can start baking on Tuesday!!

AGray,no cake and you still painting your cupboards on an Easter Sunday? Noooo, sit and relax today, theres always tomorrow.

AAw no Easter dinner for you today. You'll have to eat out, whoo hoo!

AHappy Easter everyone.

I have a slightly quieter work day today so should be plenty of time to finish off my cakes and enjoy the family Sunday roast. Yum yum I can't wait!

Glad your kitchen is up and running again bashini I'm jealous of your cake room! And don't work too hard painting your kitchen today gray...

AMorning everyone!

And I thought I was up early! Lol Everyone getting the roast ready? It's the inlaws for us today....so maybe painting the kitchen is a good thing ha ha ha!

Don't eat too much chocolate :-)

A

Ha ha that's my motto for most things in life! Alas today I will do as I'm told, ahem requested, I meant do as requested.....:-)

AMorning all. Happy Easter :)

Today I shall be cooking lamb and eating cake. Not necessarily in that order :p

Have a great day.

AI have beef, dont have cake for ourselves yet, but I do have some ganache left over and I spied some black cherries in kirsch in the fridge, now let me see,, no no no, gonna be good, didn't even buy each an egg, how sad are we?

AMorning all, happy Easter and welcome Lisa. :-) I've had a lovely morning, we had an Easter egg hunt for my little girl and she's delighted with her haul! Turkey for us today, then as much chocolate as I can manage before I start my diet tomorrow (or maybe Tuesday, depends how much chocolate's left!)

You do make me laugh Gray!

Morning all! We are recovering from our day out yesterday in the lake district. Nearly had to turn back because we couldn't find parking, this after getting stuck in traffic for a good hour. Anyhoo, we found parking which was a 10min walk to the pier. Had lunch (ok), ice cream (really good) then a 45min ferry cruise. Home by 830pm (!!). 

I really wanted to have a nice cake to decorate for today and decided to make black forest. Hopefully I can manage to make stabilised whipped cream without the gelatine lumps like last time.

Hubby will be organising an egg hunt in a while for the lil one. 

Hello Lisa, welcome to the UK thread :)

APhew, if ally finished my cakes. Had a bit of a disaster with the chocolate cake - my piping bag burst and squirmed green buttercream all over everything which I had to scrape off. Couldn't be bothered making anymore so I feel like it's a little unfinished as I wanted to pipe grass around the bottom but I'll try and dig out a ribbon or something before people come round.

[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3223457/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3223458/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

We have my parents and my boyfriends parents coming round for a yummy Turkey and ham Sunday roast. Good job my boyfriend is a good cook because I can't cook to save me life!

AMmm, nice Sugarluva.

Sugarluva- cakes look great! They'll be appreciated I'm sure despite the disaster. You can't tell anything went wrong anyway!

I'm taking a break from decorating the black forest with ruffles. Ruffles requires a helluva lot of cream! I'm only making a 6" cake which is about 4.5-5" high, but I've already whipped up a whole 600ml tub of cream. Now I just need a bit more to finish the top. I'm cooling the mixing bowl and whip in the fridge right now. 

Wish my hubby could cook!

AWow sugarluva, I love the kitkat cake, what a good idea! They're both lovely mind and I can't see anything wrong with either of them.

Mm black forest, I haven't got cake of any description today :-( (as if I haven't consumed enough calories already!).

A[IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3223512/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

I over whipped the cream for the top bit! Ah well, we're all looking forward to tucking in after tonight's meal. Lil one has a HUGE amount of choc to eat over the next week or two!

I hope everyone's weekend is going ok!

AOh I hate when the piping bag explodes! Not even gonna put lol cos it's so annoying!! I buy a big roll of piping bags now, they're really strong and don't split as easily....

There's so many lovely cakes today :-) petitcat I love those ruffles! I'm in your boat too my little lady can just about manage beans on toast lol... Once a year she cooks for me and my goodness you should see the bomb site- I mean kitchen- afterwards! It's still the years best meal tho :-)

AJean, that looks so fab, which nozzles did you use?

Gray,are you in the UK?

A

Yeah I'm in Northern Ireland :-) Do I come across that I'm somewhere more exotic?

Jean I can't get over how straight they are! Mine would have gotten narrower and narrower as I moved up :-)

ANope Gray, you sound just like us thankfully. Have you always lived there? Have you been making cakes long? Are you the chef in the house then? Sorry for the 20 questions, just being noisey!

A

:-) I don't mind, I grew up in Staffordshire, moved over here about 8 years ago in pursuit of the now Mrs Gray! Ha ha. Been making cakes 3 years now but I think my earlier ones are still my best!

Yeah I do all the cooking... Every packed lunch breakfast and supper... But I don't mind most of the time :-) is that the same with you?

AI'm from South Wales, guessing you knew that? Yes exactly the same, hubby washes up and thats it really,his answer is, whats the point when theres a qualified chef in the house, and if Im'honest I enjoy it.

Been making cakes roughly for about 25 yrs, but only seriously only for 2 yrs, I would love to do it fulltime, just gone partime so got the best of both worlds. I need to be making at least 2 week to make up the loss of money, I'm ticking over at the mo, got 1 next week, then 3 the week after.

Is there a style you prefer to make Gray? Do you make everything? Are you busy with cakes?

AI'm exactly the same, I really enjoy doing the cooking, in fact I can stop myself from 'helping' when someone's using the kitchen! Only in my house... I don't interfere in other people's kitchens! Lol.

I always wanted to be a chef but worked with so many nasty bloke chefs it put me off... I'm happy I ended up still enjoying baking though :-)

I'm really slow with cakes at the far more, but I've done no marketing, plus I put my prices up as I couldn't handle 4 cakes a week it was just too much... I love 3d and wedding cakes, gonna aim more for weddings for a bit and see how it goes :-)

What cake avenue do you hope to head along?

AI always knew I was a kinda OK cook as my mam taught me well, and when my kids very young I went into the schools as cook, I thought, well it would be nice to get some qualifications at least so I spent 3 yrs in night school getting City & Guilds 706 1/2, as a mere woman I guess I didn't do much with them, saying that I worked hard at wedding functions etc, and it was lovely to get abit of recognition for my efforts.

I do have 1 wedding cake at the end of this yr 20th of Dec to be exact, then I'making my work colleagues next Oct, a 4 tier, scary, not done a 4 tier before.

I dont have an agenda as such, as and when and hopefully try anything, saying that I do seem to mostly make cakes for adults.

I had some leaflets printed out and we've posted a few the other day but mostly its been word of mouth.

ADayscakes- lol re the bombsite! Hubby can do English breakfast, but I'm not a big fan. I prefer garlic rice with Filipino sausage/ salted fish (reminds me I need to make a batch!) and egg. That's a traditional Filipino breakfast!

I managed to get the ruffles to line up by marking the sides with a clean ruler on the crumb coat. Then it was just a matter of concentrating on keeping within the lines. My first 4 ruffles were the wrong way round - fat side out Lol. Not a pretty sight!

Nannycook I used a petal tip. Can't remember what brand I've got. Its got number 104 on it. Any petal tip I think will work so long as its narrow on one end.

AYou're doing well Barbara for word of mouth. The orders for me have dried up. I need to plan my marketing.

Dayscakes, I'm hoping to get to the point where I'm turning people down, or at least busy enough!

AMy mum thought me a lot too, and my dad's a painter, I think I got a nice combination of genes lol.

You will love doing the wedding cakes, I really enjoy them, there's something magical about leaving it of and knowing they're gonna love it! The pressure is a bit of a buzz too I must admit!

... Jean you have just absolutely hit the nail on the head... I now know the cause of all my woes: 'I' was piped the wrong way round;fat side out! (universe solved) :-)

AI can't wait to make a wedding cake for someone. I get a buzz already and I've only made occasion cakes so far!

I kept the fat ruffles on. The family aren't going to notice. This cake caused a small row today with hubby who thought I used buttercream ( he doesn't like them), and I thought he was complaining about the ruffles! Talk about crossed wires.

nanny I'm excited about your wedding cake order! It would drive me mad to wait months before I could do it!

AHa ha Jean, I guess theres a knack to it, would love to be able to master it in case someone decides they dont like fondant and wants something like this, I do have a few of those nozzles in big and small, gonna practise one day.

Yes Gray, I've only ever made 2 wedding cakes, first one was over 25 yrs ago, was 2 tier with pillars and garret frills and fruit of course, so chuffed when I did it, the other one was just last yr, again my work colleague, 4 tier, 12 inch fruit and the rest different flavoured sponges, OMG was I stressed as never done a stacked cake before, had a week off to make it, I was very pleased with it and so was the bride, in white with tiffany blue ribbon and hydrangeas, when I look back it was hard at all I just made it harder by being stressed over nothing, mind you being a guest was bad enough, knowing everyone was looking at MY cake, good feeling though!

Another thing tho Jean I'm in a prime position as I work in a shop base environment and as much as it annoys the hell out of my manager and director I talk constantly To my customers about the fact I make cakes and have been know to hand out my business card so it gets me an order or two, whoo hoo.