Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

So, picture the scene, its February and my sister-in-law Leanne asks if I can make her a birthday cake for her in March. I say yes and asks what she would like, she replies with "Surprise me!" and then I spend the next few weeks brainstorming ideas and looking on various sites for inspiration.

Leanne is a fellow Disney fan so the final idea came to me pretty quickly. Something red with polka dots. The problem is... ive NEVER covered a cake in fondant/icing and I really dont know where to start.

So I open up youtube, and watch what seems like a bazillion videos on how to cover a cake, from crumb coating to finishing, and although it looks pretty simple, I know it will be anything but easy!!

Cakes for Mothers Day

This mothers day I decided to bake a cake each for our mums using my 6" lose bottom tin. Its so cute and tiny that it was quite tempting to go all in and make as much batter as possible... which is what I did. Lets set the scene. I have 1 night to bake 2 cakes and decorate them to a level that I wont want to cry about later. Its a Friday night, which means its Walking Dead night. Which means... I have until 10pm or thereabouts. Ill need to eat tea and prep the kitchen ready for my madness. This will be tight. Theres always sky+ for a delayed start. Lets GO.

White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

My husband Fred loves white chocolate. He is forever trying to sneak bars of lindt into our shopping and loves a good white chocolate biscuit or cookie. Instead of buying some expensive cookies that included white chocolate I told him id make him some. My sister and her boyfriend Ant were coming round for tea that night, so I made a good size batch and completely winged it in terms of the recipe. Im pretty sure they liked them though as they all went in a day, and I didn't get a single one.

Easy Pastry for Pie

Making pastry for the tops of your savoury pie doesn't have to be all bells and whistles.

You know how I like to keep things easy, lazy almost and still keep things tasty.

Now I warn you, this recipe isnt healthy, you wont win any awards for the ingredients and its certainly not going to impress a foodie to look at, but it keep them smiling once they eat it. Think pastry Nanna used to make, think glutton and all things nice made with the ingredients that you probably frown upon when picking up your expensive baking ingredients.

Well, this uses the cheapest of the cheap. smart price is your friend. ;-)

My gingerbread house & royal icing recipe

It's that time of year again and I always like to make a gingerbread house to sit on my sideboard and slowly go inedible. It's a weird tradition I've done for the last few years.

Now let me put you straight, I'm not baking the gingerbread, I'm not at that stage quite yet (maybe next year... Ah who am I kidding) but I do buy my gingerbread house, sorry excuse me, I do buy my Pepparkaka Hus from ikea for the incredible sum of £2.45 I mean, come on, I couldn't buy the ingredients for that much and it tastes really good. Ikea do really great gingerbread and so for the time being, I'm happy buying the kit and spending the time decorating it instead.

More Cupcakes by Karen

Part 2 of my special look at how you can adapt my Basic Vanilla Cupcake recipe is here, and Karen is back with more wonderful and inventive cupcakes. In the first post, Karen shared some amazing cupcake recipes that im now dying to try and re-create myself. However, lots of the ingredients are limited or not available in the UK, so in following posts ill be looking at ways we can get the same results here in the UK... now THAT'S fun! :-)

Cupcakes by Karen

In 2010 we visited Walt Disney World, and being big un-posh foodies (nothing on the scale of Mrs Petticoat's adventures - seriously, that girl eats some awesome food) we visited Epcot's Food and Wine Festival and hopped over to say hello at DisneyFoodBlog.com Foodie Fest at Ariel's in Disney's Yacht & Beach Club Resort.

It was a meet up of Disney food admirers, we met lots of lovely people, but two in particular made us feel like we should be there, in the sea of American accents. Im pretty sure we were the only English people there that year.

Karen and Mike (and their 8 month baby bump) chatted away and weve been in contact ever since. They live within touching distance of Walt Disney World, and we live here in Manchester - thank you facebook and twitter!! We saw them again in 2011 with their then 1 yr old addition Anna, and now, they have another beautiful munchkin baby Lily. Hopefully we will see them again on our 2013 trip but in the meantime... Karen has been making cupcakes... lots of cupcakes.