Okay so I know Easter was last weekend, but I thought I'd show you some of the stuff I made over the spring festival. As usual, I baked a simnel cake since me and my family do love a bit of fruit cake, especially when there is some marzipan involved aswel! I won't bore you with the history of simnel cake, as I already did that last year (!) but basically it's a light fruit cake with mixed spice, citrus zest, and a layer of marzipan running through the middle, as well as on top. It is traditionally topped with eleven marzipan balls which represent the eleven apostles-simple!


I also made some classic Lenten biscuits, which are simple but ever so tasty crunchy little biscuits, packed with currants, mixed peel and sprinkled with a generous helping of caster sugar.
I love making things that taste delicious but look pretty too, so I had a go at some Easter bonnet biscuits. These are vanilla sable biscuits with a marshmallow on top to make the hat shape, and a coating of coloured royal icing. I finished mine with some simple piping and icing flowers- pretty effective huh?

Ok, so my final Easter bake, and probably my favourite this year, carrot cake complete with marzipan bunnies, carrots and chocolate mini eggs! I actually made this for my sister's birthday as it fell on Easter Monday this year, and so it just seemed right to make her an Easter themed cake!

For the cake, I took a risk and used a different recipe to my norm-but boy I'm glad I did as it turned out to be an absolute delight! The sponge was packed with carrot and raisins but also contained dessicated coconut which gave it an interesting texture without imparting an overpowering coconut flavour. I took the recipe from Claire Clark's book, Desserts, which has a great selection of recipes and some lovely photos.

Unfortunately my icing was a bit of a disaster, as cream cheese always seems to turn into a sloppy mess when I try and convert it into a sweet icing! In the end I had to add nearly a whole pack of icing sugar just to get it to a spreadable consistency, and by the time I had done that you could barely taste the cream cheese so I may as well have just made butter icing! Never mind, atleast I didn't actually use it all and so hopefully my teeth won't be dropping out any time soon!

Okay, so you're probably wondering why I've been a bad girl? Well, it's fairly obvious really...I've not updated my blog quite a while (as you may have noticed!). However, that isn't to say I haven't been baking. Quite the opposite really. I've been very busy baking, cake decorating, and trying to fit in a little college work inbetween (eek!). I was planning to wait until college was over until I made my next blog post, but tonight I decided that would be far too long, and that I would get straight to work on a new update. So here it is! As I have made quite a lot of sweets and treats in the past few months, I thought I would share a few of the best with you.

Last week we celebrated a special occasion, as my (not so) little sister Helen turned 21 years of age. With help from my sisters boyfriend Rabbi, me and my parents organised a suprise jungle themed party for Helen last Saturday, which, luckily we managed to keep a suprise until the big night! The party was a success and everybody seemed to have a brilliant time.

I put myself in charge of the sweets and cake (not suprisingly) and created a birthday cake that tied in with the jungle theme. I'd actually been planning this cake for a long time as last year, I said to myself that Helen's 21st birthday cake would be the best cake I've ever made! I really wanted to live up to my own expectations...

The finished cake consisted of three tiers made from different types of sponge: fruit cake, chocolate cake and victoria sandwich. The best three types of cake in my opinion! I decorated the cakes in animal print designs and made jungle animals out of marzipan (I also sneaked in a Tigger, did you notice?)

Everybody was certainly very impressed with the cake (including Helen) and although it took a lot of work, I felt a great sense of achievement once the finished piece was put together- the hard work always pays off in the end- especially when you eat the first slice!
I managed to get a few close up shots of the marzipan animals as I think they are kinda cute. What do you think?

As it's easter time I thought I'd bake some traditional easter treats, starting with these crisp easter biscuits with lemon zest and currants. Making these reminded me of childhood as I recall my mum making them at some point. I took my recipe from the Readers Digest recipe book, one that my mum has owned for quite a long time. I think this is a brilliant book as it contains all the British classics and a brief description of the history behind most of the recipes which I find really interesting (considering I don't really like history!). I also took my simnel cake recipe from here, as this is the one my mum has used in the past. This is a lovely moist, flavoursome cake which is packed with dried fruit and has a sweet layer of marzipan running throught the middle. The cake is baked at a very low temperature (gas mark 1) for 1.5-2 hours so you have to be patient! I think I over baked mine slightly so after taking it out the oven and letting it cool I brushed the top in some amaretto liqueur (hehe!) It smelt absolutely delightful as the amaretto enhanced the almondy flavour. I decorated the top in marzipan and 11 marzipan balls which represent the disiples of Jesus. I also made a simnel loaf cake along with this so I could cut it up into slices and give out as gifts (meaning I wouldn't have to give away any of our cake!).

This year I also really wanted to have a go at making hot cross buns- slightly sweet spiced bread with dried fruit traditionally eaten in Britain on Good Friday. I've never made bread before so I was unsure as to whether they would be successful. Everything was going well- the dough rose beautifully the first time but unfortunately when I shaped the dough into buns and left them to prove, the house just wasn't warm enough for them to rise so I ended up with rather heavy, cake-like buns! This was quite annoying considering I'd spent all day making them, but they actually taste quite nice and I almost like their denser texture! However, I have still bought a pack of hot cross buns from the shop, Birds, where I work which I know will be good! Nevermind, I'm just going to fob them off as hot cross 'rock' buns instead!

This week it was my mum's birthday so a great excuse for me to get baking because everyone deserves a cake on their birthday. The unfortunate thing is that my mum is trying to eat quite healthily at the moment so I wanted to make her a cake that she could enjoy but not feel too guilty about! After much consideration I decided on a sticky toffee and pecan cake which contains dates (they're healthy right?). We didn't have any pecan nuts so I used ground almonds in the cake mixture instead, and used margarine rather than butter to help cut the calorific content. To sandwich the cakes together I used low fat cream cheese mixed with brown sugar and maple syrup to sweeten it. I had already made model dancing ducks out of icing and marzipan (as my mum loves ducks) to put on the cake but this proved to be very difficult as they kept falling over ! I also tried to ice 'mum' on the cake in royal icing but it is NOT a good idea to do this on cream cheese icing (I should have known) as it runs! Nevertheless, my mum was still very impressed and thought the cake tasted lovely. I wasn't overly keen-it just wasn't indulgent (or sweet) enough for me (!) but it turned out perfect for my mum which is the important thing.