5 things for 2013

I have borrowed the idea for this post from my friend Helen, who's blog you can read here. Helen has been writing some blogs recently about the 5 good things that have happened to her recently, and this format really inspired me. Rather than copy it directly, I thought I'd use it here to look forward to 2013 and log some of my *whisper it* "resolutions". 

I know some people are not really big fans of resolutions, or using the New Year to re-evaluate what's going on, so if this is you, you might not want to read on. Personally I think that any time of year is great to do this, but a new calendar year just feels like a good excuse to do it. It also gives you a fixed timeframe to look back on to see how you got on.

So. What do I intend to refresh or start this year? Well...

1. Get healthier.

Yeah, yeah, I know. This is pretty standard, and probably the one I will fail at the most. But hey, I felt I should give it a go at least. I have put weight on this year. Quite a bit of weight. This I realised when I saw this photo of myself taken at Andy's graduation. Not good. 

Me and Andy. Absolutely horrified by this pic so it's my inspiration shot for this weightloss attempt. 

Plan is: carry on cooking yummy things from BBC Good Food Magazine, cut out "little treats", and try new things from Nadia Sawalha's new book Greedy Girls Diet ; exercise more. (Oh and Andy's doing it too, so I have some moral support). Wish me luck.

2. Crafting

I love craft. In particular I love sewing, and more recently knitting and crochet. So my crafty resolution(s) is/are to carry on with more. I need to get back to sewing clothes (not done any since July); knit some more including learning how to knit cables, finish my knitted waistcoat, and knit a gorgeous jumper I found in this months Let's Knit! magazine. I also have some baby stuff to do for this years crop of new little people; and I need to carry on my crochet blanket. I've only got 10% done so far, and I need this to be more by the end of the year or I'll lose the will to finish it!

My knitted waistcoat so far! 

3. Baking

I have been running a small business doing cakes for the last 18 months or so. It's been fun, but it's not really bringing in enough money to make it worth my while. So, my business will close at the end of this month. I will still happily do cakes for people, but it just won't be through my business (if you know me and need a cake/cupcakes then please do ask!). One day when I have more time to spare at weekends, or if I'm ever lucky enough to be able to try it full time I will come back to it, so it's "au revoir" rather than goodbye!

I'm doing cakes for my lovely friends Linzi and Steve for their wedding in May, and very much looking forward to these as there'll be several different batches with more natural decorations than usual.

I'm also hoping to continue with my cake decorating classes at Trafford College in April to develop my skills further. I'm looking forward to learning to make flowers and frills and lots of other things which I can use in the future.

And I'd like to make more bread. Tying in with resolution 1, I'd like to make a good rye or pumpernickel bread, and there is a lovely looking recipe in the latest Great British Bake Off book which I'm going to try, and after I'm happy with the results from resolution 1, then maybe the doughnuts too!

4. Read more

Since I got (addicted to) my iPhone a few years ago, I have gained the habit of reading facebook, twitter, pinterest, and BBC news before I go to bed. Which has totally taken over my traditional reading time. So this year, the book is going to claim back this half hour. I've got a few books I'd like to read to begin with so I'm going to read/reread:

• The Hobbit (started already)
• A book about how sewing helped the war effort in World War II I've borrowed off Mum (can't remember the title right now)
• Something Poirot or other Agatha Christie
• Some more Philippa Gregory. Not sure where I'm up to in her chronological series' but I'll work it out. 

5. Professional development

I need to get my revalidation for Chartered status done. This is a particularly dull one I know, but I need it to be here. I've started it, but too much of resolution 2, 3, and 4 always get in the way. So I think this is a good one to end my resolution list with. 

So there it is. My plan for 2013. Oh, apart from a sneaky 5a) blog more! I have really enjoyed my blogging so far, so will carry on as much as possible this year. Hope to see you along the way!

Made by Mich - wedding cupcakes so far...

Given I posted about the wedding cupcakes I made for Easter weekend, I thought I'd better post about some of the other wedding cakes I've made.

I'd been making cupcakes for friends' birthday presents for a while when someone commissioned me to make some cakes for their 30th birthday party 2 years ago. (I will blog about my other cakes another time). But it wasn't til some friends asked me if I would bake their wedding cupcakes that I really thought I might be able to make some money out of it, and so Made By Mich cupcakes was born. I've been "in business" for just over a year now, and it's only a mini business as I work full time, and I'm not financially stable enough to give it a go properly (one day...).

Anyway, I'll tell you more about the other cakes another time. So...

Ben and Leanne's wedding, April 2011.

The first wedding cupcake tower I made was for Ben and Leanne in Durham last year. Leanne chose a butterfly theme and had gold cases, lemon cupcakes with lemon icing and caramel cupcakes with vanilla icing. Leanne sourced the icing butterflies and those on wire from eBay. eBay is really very fabulous for cake decorations!

Ben's Grandad did the topcake which I added to the finished tower with butterflies,gold ribbon, and the brides bouquet was arranged in front. I was lucky enough to be a guest at this wedding, and the venue was absolutely stunning, and I was more than a little bit scared and honoured that my cakes were the focal point of the hall right in front of the top table! But it did look very lovely in the beatiful setting.

Susie and Tom's wedding, May 2011.

The next wedding I did was for more friends, Susie and Tom. Susie had a City Centre wedding and went for a chic black and purple theme. Susie chose chocolate cakes with vanilla icing, and Tom was more than a bit fond of the raspberry cupcakes with white chocolate icing, so I did those as well. I made them a topcake which was chocolate with a vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam filling, covered with sugarpaste. Susie topped the cake with a floral display we found on eBay, and found some lovely purple sugarpaste roses also on eBay, which saved me a job!

Usually I like to put the decoration on the cakes to the left hand side of the cakes, which you can see above with Leanne's butterflies and below with Jenny's cakes, but Susie was insistent that she wanted them on the top, and I think they do look nice after all.

Jenny and Pukul's wedding, November 2011.

The third wedding cupcake tower I made was for Jenny and Pukul, for their Indian wedding. The bride and groom both had ideas this time, which was new to me! Pukul proved very useful tho, as I initially had trouble sourcing dark blue cupcake cases. Pukul found some on the website I usually use! (In my defence they were out of stock at the time!).

Jenny and Pukul wanted fresh flavours that everyone would like, but also done so people would know what they were eating. In the end they chose lemon cupcakes with lemon icing and ginger cupcakes with ginger icing. One would be in gold cases, the other in blue.

The blue and gold were the theme of the wedding, and Jenny and Pukul brought a sample of their invitations to show me the shapes and colours.

From this, I designed a little blue and gold paisley shape for their decorations. I cut out 100 little teardrop shapes, pushed the tip over with the end of a paint brush and then used lustre dust with a drop of vodka to paint the gold pattern (the vodka evaporates!). I pushed a little dent with the end of the paintbrush into the middle of the shape before I painted them, then glued a silver dragee into the hole with some Squires edible glue.

I think the overall effect was a success, and the bride and groom were very pleased. Oh, and to let the guests know what they were eating, there were little cards out on the table to show which colour cases were which flavour. Jenny's Mum made the topcake, and again a floral display for the top, this time by the wedding florist.

I really enjoy wedding cakes, although they take a LONG time, the feeling at the end of the effort is all worth it. I've got two more booked in, but not til December this year, and May 2013...

Spring wedding cupcake tower

On Good Friday, I delivered a cupcake tower for Laura and Chris' wedding in the Ox Inn, Castlefield.
Laura wanted a fresh, spring theme to her cakes and was inspired by Angela Griffin's lemon drizzle cake from this year's Celebrity Great British Bake Off for Sport Relief, which was finished with daises as decoration. So far, so good, and I bought a set of daisy plunger cutters from goold old eBay. Flavours were easy to choose - Laura went for half lemon, half carrot, and a victoria sponge topcake. After lots of thinking and discussion, Laura chose silver cases to compliment the light theme, and white icing for the topcake with a white ribbon.

We settled on 84 cupcakes, and as this was 7 batches, ended up with 4 lemon and 3 carrot.

The daisies for the cupcakes were cut out from plain white sugarpaste using the medium size cutter and left to dry. Once dried, I used an icing felt tip pen to colour yellow centres. These were put onto the cupcakes in my signature style - off centre so you still see the tip of the icing swirl.

The topcake was fun to do, if a little challenging! After covering with white sugarpaste, I cut and stuck something like 200 mini daisies onto the cake using Squires edible glue. Phew!

Laura wanted the daisies to look like they were cascading with them closer together at the top, and more spaced out at the bottom. I think I managed this alright given the space available on a 6 inch cake. Once the icing was dry, I then coloured the daisy centres with my yellow icing colour pen:

Probably the most labour intensive of the wedding cakes I've made until now, but definitely worth it. Laura and Chris are on their honeymoon so I've not had any feedback from them yet, but I hope I did their day justice.