Three Princesses One Cake

So a friend of mine asked me to make a birthday cake for a little girl who loves Disney princesses, specifically Cinderella (her favourite), Rapunzel and Belle. I must have gone through half a dozen designs before I settled on my favourite. The trick was, I wanted to include enough detail for each princess that they could be easily identified without actually having all three as figurines on the cake.

So Cinderella got one of her little blue birds, floating pretty ribbons around her.

Pascal got to feature on behalf of Rapunzel. He is also clinging to a long rope of Rapunzel's hair, which wraps more than twice around the cake. I just love Pascal, definitely my favourite bit on this cake :)

 And representing Belle is the ruffled golden yellow dress and the red rose. 

At the party I was presented with these stunning roses (and a box of chocolates) to say thank you. They are beautiful and so fragrant, I can smell them all through my house this evening.

My Very First Lemon Meringue Pie

I made this pie as a surprise for my hubby. He has been saying for years and years that I should make him a lemon meringue pie, but he wants me to use his old recipe, which he has never been able to find. So today I decided to take a chance and use a recipe I found on the internet and make my very first lemon meringue pie, ever!

Doesn't it just look delicious? Now I have never really been a big fan of lemon meringue pie, but I have been converted! Crisp pastry beneath wonderfully tangy lemon curd, smothered in velvety smooth, soft and light meringue. It came out perfectly on my very first attempt, thanks to a wonderful recipe and brilliant explanations of the food science behind the pie by Not So Humble Pie. I highly recommend her recipe, I will certainly be making it again, very soon.

Update: A month later and I have made it twice more, and it seems to become more delicious each time!

P.S. I did the chilled filling method and didn't add any cake crumbs. I had little to no weeping, and the meringue only threatened to slide off of the slices serves the next day.

Carrot Cake and Gingerbread Cookies

I was asked to bring a carrot cake to our ward talent show, but I didn't want to make just another boring carrot cake, so I added some gingerbread cookies - decorated as carrots of course! The icing is cream cheese buttercream icing and is piped on in a method called "Pretty Petal Effect" that I learned from My Cake School. It is so easy to do, pretty quick and so effective.

Baptism Cookies