There is a funny TV advert that my family seems to have adopted as their motto. I can't remember what it advertised (frozen pre-cut veg, I think), but it aired in South Africa and it showed a group of older women knitting with a little girl sitting and asking questions. She asked, "Gran, what did you do when you were younger?". The older ladies, without batting an eyelid, say: "We cooked."

The little girl had a think about that, and, then she asked, "Yes, but what did you do for fun?"

The grandmothers looked at each other, thought for a second, and replied, "We baked."

When we're older our grandchildren will ask the same of us and I'm almost certain our answers will be the same (with knitting, quilting, etc. in there too). That's why whenever I catch up with my family on Skype we always exchange pleasantries and reports of the week with a chuckle and an exclamation of 'we baked!'.

And this weekend I baked.

















The EEWI ladies joined forces to bake up a storm for the Victoria Park Celebrates festival on Saturday. There was another sale scheduled for Sunday, so many of us whipped up a few extra goodies that were due to spill over for the next day and thank goodness we did: it was spectacularly busy inside our tea shop.






















The event had a 40s theme so there was bunting, stripes, and pearls aplenty. It was as if the cast of Mary Poppins had stepped out of the TV set and were enjoying a lazy morning in Victoria Park instead. The bandstand, above, was decorated with jolly bunting and had a lot of lovely acts on the go like singers, dancers and bands. It was a cold and wet day so most people gathered under their umbrellas and watched on cautiously, but it was generally quite a lot of fun and a lovely Saturday out.

















This is the view from within our tea shop tent. As you can see, the organisers were being quite ambitious with their beach chairs all set up in rows near the band stand!






















Inside things were heating up as the electricity man finally came to connect the urns and we could start serving tea and cakes. The EEWI has a wonderful collection of cake stands which come out for events like these - aren't they lovely?






















They look even better with cakes on them. I baked the night before and made vanilla cupcakes (the pink and white swirly ones in the picture above), generously-sized chocolate brownies with walnuts and pecans, and courgette cakes. After a whole night of baking I was too exhausted to get out the camera, and promptly forgot to photograph my wares the next morning too. Oops. Everything was delicious, I promise.

















The bad weather may have played in our favour a bit: everyone flocked to the tea shop selling hot tea, coffee and delicious cakes. And they were delicious. We had banana breads, chocolate cupcakes, exceptional chocolate millionaire shortbread, marzipan cake, marmalade slices, and more.

















Aside from tea and cake, and listening to the Charleston Duo, there was plenty of other things to do as well. A children's carousel turned giddily around, Make Do & Mend were in the tent next door organising brooch-making, children could take a closer look at bugs and specimens in another tent, and there were rides to be had too. The rickshaws were done up with festive floral accents, although the hooded-drivers lacked their 40s gear.

















And what would a 40s festival be without a horse-and-carriage?

As always with an EEWI event, a bit of hard work selling cakes, a lot of very good company, and a jolly Saturday indeed.

Now, I know I said I'd bake a cake for the sugar roses and share photographs with you but I was a little distracted (forgivably, I think) by these:


Can you handle your excitement at my teapot shortbread biscuits? Maybe it's just me, but there's something so very satisfying about the pastel shades of royal icing on shortbready goodness.






















I made teapots and scalloped circles, miniature heart biscuits and giant hearts. I made some cupcake-shaped biscuits as well but The Mister didn't photograph them.
















I lined the hearts with white piping icing and filled with with a soft lilac icing (you can see in the image above) but they're oh-so-nice without any filling, too.






















And just so you know that I didn't forget you all completely, I whipped up a batch of strawberry swirl sweetheart cupcakes and iced them with light strawberry buttercream. This one is topped with one of the miniature sugar roses I made this weekend.
















You can see the strawberry swirl cake here (a bit) with the layers of vanilla and strawberry sponge showing through the white cases. I used a catering-sized piping nozzle to make nice layered buttercream swirls (yum) and topped with edible roses and glitter.






















I made a selection of pink and white hearts from sugar paste as well, and sprinkled those with pearl dragees (why aren't they just called pearl balls?). I like this one best - simple, pretty and yum. As you can see, I had a bit of buttercream left over so I popped it into one of my icing squeezy bottles and popped on a star-shaped nozzle to pipe little flowers on top of the scalloped circles.






















The roses turned out very well, I think, and they're quite easy to make once you get the hang of them. I love these colours, the two-toned sponge cakes, the almost-transparent edible glitter... I think we found a wedding winner! The only thing now is to figure out how to display the cookies and cupcakes at the actual wedding. Cake stand? Pretty antique plates?

Here's my rather fool-proof sugar biscuit recipe from this website:

Shortbread sugar biscuits

I've been zooting around London these last few weeks covering some interesting stories and reviewing restaurants (ah the life of a freelance journalist!), and I thought I'd share this one with you. I had to head down to Battersea this week to review Cake Boy - Eric Lanlard's patisserie and cake emporium.

Candy Cakes is a London-based cake store serving up luminous candy-topped cakes and cupcakes out of a green-and-pink shop. There are a few of them out there, but we went to the Covent Garden branch which I spied on one of my first sightseeing outings of the local area and have been wanting to visit again ever since. 

As you saw from my last post, I had an encounter with the cupcake fairy this morning. My oh-so-funny blog title today refers to my journey to the class which included lots of very fast walking, a 45-minute train ride, getting stuck in a lift, and some more frantic walking. But I got there.


So the Cupcake Fairy was actually Lisa of the Cocoa Box (pictured here).

She was very funny, full of clever foodie analogies and witty banter. I particularly enjoyed the way that the sugarcraft instructions were "illustrated" with analogies of various English sweets:"Roll it out into a Wrigleys Spearmint, and then take your thumb and flatten it into a Werthers original!". It makes you feel like you're absolutely in the right place if you have interest in sweet treats and cupcake delights!

lookee! I made cupcakes.