From Little Acorns.....

I love making cakes, you know this about me. I love it, love it. Recently I have made some more elaborate cakes. A wedding cake (yawn!) and a couple of friends birthday cakes (one involving a frog on a lily pad and one with very bad writing!). But none of my cakes have ever been made for public consumption i.e. for people I don't know, until recently.
I was at a friends birthday party (the bad writing cake) when another friend asked me to make a cake for her daughter's upcoming 5th birthday. Her daughter likes dogs, well actually she LOVES dogs, obsessed. The commission was to make a dog based cake for a five year old and some cupcakes for the adults attending the party. My friend insisted that she would pay me, I demurred, she insisted again and I said "well, let's talk about that later" (not good at the taking of the money from friends, you know what I mean?). I came away from the party with a hangover and a job, not too shabby for a Sunday night in Camberwell.
I had a few weeks before the big day and spent some time researching dog cakes on the internet, as you can imagine there was a lot to see. In the end I decided on dalmatian cake, the dalmatian being Ella's favourite of all the dogs. The cake itself was a chocolate cake (from Nigella's Feast), two layers with a vanilla butter cream in the middle, covered with white fondant icing and decorated with black spots. The crowning glory was a fondant dalmatian (with red scarf) sat atop the cake. After getting approval for my design it was just a matter of waiting until the week before to make the fondant dog and ice the cake board and the night before to make the cake.
The morning of the party I made 2 dozen cupcakes (12 vanilla, 12 chocolate) and decorated them with fondant icing paws (see below). All that was left to do was to get them safely to the party, that's where a husband with a car comes in handy (especially when I don't drive). We delivered the cakes and stayed to enjoy the festivities (5 year olds birthday parties a very tiring...) and saw the cake delivered to Ella with candles. She was very happy with her doggie cake and there were compliments from the adults for the cupcakes. My first foray into paid cake making was a success.

Since then I have been made redundant from my day job and one of my ideas is to start a Cakes and Cardies business, to somehow turn my love of baking into a job. It is a challenge, daunting etc but if I don't try it now when will I? Onwards and upwards.