Actually the nightmare came after Christmas when our mixer broke down. We were working on a cake and just as we had started the mixer broke and that was it...sheer panic and a mini meltdown. It took everything not to throw ourselves on the floor and cry and scream a little. All was well in the Kiss Me Cake kitchen though because we have our trusty back-up Ken! Ken is an ancient mixer that we keep in the back of the storage room, he is very noisy and slightly slow in his old age, but for emergencies he is brilliant and on this day he absolutely saved us and the cake. Yippee!
The nightmare that we had before Christmas wasn't a bad one though, in fact it turned out to be one of our favourite cakes. Making a Tim Burton themed cake was an absolute dream and we had so much fun with this one, the only drawback was all of the black icing we had to use...black icing is the worst. It sticks to everything and colours your hands a yucky grey colour, we like to buy pre-coloured black icing, we often make our own and we absolutely dread it when we have to, it takes forever and colours all of your hands and fingers...it can take days to get rid of no matter how many times you wash your hands and scrub; but look how fabulous our cake turned out, totally worth the yucky grey hands.
Hello folks! We have completely been neglecting our blog, but that's just because we have been so busy! As well as lots of Christmas cakes to get out in December we were inundated with Birthday cake orders and so we've been busy little bees creating some fab birthday cakes and preparing for our next wedding fair.
Those of you that know us will know that we run our business alongside our normal 9-5 jobs. Sometimes this can get a bit hectic and we've been known to work late in to the night after work to make sure we get our cakes out and looking beautiful. It's hard work but we absolutely love it and have achieved a good balance in the way that we work. We plan everything down to the last second so we know we will get the cake done and to a high standard too. After a long day at work it's actually very therapeutic to get in to the bakery and get working on our next order and it's so much fun too.
Keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter pages...when we are not blogging we are definitely Face-booking and Tweeting and you can get regular updates from us there and see what's happening in our bakery.
Here are some pictures of what we've been up to.
Every year we try to commit to helping two charities. This year we supported the Teenage Cancer Trust and Music and the Deaf.
Most recently we worked with Music and the Deaf. Music and the Deaf helps people with hearing loss to continue to experience music. The charity has set up music clubs throughout the country and offers people the chance to learn a musical instrument or take part in signed song by joining a signing choir. Music and the Deaf is supported by Sir Richard Stilgoe. In October they re-launched their new logo and opened up their new offices at Eureka. We were so pleased to be approached by them to provide their cake for the launch.
We wanted our cake to capture what it is Music and the Deaf do, so we wanted our cake to be extremely visual with the piano keys spiralling around the cake and the music bursting out of the top, the spirals represented the sign for sing and then we included notes and incorporated the new logo.
It was an absolute pleasure to provide a cake for such an important charity. More information about Music and the Deaf can be found here:
http://matd.org.uk/
If you would like us to support your charity event. Please send details to kissmecakebakery@gmail.com
We are afraid that it is official as we are declaring it, there is always time for cake. And doesn't it make you feel better? Yesterday we handed out 100 cupcakes to some hard-working people, everyone accepted one and every person took it with a smile on their face, you see cake makes us happy!
Here's a lovely bit of carrot cake that we whipped up for a birthday recently...and how brilliant it is too as it's got one of your five-a-day in it! We always said cake was good for you didn't we? We also believe that baking a cake can make you feel happy too...have a look at one of our favourite books "Saved by Cake" proof that baking really can banish the blues. This book is full of quirky recipes with some interesting flavours too who knew coca cola was delicious in a cake or even beetroot!
http://www.mariankeyes.com/books/Saved-by-Cake
No longer do we worry about the calories, if it brings a smile to your face then it's worth having. Even better if you whip a cake up yourself you can burn a whole load of calories that justify eating it! Did you know that squatting in front of the oven can burn between 200-300 calories? And you can burn up to 100 calories just from rolling pastry? We found this amazing article "Great British Bake Off: The Workout" on the Radio Times website...we're so impressed we're thinking of putting this article on the kitchen wall!
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-03/great-british-bake-off-the-workout
From now we shouldn't pass on cake as we've found some health benefits right here, it makes us happy and we can burn calories whilst making it and after doing a bit of googling we can burn 29 calories eating it! Woo hoo...happy cake days everybody!
