BUSY, BUSY.

I have been really busy since my last post and much of it, one way or another has involved baking.

My friend Rachel asked me if I could make a birthday cake for her granddaughter's fourth birthday.  I remembered that somewhere amongst all my cook books was one which included several designs for children's birthday cakes so I sent her some pictures and she chose this one.  The family live in France so a fairy tale French château seemed perfect.

The only problem is that I have never ever made anything like it before!

I did a little mock-up of the design using cake tins I already had and ice cream cones for the turret roofs.

 On the internet I found several pages of similar designs to what I was aiming for.

Luckily Nick was back in the UK for a week and was able to bring back cake decorations and other stuff which I had no idea if I could buy here in France.

I baked the sponges for the cake and between Rachel, myself and Nick (and a few glasses of wine) we decorated it.  It took two whole hours.

The birthday girl was thrilled with it.