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Reaching the final of Masterchef 2007 was a rollercoaster of emotion, with huge highs and lows, but I loved every minute and learnt a huge amount. I owe a great deal to John and Gregg who had faith in my ability when I did not believe in myself. Since competing on the programme my life has changed considerably. I now write cookery columns for two magazines, give cookery demonstrations and am just working on my 13th cook book - unlucky number for some but not for me!!! I love all forms of country cooking, using seasonal and locally sourced produce. This blog is to enable me to share with you a few of my recipes and baking ideas. Enjoy Hannah xxxx

Monday 15 June 2009

You will have to forgive the lack of posts at the end of last week - lawyering got in the way of nice cooking things. I finished work at 11pm on Friday and then had to ice three cakes ready for Saturday. Needless to say, they were very rushed as I was tired but everyone seemed happy with them - a christening cake for George, a tractor cake for Niall (the tractor is a bit small for the field and the enormous carrots in my view but Niall is 4 and didn't mind and at midnight I really didn't have anywhere to magic a larger tractor up from!) and a chocolate extravaganza cake for our nephew who was 13. The idea for the chocolate cake came from Rachel Lucas who reads this blog - thank you so much Rachel for the inspiration! The bottom layer was a ring cake so there was a hidden cavity of sweets and lollipops when the cake was cut and the kids were very excited about that (although you would have thought that with the huge number of sweets on the cake they wouldn't have needed any more)!

9 comments:

Celia Hart said...

The tractor cake is brilliant!

Hope you had a rest on Sunday :-)

Celia
x

Joanna said...

Well, of course, they're all wonderful, but the sweetie cake is truly inspired, especially the secret cavity .... so much better than anything I ever made for my children's birthday parties :)

Brilliant ... how did you glue the sweeties? With some sort of sticky icing, I suppose ...

Joanna

Hannah said...

Thanks Celia - sadly no rest for the wicked yesterday as I had a friend to visit but we had a nice girlie day!

Joanna - it was just three cakes (9in, 7in and 5in) covered in chocolate buttercream and then the chocolates stuck onto it - overnight the buttercream set and everything stayed in place when we took 1 1/2 hours in the car! Under the marshmallows was melted chocolate to hold them in place but this was more because I had left over chocolate from the tractor cake than by design. Hope that helps
Hannah
xxx

Rita said...

So lovely and I salute you to do it so late at night! Fantastic!

Lucy said...

Ah they are all brilliant - I love the sweetie cake :D

Marie Rayner said...

I know how you feel Hannah! There are just not enough hours in the day! I love all your cakes! They're so magical and whimsical. I would give anything to have someone make a cake like that for me. Your friends and family are so very lucky!!

Rachel Lucas said...

The Chocolate Extravaganza idea was from me, Hannah! Boast boast... I LOVE your interpretation of it, I imagine it was an amazing surprise. You have been outdoing yourself recently in the cake department, I'm so impressed. They are all stunning. I hope you had a restful weekend after all that work and enjoyed the sun for a while at least xxx Rachel

Hannah said...

Hi Rachel - thanks so much for reminding me (I really should have gone back to the posts last year to see for myself but just haven't had time) - Anyway I have now given you full (and much deserved credit) in the actual post! Thank you.

Rita, Lucy, Marie - thank you for your lovely comments

Hannah
xxx

Katie said...

Wow that tractor cake is amazing. I bet it went down a treat