An early morning (6.30am) visitor to our garden this morning. How I wish I had been more awake and focussed the camera properly but I thought I would share with you anyway! It was a lovely start to the day!

A nice little article appeared in Woman magazine last week about female Masterchef finalists - Emily, Caroline and myself as part of the lead up to Celebrity Masterchef (are you watching?) If you click on the photo you will be able to read the article. I am not convinced that I said Tony Blair wasn't "too fussed" but hey ho!

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)!

Kathy Brown came to visit last week to plan our Alice in Wonderland Afternoon Tea (we have sold 46 tickets already which means lots of baking!!!!) and given our shared passion for cooking with flowers, I tried some new floral recipes on her! Lavender lemonade and lavender and lemon curd cookies. Both were yummy and got a seal of approval.

Lavender Lemonade
1 - 2 tsp culinary lavender (pesticide free)
6 lemons
3 heaped tbsp caster sugar

Peel thick strips of zest from three of the lemons, ensuring that there is no white pith as this will make the lemonade bitter. Place in a heatproof jug with the juice from all of the lemons, the caster sugar and lavender. Pour over 500ml boiling water, stir and leave to cool. Taste for sweetness and add a little more sugar if needed. When cooled, top up with ice and cold water (or sparkling or soda water if you prefer) to serve. The lavender gives the lemonade a really delicate floral flavour and is a pretty pale pink colour - perfect for a summers day (although where summer has gone this week, I have no idea!)

In contrast to the wedding cake which took a few hours to decorate, this was a very quick birthday cake and cupcakes that I decorated in 15 minutes yesterday (the fact that I had overslept had something to do with the speed!) With some green butter cream rapidly piped over the top and the left over decorations from the wedding cake, my ordinary toffee sponge was transformed into a garden! It goes to show that even if you don't have much time, you can still create something quite pretty! With the cupcakes baked in my new American pink cake wrappers and the little ladybirds from a shop in Vienna - these cupcakes are very "International!"

This is a wedding cake I made today for Paul and Jenny. It was a little traumatic to say the least transporting it on my lap in the car but we made there with the cake in one piece! I didn't even need the emergency decoration icing kit I took with me. You can click on the picture to see the cake in more detail. Congratulations Jenny and Paul - hope your day was extra special xxx

I am not a horsey person - I find large horses quite intimidating - but even I was won over by the wonderful Lipizzaner Stallions at the Spanish riding school. They were so beautiful and elegant. The riders rode without stirrups during the jumps - I honestly don't know how they were able to hold on! Their stables were the ultimate in luxury - an elegant arched courtyard - and the indoor area was worthy of being the grandest of ballrooms! Lucky horses!

I am just back from a wonderful long weekend in Vienna. My lovely German friend Maren had organised the trip and we rendezvous'd at Vienna airport. With a visit to the ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House, a performance by the Spanish Riding School, a ride in a pony and trap around the town and a Mozart concert, it was certainly a whirlwind packed weekend. However the main purpose of the trip with was sample all the wonderful Austrian cakes. My favourite bakery (and there are literally hundreds to choose from) was Demel - the confectionners for the Royal household - founded in 1786. The shop and cafe was steeped in baking history, with vintage cake tins and moulds. We loved it so much that we managed 4 visits in 48 hours - impressive even by my standards!! If you go, take a seat in the cafe at the back of the shop as you can sit and watch the bakers working through the large glass windows. These are some of their wonderful cakes - my favourite was the GIANT pistachio macaroon. How yummy would that be to eat! Their sugar decorations were impressive too and we loved the sugar Eiffel Tower with tennis ball made to celebrate this weeks tournament at Roland Garros.

I am envious of anyone who lives in America! Cake decorating supplies there seem to be at a level way beyond what we have here in the UK. With cake decorating, I often find that all you need is the perfect decoration to transform a very plain cake into something very special. I have recently discovered Fancy Flours website and their products are just STUNNING (I am not on commission honest but this is just the nicest cake decorating website I have seen in a long time). Postage to the UK is a lot but luckily with my brother in New York I was able to send the items to him to forward on to me. My parcel arrived the other day and these were just a few of the delights - Rainbow candies, Edible coloured paper seed packets and birthdays cakes, cupcake wrappers (I just love this idea!!!). Everything wrapped in lovely brown and white stripy tissue paper! So nice. I also took delivery of edible clear gel that can be used to decorate the wafer paper pictures with edible glitter to give a 3-D effect. I can't wait to try these all out soon! Since placing my order the site now has Barley Sugar birds - so I am just itching to place another order - it is a good job my brother is coming to the UK soon!

These are some little cakes I made at the weekend for a friend's party - chocolate cupcakes, cherry and almond cupcakes with sugar butterflies, cherry and cinnamon viennese whirls, coffee mocha meringues and rose meringues. I thought they looked quite pretty with the variety of colours on the tray and they all disappeared fast!

Sometimes it is the simplest of dishes, that take no time at all to prepare, that are the best. This weekend I served frozen Greek yoghurt (500g of yoghurt whisked with 250ml of milk and simply churned in an ice cream machine) in cocktail glasses topped with orange blossom honey and nuts. It was a perfect end to our BBQ supper and looked very elegant in the glasses. As there is no sugar or sweetness in the yoghurt, you do need the honey on top! If you don't have an ice cream machine, place the yoghurt in a tub and freeze in the freezer, remove every 30 minutes or so and whisk with a whisk to add air. Repeat this until the mixture is completely frozen.

A sneak preview of my favourite sundae in the book - the combination of creamy panne cotte, ice cold sorbet and the crackle and pop of the popping candy makes me smile! I had fun guilding some raspberries with gold leaf for decoration and fell in love with the gold spoons and glasses with gold beading that Steve had managed to find! Kate's photos are obviously so much better than mine and the above picture really doesn't do the sundaes justice but it should give a hint at the wonderful styling the team are doing! I hope you like it !

I can safely say that today has been one of the nicest days EVER! I went to Shepherd's Bush for the photo shoot for the sundae book. Kate, Steve, Sunil and Aya have created just the most beautiful pictures and the book looks better than I could ever have imagined! I thought I would share with your these fun pictures from the day - the book has a very retro 1950's feel! We had great fun with the mannequin which ended up needing a little "padding" and a petticoat to make the skirt hang perfectly! Who would have thought a mannequin at a cook book shoot! But the end picture was stunning. Thanks Kate, Steve, Sunil and Aya for such a lovely day.

Props from the Sundae shoot - so nice that I could have taken them all home with me!

This is the cake I have made this evening - a buttermilk sponge with wild strawberry jam, all sugar pink with tiny birds and trailing ribbons. It is for a special 60th Birthday celebration for my friend Lucy's Mum. Somehow she is going to transport it all the way on the train tomorrow from Bedfordshire to Carlisle! I think that will be the furthest one of my cakes has ever travelled! Happy Birthday Lucy's Mum xxx I do hope she likes it! Off to London tomorrow for the photoshoot for the Sundae book. I can't believe that this book is almost finished now and am really looking forward to meeting Steve and Sunil who are transforming my recipes into pictures! Will post a few sneak preview pics on my return if I am allowed!!!

There are times when even though I should be cross with Peapod our kitten, she just makes my heart melt. Today she had pulled flowers out of the arrangement I did for a supper party last night. I should have been cross but she looked so cute playing with a tulip that I just forgave her instantly! She has also discovered that lying in front of the Aga is a good place to be as the stone floor is warm! Could she look any more at home I wonder?

I am sure after the afternoon tea extravaganza at Kathy Brown's garden in Stevington last year we both said "Never again!". After the RHS flower show, we said "Never again!" Somehow we have forgotten this and are busy planning a wonderful event for August - A Mad Hatters Tea Party - Kathy has even ordered some Mad Hatter hats from America! With "Eat Me" cakes and "Drink Me" lemonade - I am having a delightful time dreaming up our menu. Playing card biscuits with stained glass hearts and diamonds, popping candy cakes and possibly the little seeding cakes from yesterday - with their edible mud! So what would you serve for a Mad Hatters Tea Party? All suggestions gratefully received! Details of the event will appear here on Kathy's Website at some time soon I am sure - perhaps we will see one or two of you there!!

Today is Mike's 65th Birthday - Happy Birthday Mike! As regular readers of this blog will know, Mum and Mike are very keen on gardening and we get lots of lovely fresh produce from their enormous allotment. When it came to a cake for Mike's birthday, there was no choice but for it to be a gardening theme so I made these seeding cupcakes cakes served in their very own propagator tray (which doubled as part of his present!) With oreo cookie crumbs as mud (Hello Cupcake was the inspiration for this) and green butter icing piped into leaves and stems to make the seedlings, these cakes were just the ticket!

A Song Thrush in our garden!

I have spent the last few days over in Suffolk for work - the upside is getting to eat yummy food at the Bildeston Crown - these were two of the wonderful desserts we had - sage and apple doughnut, apple tatin and goats milk panna cotte - the other a 1970's inspired arctic roll and trifle! So yummy and the pictures really don't do them justice. Needless to say after a few minutes our plates were empty and scraped clean and we were asking for seconds. The Crown recently won Silver in the National Tourism Best Hotel in the UK awards - beaten only by Michael Caines's Gidleigh Park in Devon which has two stars - so we are really proud of our hotel - Well done Chris and Hayley for a much deserved award!

This weekend was our village school's May Fete. With Maypole Dancing and Morris Dancing it was a lovely country affair. Not quite as grand as the May Fair at Ickwell that we went to last year but there is something about a village fete to warm the cockles of your heart. There are only 62 children in our village school but I think this is a good thing - the older children and younger children mix so well together. We were treated to Tai Kwando demonstrations and rice crispy cakes for 5p. What a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon!