Whistlin' While I Work

So here they are, the pictures from Restoration Cake's very first 100% dairy-free wedding.

White sugar roses hung out to dry.



Pink sugar gerberas drying (yes, that is a bath sponge... very useful in sugarcraft!).



Dusts for enriching the colours of the flowers.



Roses resting after dusting.



This is me, arranging and re-arranging cupcakes at the venue.





My heart stops for a moment every time I do this! One slip and... my heart skipped just thinking about it!



The finished product was a 6" Red Velvet cutting cake atop 100 Vanilla and Red Velvet cupcakes decorated in our Pretty Pleas style.








All that remains now is for me to wish EJ and Anne-Marie every happiness in their life together.

Hope you enjoyed the cake!

C

Everybody's Starry Eyed

I have been a busy little bee over the last couple of weeks, both in my dayjob (which seems to have been stupidly hectic of late) and with all things Restoration Cake.

Honestly, I just want to make cake and be fabulous. C'est tout. Not much to ask.

My most recent creation looks to be quite humble at first glance. A royal blue iced chocolate cake (non-dairy, I must add) covered with a sprinkling of silver stars.



However, if you know your constellations (I must confess that I do not) you will see that this seemingly random sprinkling is in fact an acurate map of the Monoceros constellation and its surroundings.



Yes, it was painstaking but I was so chuffed with my efforts that I sent the map, complete with the tiny holes I had made with my scribe, to my customer with the cake!

C

While The Cats Are Away…

… the mice will go to The Designer Wedding Show.

Conspicuous by our lack of diamond rings and big days to plan, the most stylish girl I know and I attended this year’s Designer Wedding Show in Battersea Park. The mission was strictly fact-finding and networking, though we would have had to be made of stone to have not made time in our itinerary for dreaming and (frankly) plotting a little in the absence of our respective beaus.

The whole event was an inspiration. There was beauty at every turn. Fabulous vintage inspired gowns of antique lace and appliqué. Jewellery and accessories either sourced from vintage stores or recreated to appear antique. Intricate wedding stationary, so beautiful that I went out the next day and bought myself a calligraphy set to improve my penmanship. We actually saw a scribe… and a Silhouette Artist; these wonderful crafts, that do not really exist any longer in our day to day lives, are thriving in the Wedding industry.

Even more inspiring to me was the overwhelming power of the female in the room. Fiancés had in the most part been left at home and women flocked to the show with their girlfriends and Mothers. Again, I would have to be pretty cold not to be moved at the sight of a Mother helping her Daughter try on a veil.

Even the stories that we heard that day told of the power of women to create things of beauty. We met one woman, who told us that she was one of a collective, who began her craft in her 50s after her husband “did the runner”. She explained to us how she and her group of friends had focused their energies on creating beautiful and frivolous trinkets.

I was thrilled to have my silhouette cut by Alison Russell who learnt her craft from her Grandmother. Alison now offers a service by which wedding guests can pose for 2-3 minutes as her scissors glide deftly around a small sheet of black paper and the resulting silhouette is mounted in a card and given as a Wedding favour.

www.alison-russell.co.uk

And here is mine.



I have big plans for this little beauty…

So as I work on the final designs for our next Restoration Cake photoshoot, which will be dedicated to Wedding Cakes and all things romantic, I send this belated Valentine to my Mother and my Grandmother who taught me to bake and be fabulous. Great big love to all my Sisters (you know who you are) and all you amazing ladies out there.

C

Probably the Best Way to Spend a Friday Night In...

...Fashioning beautiful fondant roses, with a glass of red wine.

As promised, here are the pictures of the Birthday Cake I was working on for last night. It was a 6" Chocolate Mud Cake (i.e. there is a little bit of coffee in the mix which makes the chocolate feel richer) with a Vanilla Buttercream filling, decorated with black and white fondant roses. Tres chic, non?

It went down well... yum.

Wishing you all a fabulous week.

C

The Measure of a Man (and Other Tasty Treats)

As January melts into February, my thoughts often turn to the final moments of our two King Charles’s.

30th January (1649) marks the anniversary of the Regicide. I remember being about 8 or 9 years old at school, learning the first lessons about our Tudor and Stuart history, and one aspect of the killing of the King has always remained with me. I can vividly recall my teacher (Mrs Howitt… she smelt of Poison by Dior) telling us that when King Charles I was led onto the scaffold, he wore two vests to guard against the bitter cold lest his shivers be mistaken for a sign of fear.

The image of a King loathe to shiver before his rebellious subjects really touched me. I am reluctant to put this down to sympathy as it feels disrespectful to pity a King but I am left with an impression of pride and dignity in the moment that the Divine Right of Kings was shattered so violently.

6th February (1685) marks the anniversary of the death of King Charles II. That image of the King dying slowly surrounded by the ticking clocks that so fascinated him.

The constitutional crisises prompted by the deaths of both Kings have had a lasting impact upon the Great Britain that we know today. What I deduce from the periods of Republic and Revolution that followed both of these events is this country’s dependence upon a sound Monarchy. I am proud of this lesson learnt. A true Royalist through and through.

The only problem that I face year after year at this sombre time is the glorious distraction that is my best friend’s Birthday. I would love to join the Cavaliers of The Sealed Knot in their annual drinks on the Mall but this event is always scheduled on the last Saturday in January and I am forever being called upon to drink with the Birthday girl.

I would love to pay a solemn pilgrimage to Banquetting House to look out to where the scaffold would have stood and lay flowers at the foot of the statue in Trafalgar Square (erected by the Son to commemorate the Father) but I am invariably tied up in my kitchen fashioning a suitably chic Birthday cake.

Today, I light a candle in memory of the most fabulous King of England… and I am sure that he will approve most heartily when it is blown out by the most stylish girl I know. Tomorrow, I will post you a picture of this cake, because I wouldn’t want to spoil tonight’s surprise!

The King is dead. Long live the Queen.

C

A Tidy Number 350

Perhaps my first item of business should be to wish you all a very happy New Year! May your 2010 be everything that you could ever wish that it would be and much more.

This year has started on something of a manic note, but the dust is beginning to settle just enough for me to take stock of that which is truly important.

I should probably begin this little musing with a bit of background… I should explain that I am not top of the class when it comes to Maths. Sure, I have a Maths GCSE on my CV (in which I scraped a C grade by some miracle or on the merit of good penmanship) and I can figure out essential percentages enough to see me through the sales, but my brain is not tuned into numbers.

Having said that, figures, facts and statistics thrill me. Much in the same way as knowing that my CDs are in alphabetical order, I take comfort and some small pleasure in a neat number.

So this afternoon, with the shameless use of a calculator to check my workings, I came across the revelation that 2010 marks 350 years since the Restoration. I cannot even begin to express my excitement at this tidy number. I immediately reached for Pepys' Diary and started reading along with his January entries!

It will take me more than one post to explain what this date means to me. I started rambling and ranting and raving but thought better than to go straight into this in my first post of the year.

You have plenty of Restoration 1660 themed musings along with many Restoration Cake updates to look forward to this year. 2010 promises to be an exciting year for Restoration Cake. We have a new Wedding Cake gallery coming soon but, in the meantime, enjoy these little lovlies... 100% dairy-free mini-cakes.

C

The Crazy Month Of December

My goodness, what a month I have had. I should start at the beginning…

On Monday 1st December, I woke up under the same roof that Charles II would have woken up under many times, many years before me. My wonderful Mr. C found a little piece of heaven called New Park Manor in the New Forest where we could enjoy a little much needed R&R. The Manor was a favourite hunting retreat of our patron King and his mistresses – Barbara Villiers even stayed there. It is now a hotel and spa.



The building is steeped in references to the Restoration. The guest rooms are even named after great women of the era and each door is hung with a portrait to match. We were in a suite named after the Queen, Catherine of Braganza. Our floor to ceiling windows overlooked the front of the property and into the forest. I disregarded the driving rain, opened up the heavy sash window to look outside and started to cry. I acknowledge that I was a bit tired and emotional (it has been a long, heavy year and this was our first break together in a long time) but there was history in this place, in the walls, in the ground, in the trees; there was a connection.





As I lay on the beautician’s table, I drifted in and out of various levels of sleep and awake whilst having a facial and tried to imagine how long the journey from London would have been for the Royal party. I tried to imagine the Royal table set up in the dining room that we ate in the night before. I imagined the King taking his walks about the grounds and leading the hunt out into the forest. Most of all I cursed myself for being a heavy sleeper and missing the opportunity to be haunted by some remnant of that time gone by. Before I knew it, I was being told to take my time getting up and dressed.

That afternoon, Mr. C and I bubbled away in the hot tub outside on a crisp December afternoon, watching the horses and deer frolicking in evergreen surroundings, and we wondered when our world would next be so blissfully quiet.

The moment we returned, the work resumed. I was painting sugar cameos, gilding sugar cherubs, stamping out sugar snowflakes and making load after load of ButterCream in preparation for Animal Aid’s Christmas Fayre.





I took Thursday 3rd out of my office to make 4 Dairy-Free Celebration Cakes to give out free samples. On Friday 4th, I was back at my desk looking after not only my own 2 bosses (a COO and SVP) but also the CEO of our company. This made me number 1 PA in the office for a day… and it was a busy one!

Once I was back home on Friday night, I was back in the kitchen whipping up 120 Vanilla Cupcakes.

Saturday morning, I made an early start on the Pretty Pleas, Cinnamon Swirl, Chocolate, Nell and Minette Cupcakes to complete the menu. By 12:30am on Sunday 6th December, 500 Cupcakes and 4 Celebration Cakes were stacked up ready to go to the Fayre. A bottle of Cava later, I was sound asleep.



The Fayre was amazing. Restoration’s stall was constantly busy and we met so many fabulous people. The free samples were a hit (who says no to free cake?) and the Cupcakes were flying off the shelves of our 7-tier cake stand. The feedback we got was amazing! Though a few potential customers may have been disappointed with our disregard for any aspect of healthy living at our table, the majority were enthusiastically enjoying a sugar-high on us! I have never seen so many happy faces!

So it has taken me this long to recover from the excitement and the long-hours but now I finally have the opportunity to say a massive thank you to everyone who came along on Sunday. Thank you for your custom, your comments and your lovely emails! Please do all keep in touch and I will be sure to keep you abreast of all things Restoration Cake.

And finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to the amazing Restoration team, without whom, none of this would have been possible.

Kate – Thank you for your impeccable sense of style, thank you for staying up late with me on Saturday night icing Cupcakes, and thank you for staying on your feet all day on Sunday. You are the most stylish girl I know and you are fabulous. www.thefabricofmylife.wordpress.com



Josh – Where did you come from? I think you must have fallen in from the heavens! Who knew that you were such an amazing salesman? Thank you for your time, unfailing energy, and sheer class.



Chris – I couldn’t do any of this without you. Fullstop. Thank you for being my Mr.



Cx