Cakes, biscuits and cards

 I recently had a birthday (they do creep up rather quickly, I'm finding) and to celebrate, I did some baking to take to work.  One colleague is vegan and one is gluten free, so I had to make sure they were catered for. 

I made gooey, squidgy (extremely unhealthy, but delicious) gluten free chocolate brownies, with ground almonds instead of flour.

 Ginger biscuits with a swirl of icing are my go-to biscuits for my vegan friends. 

There was, of course, a chocolate cake (another go-to recipe) with chocolate buttercream icing and chopped up Twirls on the top.  This got lots of compliments, with one colleague saying it was the best chocolate cake they had ever tasted.  Praise indeed!

Of course, after receiving presents, there are the thank you cards to write.  I have just got a few more to do, but I decided to make them myself this year, so here are the first set.  Simple designs with die cuts and stamped sentiments.  I think the clean and simple (CAS) look suits my cards.

Cakes and cards

 In amongst preparing for the craft fair, birthdays of friends and colleagues have come and gone.  My colleague, Leanne, had a big birthday last year and I made her the cake above with birthday bunting.

 This year, it was the same 'Russion Roulette Revels cake', minus the bunting.  I have written about this cake before and it is a great recipe, keeps moist and has the most delicious chocolate fudge icing, but works equally well with chocolate buttercream.  The Revels are a chocolate coated sweet, with various fillings - honeycomb, toffee, orange, chocolate, raisins and coffee.  The last two are my least favourite and I usually get more than my fair share of them!  Leanne says she always looks forward to this cake.

 I have also been making cards, again with bunting (a bit of a theme is developing here, but it is very celebratory, isn't it?).  This was for a birthday in September.

 This was Leanne's card this year.  I used glossy accents on the bunting to make it shine and used a kit to create the card.

 This is for a colleague's 50th birthday this week and involved stamping, heat embossing, glitter and glitter paper.  It was very enjoyable to make too.

 I added a few stamps and die cut numbers to the inside too.

The great thing about using stamps is that the envelope can be decorated too.  I have a feeling that I may be making more cards in the future... in fact, my mum is 80 in less than a month, so that is a perfect reason to make another card.

Cakes and Flowers

 As I get older, I have decided that I don't much care for birthdays (mine is rapidly approaching) any more.  They just serve to remind me that I haven't really achieved all that much since last year.  However, not wishing to be too much of a misery, there are some nice things about them.  The cakes were made for my colleagues at work and were an experiment using the Russian Roulette Revels cake (or Dis-aaaaaaster cake, if you prefer) mixture, (which I posted about last November) but in cake cases, rather than one big cake.  Well, I can confirm they were a huge success!

 I used chocolate butter cream icing and finished the chocolate theme with two Galaxy counters.  Yum!

 Of course, when given these lovely flowers by my colleague, Leanne, how could I fail to be cheerful?

 A gorgeous mixture of flowers.

 These were from another colleague, Carol.

Lovely pastel creams and pinks.
So, to paraphrase A A Milne, "Nobody can be uncheered with cakes and flowers"!