Happy Mother's Day!

I love the kind of weekend where you feel like you got a lot done, but not so much the kind of weekend where you reach Sunday night, and realise you need another weekend to recover...!

I was overwhelmed by orders, requests, and feedback on the Mother's Day range I put out this year - my very first! so thank you to everyone who got in touch. The cupcake bouquets (previewed here) were definitely the most popular, and I had a ball making them! Here's the line up on my kitchen table yesterday afternoon waiting for pick ups:

Not a fabulous photo, chances are pretty high that I was covered in icing sugar by this point and trying to keep my camera clean-ish. I hope they all made it to their destinations safely!

Unsurprisingly, the LAST thing my Mum wanted this year was cupcakes - of any form - so I had to compromise on cake (since then it gets "shared" :)) and a painting (slightly less edible, but equally time consuming).

Again not a great quality photo, but would you believe - when I went to edit it tonight, it was focussed on some of my ridiculously long hair which had dangled into shot. Sigh. I clearly wasn't paying ANY attention at the time. Given that I was half asleep when I finished the painting itself, it's probably for the best :)

But back to the cake, since that's what we all came here for.

And not just cake. Cake with a VIEW

And Frangipanis! And happiness. And 3 layers of ribbon because I had no patience for letting the buttercream set, and it kept soaking in. White ribbon + tiredness + no other ribbon colour options = fail. Luckily you can't really tell in the photo. (Hush, no need to spoil my illusions!)

This was my very first go at making frangipanis, very last minute, and with no tools, cutters or molds... These were entirely hand made and shaped, and then painted with a little food colouring and water. I love the way they turned out for something so last minute - definitely inspired me to learn the RIGHT way though! Wonder if there actually IS a right way... I'm sure there's a gadget that does it all for you, but then where's the fun in that!

And the best part? (seriously, the best part) underneath all that buttercream and sunshiney goodness, are two tiers of dense and delicious White chocolate and lemon mud cake. YUM. Every time I try a new recipe I fall in love with it, no idea how people ever pick favourites!

I've made the lemon and white chocolate variation before, but this time I put half brown sugar and half white. Only a teeny tiny change really! but I think it made all the difference. Funny how just changing the sugar makes the difference between chocolate mud and caramel mud, then a dash of lemon juice and it's all different again! Just another reason to love mud cake, as if I needed one....

So there you go! Mother's Day over for another year (in my corner of the world at least). A big Happy Mother's Day to all you mums out there! I hope you've had/are having a lovely day and being spoiled rotten. Thank you especially to MY mum (though I don't believe she's figured out how to read this...) for being patient with all my Mother's Day musings over the last few weeks, I hope the cake makes up for all the pestering :)

What did you do with your mum/kids to celebrate this year?

- B xx