loving the ginger (and) another collaboration

Ive been supplying Picolo coffee in Newcastle for a few months now, the lovely James gets an order every Monday, although this week its Tuesday.  Out of the norm, James ordered ginger and lemon cream whoopie pies this week and i was over the moon, i love making them, the house is filled with the scent of Christmas.  The process of making the gingerbread is a lot firmer and therefore better to handle than usual whoopie pie batter.

Here they are, available from Picolo Coffee as of 8am tomorrow morning.  Always had a soft spot for the gingers.

Secondly the fantastic Candy Handfuls Bakery and I have worked together again on a corporate project, which shall remain anonymous for the time being, just until i know whats going on with the contract if you know what im saying...

Here it is, a pie chart cake, comprising of a vanilla white cake sandwiches with raspberry mousse, and secondly a chocolate fudge cake sandwiched with a chocolate butter cream, the cakes are sandwiched inside to represent the sections too so it was a bit of a challenge for poor Helen to make it nice and flat before doing a bloody fantastic job of the fondant!

Dinner tonight for me was my bolognaise, i tell you i make the best and ultimate bolognaise sauce, a proper ragu, theres hundreds of recipes out there for bologonaise but believe me this is the best one I've ever tasted!  I'll put the recipe up tomorrow.

The Beehive and CandyHandfuls Boutique bakeries

Ive been looking for a bakery in the North East to collaborate with for ages now, I want to be able to offer clients a wider range of products and services than i just sell.  I also think its nice to extend an olive branch to someone who should technically be my competition to just say, hey look we both make cakes, we are both very good, why dont sometimes we work together and play to our strengths to offer a wider service and expand both our businesses.  Its nice to be nice i reckon.

Thats exactly what i said to the lovely Helen a couple of weeks ago and thrillingly she agreed.

Helen owns and runs Candy Handfuls Boutique Bakery and is really really good at what she does, infact I might go as far to say shes the best, AND shes cool as. Rocking the decade before my prefered 60's, shes a glam 50's vintage cake queen!

We are going to be collaborating on a few cakes over the next couple of months to see how things go.

Out first collaboration was this 18th birthday cake.
The top a large cupcake was half chocolate and half vanilla with a vanilla buttercream, Helen worked her wonders and accesorised the cake perfectly as per the brief (pink girly and glittey)

I worked on the cupcakes, again half vanilla half chocolate, the sprinkles were all edible and included tiny little pink hearts which actually looked like tin foil.

What does everyone think?

The second cake we worked on was a Christening cake today (for tomorrow)  its a half red velvet and half vanilla elephant, in the style of the Christening invitations, Helen has excelled herself on the carving and decoration and i think its a pretty excellent version of the invite!

Lots to come from us in the future!  x