Love.....the Rustic Baker Summer Collection

I love being The Rustic Baker. I love trying new things out. I especially love and am slightly frightened by the fact that I am going to apply for the Great British Bake Off. Even if I get nowhere it's all good. So many people and I am sure that it is a tough job to find the right combination of skilled bakers. Still I have enjoyed my reseach and development phase! So by season, starting with Summer picking up from where I have left off, these are some of the best I have baked: Lemon Lime Loaf, Choc Peanut Butter Cookies, Marshmallow Fluff Flapjacks, Vegan Lemon Cake, Ginger Cake, Blackberry Pimms Summer Cupcakes, Coffee Walnut Traybake, Blackberry Apple Crumble Tart, Fruit Scones, Fudge Shortbread, Choc Cupcakes, Plaited Milk Loaf and Choc Macarons

Love... the rustic baker & Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all you excellent Dads out there. In our house baking is always in order for those celebration days. So Oldest One and I created a ginormous cake of many colours and loads of sugar! It's your basic sponge dyed 2 different colours. Admittedly the top half was meant to be blue but the red came out well. I have since discovered that I should have used a white cake recipe to get the true colours I wanted but hey ho it looks great and the Husband loved it. Just a note for the future don't decorate near Youngest One, she is a food machine and couldn't understand why she couldn't eat the sweets, cake, icing, in fact the whole shebang. 

Love.....the rustic baker birthday style

To my gorgeous Oldest One a birthday cake supreme. We love Lego and Star Wars here so this year I decided to take the challenge of making a Death Star in cake form. My friend AtNumber29 sent me a link to a youtube guy who had made a similar cake. But as usual I wanted to go one better!

I used a recipe from Jo Wheatley's A Passion for Baking, yes I am a fan, but added a few twists like popping candy and using  ground almonds and more melted chocolate as I didn't have cocoa powder to hand. A lovely lady who sells cake decorating bits 'n' pieces gave me an excellent tip to make grey icing; use some ready made black icing and knead it into the ready made white icing. Genius. No black hands to explain to my child!

This cake had the works, allergy friendly butter cream courtesy of Betty Crocker, popping candy, chocolate, marzipan and finally icing. Must not forget Darth Vader!