mooshpie

happy big birthday cake

Sun, 13 May 2012 10:28:37 -0400

my good friend celebrated a big birthday a couple of weeks ago. To commemorate this occasion i whipped up a special cake for her.

i made a sticky ginger cake (pretty much the same recipe as this and this cake i made the last 2 years for mr mooshpie’s birthday)

and decorated it right posh using fresh cut flowers.

i have in the past made sugar craft flowers but fancied a bit of a change. (below is a cake i made for granny mooshpie’s 60th birthday)

Anyway back to the ginger cake… here is my step by step cakeathon!

stage 1

The cake rose rather a lot in the oven so i trimmed off the domey tops for a flat top cake (essential for putting on icing)
we ate the trimmings the next day with custard!

stage 2

now the cake is level i sandwiched it together with lashings of my zesty homemade lime curd.limecurd is spread all over the cake top and sides to allow the icing to stick to the cake!

stage 3

easy does it. you roll out the icing to the desired size then carefully place the rolled icing onto the limecurd up cake.
(silly me didn’t buy enough icing for the cake which led to a few cracks, a big learning curve there for me then! hehe)

stage 4

cake covered and trimmed of excess icing ready for the finishing touches. i also tried to “polish” the icing with a fancy smoothing tool but as the icing was rather thin it started to tear a little. the small holes i covered up with left over icing and then gently smoothed over with my finishing tool to hide the imperfections… it kind of worked :-)

stage 5

now the fun part arranging the fresh flowers to put on top of the cake. I used flower pick (you can buy these in good cake supply shops and even off amazon) and a ball of icing to hold them in place.

stage 6

ta dahhh! the end result. i used fresh roses and delicate sweet peas for my floral arrangement.

It’s my first attempted at using fresh flowers in a cake and if i do say so myself it turned out rather well.

1 year today

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:02:00 -0400

and along came a minimooshpie. (well not really came more like a very very long labour) nonetheless the mooshpie household is now full of constant chatter, giggles and sweet sweet smiles.

to celebrate i created a special drawing of red riding-hood, that i gocco printed onto onesies. They were for gift bags for her little chums to take home, a keepsake to remind us that they were really once tiny people.

as always i am one for a bit of light procrastination and i left printing them till the night before her birthday.

out came the trusty gocco and for the first time ever i used the carbon pen to create my print master image. (the pen worked so well that i will now use that, rather than photocopying my drawings. it’s a much faster way too.)

here is me printing late a night ( i had already baked 24 tiny cakes too!)

here is the gocco printed onesie with my red riding-hood drawing on. The illustration is the beginning of a new series i will be working on!

“Baked pretty for easy to eat”
here are the tiny cakes for tiny people that i baked.

carrot date and banana cakes (with no sugar. sugar free = yummy) with a cream cheese vanilla frosting topped with berries.
featuring my printed onesies and a pretty deer.

all wrapped up and ready to be given to minimooshpie’s little friends.
they also took home some cake and some bubbles.

"Baked pretty for easy to eat"

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:12:51 -0400

Some delicious cakes that i have been baking recently. Who doesn’t like a nice bit a cake eh?! anyone…

Sticky ginger cake a real treat any time of the day. Incredibly easy to make which is handy with a pesky minimooshpie crawling around!

a tasty bitter sweet marmalade cake made for a friends birthday.

very fluffy and light this recipe is a keeper! :-)

and for the minimooshpie she gets a cake of her own! a variation of a spotted dog (with no sugar just lots and lots of fruit. still needs a bit of experimenting to get it just right)

she seems to like it as do her little friends. she also seems partial to a scone too!

i’m making a special cake this week for a friends BIG birthday. i’ve already done stage one ( made the lime curd) i will post pics of it at the weekend!

happy cake eating

terrarium fun

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:51:00 -0500

I have been admiring terrariums for a while now… a terrarium is a miniture garden contained in any sized vessel you wish, from light bulbs, fish tanks to old victorian bottles.

here is the first one we made. It contains little elm trees rescued from the gutter, sphagnum moss, soil, stones, a 1950s porcelain deer inherited from dan’s grandparents along with a miniature fir tree. i adore it!

the next one is in an old victorian Eno’s fruit salt bottle ( one of the many victorian bottles we collected for our wedding)

contains a mini t-rex, a foraged cyclamen from the garden, sphagnum moss, soil and stones.

These are just the begining. We are currently adding more display units to our sun room(below pic) so we can house more terrariums and plant specimens.

here are some of my fave and inspiring ones from the interwebs…

this lovely little donkey terrarium from ann wood

from little big check out littlebig’s blog on how to make them

it's been a while...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:57:52 -0500

i’ve had my hands full somewhat over the past 8 months since the minimooshpie arrived so my drawing days are few and far between.

however i get to use my creativity in other places like decorating minimooshpie’s bedroom.

i’ve also been doing a few other crafty bits which i shall post about soon! so keep watching.

here are a few sneaky peeks of her room. we both love it!

it’s full of inherited furniture( the book shelf is rescued from my old primary school before they knocked down the old cow shed buildings and replaced it with a new super duper school. i think they also started my obsession with school furniture.), lovingly knitted woodland critters from granny mooshpie and beautiful wall vinlys from love mae

i’m looking forward to my happy times in there!

the book i did some illustration proposals for has come out. The New Artisans- http://t.co/fdiWb7ax....

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:38:02 -0400

the book i did some illustration proposals for has come out. The New Artisans- http://t.co/fdiWb7ax. Im mentioned in back of recommend blogs

looking forward to getting a bit of drawing done next week something, dare i say it…...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:21:31 -0400

looking forward to getting a bit of drawing done next week something, dare i say it… christmassy!?! :-)

hey brighton followers get yourself off to the Printwerks screen printing evening tonight for G...

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:09:10 -0400

hey brighton followers get yourself off to the Printwerks screen printing evening tonight for G & T (towels!) http://t.co/7U9f1dzX

G & T: Back to school printing day Hello you Brighton...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:33:12 -0400

G & T:

Back to school printing day

Hello you Brighton lovelies!
Fancy celebrating the kids going back to school with a nice G&T whilst creating your own bespoke teatowel. Then head on down to the coachwerks for some after school fun. ( big kids only…)
Its going to be a great evening, hope to see you there.

p.s i made the super poster too.

my tasty weekend mooshpie blog post featuring damsons in all kinds of treaty ways!...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 10:43:06 -0400

my tasty weekend mooshpie blog post featuring damsons in all kinds of treaty ways! http://t.co/sHIck4D Yummy :-)

Dam good weekend

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 08:54:54 -0400

I love this time of year, the summer sun has ripened all the early autumn fruits like crisp sweet discovery apples with blushing pink flesh and the bitter sweet tang of plums and their tiny cousin the damson.

We had a super relaxing weekend buying a bag of little damsons for a £1 at our local “trendy” farmers market.Said damsons were soon bubbling away into a tasty compote, while I baked a batch of double chocolate and sour cherry biscuits. (this picture is from a while a go as the biscuits didn’t stick around long enough for a picture as they were that tasty heheh!)

Soon the compote was ready and I treated myself to gypsy toast with lashings of the fresh damson compote and caramelised bananas- a lunch fit for a king!

There was a fair bit of the compote left so I dreamt up recipes I could make like damson brownies or a Victoria sponge, sadly I didn’t have enough chocolate, eggs or butter so that was end of that. In the end mixed it up with some yoghurt and icing sugar to make damson frogurt.

And my stars what a success it’s the tastiest frogurt I’ve ever had. The tangy sweet damsons cut through the sour yoghurt and the icing sugar makes it all fizzy like sherbet! A super supper treat…

stopped watching the scary film now me and the mini mooshpie are baking a cake instead, she has her...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:44:59 -0400

stopped watching the scary film now me and the mini mooshpie are baking a cake instead, she has her own tiny spoon to help too!

nostalgia

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:03:04 -0400

i find myself even more now being nostalgic for the places i have been. as mr maskingtape pointed out to me the other day (whilst we and the mini mooshpie were picking blackberries), that nostalgia means home sickness (nóstos, “returning home”, álgos, “pain” or “ache”)…

i have been lucky enough to have been to some pretty special locations. Sometimes living there for a month, other times just a week. i have a long time love and affinity for these homes away from home and wish to one day return…

here are some photos of the places i’ve stayed to feed my nostalgia (some mine some mr maskingtape)

this is where we house sat in vancouver looking after 2 cats while i did my animation course. we lived there for 1 month.

our little log cabin on the arctic circle for our honeymoon (nearly 3years ago) where we watched the northern lights shimmer away. 1 week!

we stayed in a forest hut like this in Tsitsikamma nature reserve south africa. ours was right on the river bed, we bbq’ed with genets and woke up to the call of turaco

the little cottage we stayed in akaroa at onuku farm new zealand. we had a small fire which we made every morning and slept in the rafters listening to the bell birds.

we stayed in this cottage for a night it was in the middle of this valley, on its own. It had one room with an open fire, double bed, and a tiny kitchen out the back. The toilet was located behind that bush, and was full of all kinds of creepy crawlies…

In Reunion. In a wooden windmill in the mountain Cirque de Cilaos. inside we could take our pick of beds (there were a few) it was so cold though so we piled on the blankets. The hosts were amazing cooks and we feasted on duck with vanilla and beef with orchids and drank botanical ales. in the morning we were greeted with fresh bread and delicious home made jams! we stayed 2 nights.

Maybe that’s why we’ve moved to a house with a shed, and why i’ve got my obsession with sheds…

Ginger and lime curd cake: fresh from the mooshpie bakery-...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:59:16 -0400

Ginger and lime curd cake:

fresh from the mooshpie bakery- Baked pretty for easy to eat.

my first cake in the new oven made especially for mr maksingtapes birthday( it’s his favourite cake)

My own secret recipe of an extra gooey spiced ginger cake with lashings of homemade limecurd and limecurd icing Yum!

the science of jelly

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:01:18 -0400

Well it was mr dan’s birthday at the weekend and what better way to celebrate than making a good old fashioned raspberry jelly.

I got a nice copper jelly mold at the local car boot a couple of weeks ago and thought this was a good excuse to try it out.

So here are some super pictures of my jelly endeavour…

stage 1, cutting jelly block into cubes and mixing with hot water

stage 2 adding fruit to molds in readiness for the liquid jelly

stage 3 in the fridge setting

and the end result…

as you can see it didn’t quite work out :-(

i think it was a combination of not enough gelatin, too much fruit, too much liquid and not enough setting time ( needing more than 24 hours as it’s a rather large mold)

Still it did taste rather good and well looks aren’t everything! heheh

I will try it again, maybe even try it with a cake batter in like a bundt cake ….

an afternoon of housey makeovers for me today… have a look at my doings here,...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:40:13 -0400

an afternoon of housey makeovers for me today… have a look at my doings here, http://t.co/6zukq4u
more projects to come

making good

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:08:00 -0400

we got this old cutlery tray from dan’s grandparent’s when they moved to south africa.

it was in the need of a little tlc, so i spent the afternoon removing the old gummed down paper, then sanded and bees waxed it.

we also got some of their old silverware which i also treated to a bit of sprucing up

before

and after

all pretty and waiting to be used for cakes and other tasty treats!

something i have been working on and my obsession with sheds http://t.co/6NuODhp

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:48:47 -0400

something i have been working on and my obsession with sheds http://t.co/6NuODhp

the acorn family: my little acorn family drawings have been...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:57:34 -0400

the acorn family:

my little acorn family drawings have been brought to life, thanks to my clever mum’s mad knitting skillz!

for the love of sheds

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 08:06:11 -0400

we moved to a nice new house recently and in the garden is a lovely shed. This shed became the beginning point of my obsession with sheds and all things shed like.

It will become my studio where i can while away the hours making mooshpie goodies.

here is the shed before

and after its makeover

all i need to do now is the inside, paint and prepare my workspace.

******************

here is a lovely pen and ink drawing i did with some lovely sheds