Easter bake sale

I know it's a bit early, but I'm going to be on holiday for Easter and couldn't let the occasion go by without a bake sale. I made these cupcakes with marzipan and cherries, in a nod towards the traditional simnel cake. I got the recipe from BBC Good Food but instead of putting the almond essence in the actual cakes, I added it to the icing along with some yellow food colouring to make it look like egg yolks. I guess if you don't like almonds / marzipan you definitely wouldn't like these, but at least two people have said they're the best cupcakes I've made yet!

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St Patrick's Day Bake Sale

For St Patrick's day I made chocolate and Guinness cupcakes topped with Irish cream flavoured butter cream and shamrock sprinkles. Thanks to Hal and his colleagues at SmartWool and Timberland for their donations totalling £26.44

January bake sale raises record donation of £59.59

A big thank you to my colleagues at Racepoint for their continued support and to Hal and his colleagues at Smartwool for their generous donations. The combined total came to £59.59, making it a record-breaking CakesforLife bake sale and taking me well past the half way mark. Please continue to give generously for this worthy cause and use the comment section below to post requests for next month's cakes.

First Bake Sale of 2011 - Year of the Rabbit

It's nearly time to celebrate Chinese New Year, so I thought I'd mark the occasion with some bunny rabbit cupakes....the cakes are vanilla with a marshmallow centre (recipe courtesy of Hummingbird) and I topped it with vanilla butter cream frosting and some dessicated coconut before adding marshmallows and other sweets to make the rabbit faces. The whiskers are harder to do than they look - thanks to Hal for his help with those!

The other cupcakes are supposedly 'healthier' than your average cupcake as they're made with polenta and super food blueberries! The recipe for these comes from Primrose Bakery and another shout out goes to Hal for decorating them with the blueberries and icing sugar on top.

Third bake sale raises £32.60

Thanks to colleagues at Racepoint for raising £17.60, and to Hal for another generous donation of £10 (and for cleaning up after me once again!). These two lonely cakes were left over, so I'll be trying to sell them to my mum and dad later today!

Update: sold the last two cakes to mam and dad for a generous £5, bringing the total to £32.60.

Third Cakes for Life Bake Sale

It's December, so the third bake sale definitely had to have a festive feel, but I decided not to go OTT with decorations. The black forest cupcakes look nice and wintry because of the snow. The others don't look very festive, but they're made with ginger and cinnamon so should taste just like Christmas!





Credit goes to Amy Lane for her black forest recipe (although I did improvise a bit too) and to Hummingbird Bakery for the ginger cupcake recipe.

Second bake sale raises £43.59

It's taken me a little while to update this, but I'd like to thank all my colleagues at Racepoint for showing their support once again and helping me raise £33.59 for Cancer Research UK. A special shout out to Hal for cleaning up the mess I made in the kitchen and for a very generous donation of £10, taking the grand total up to £43.59 for my second bake sale. After just two bake sales and some generous donations from friends and family who haven't even tried the cakes yet, I've reached 26% of my target for the year. Maybe I should up the ante! Watch this space for a festive bake sale coming very soon....