Make a difference this year by ordering your Christmas cake, cupcakes or biscuits from Baby Cakes. For every Christmas sale made, Baby Cakes will donate 20% to the Forever Friends Appeal at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Order now by with your requirements.

Whether you choose a decadent drip cake, a gingerbread house, personalised iced biscuit place settings for the table or a box of cupcakes, you can feel good about supporting the Forever Friends Appeal.

Decadent Christmas Drip Cake

Diameter	price
18cm	£45
20cm	£55
Two tiers (15cm and 20cm)	£110

Drip Cakes available in the following flavours:

• Dark chocolate cake with rich chocolate buttercream
• Sponge cake with buttercream and white chocolate ganache
• Chocolate orange cake with chocolate orange buttercream
• Sponge cake with buttercream and seedless raspberry jam
• Chocolate turtle (chocolate cake with buttercream, toasted hazelnuts and salted caramel sauce)
• Sponge cake with salted caramel sauce and buttercream
• Red velvet cake with buttercream

Christmas Treats

As well as the Decadent Christmas Drip cake, we are also offering a host of traditional Baby Cakes favourites, including magnificent Gingerbread House centrepieces, cupcakes and iced biscuits. All iced biscuits are available as vanilla sugar cookies or spiced gingerbread. (A minimum order of 12 biscuits applies.)

 

Personalised Luggage labels £3.50 each
Russian dolls and snowmen £4.50 each (add 5op for piped names)

Add £1 for individual packaging in cellophane with ribbon

Gingerbread Houses

Small (15cm tall): £40
Medium (25cm tall): £70
Large (35cm tall): £130
Extra-large (35cm tall): £200
Extra-large with trees (x2) and Russian dolls (x 4): £200

Traditional Christmas Cakes

Rich dark fruit cake made with vine fruits soaked in brandy, marsala, lemon and orange juice, wrapped in marzipan, covered with sugar paste and decorated in the signature Baby Cakes style.

Diameter	price
15cm	£50
20cm	£70
Two tiers (15cm and 20cm)	£130

Place an order by  with your requirements.

Chocolate Hot Cross Buns

Love chocolate? Love hot cross buns? Me too! Let’s create a delicious monster! This monster tastes even better if you have time to soak the fruit and zest in the juice of the orange overnight. But if you don’t have time, don’t worry because your buns will still be wonderful. Here’s how it’s done:

Ingredients for the buns:

450g strong white flour
2 ½ tbs best quality cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp salt
3 tsp mixed spice
1 sachet yeast
50g soft brown sugar
50g margarine or butter
1 free-range egg
220ml milk
75g chocolate chips
150 mixed fruit and peel
Zest of one orange
Juice of ½ orange

Ingredients for the crosses:

3 tbs plain flour
4 tbs tap water

Ingredients for the glaze:

1 tbs sugar
2 tbs tab water

1. Zest the orange and put the pieces of peel into a little bowl.
2. Squeeze the orange and pour the juice over the peel.
3. Stir the dried fruit into the juice and leave for as long as you can. (Overnight is ideal.)
4. Measure the milk into a saucepan add the butter and heat gently until the butter melts into the milk.
5. Place the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and stir.
6. Add the soaked fruit and zest and mix again.
7. Finally add the milk and butter mixture and egg and stir again.
8. At this point the mixture will be difficult to mix with a spoon, so tip it out onto your work surface and knead. At first the mixture will seem almost unbearably sticky, but keep at it, and after about 10 minutes, the dough will become silky and easier to manage.
9. Rub a little vegetable oil around the inside of another large mixing bowl and throw the dough inside.
10. Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for around two hours until the dough has doubled in size.
11. Line a baking tray or two with non-stick baking paper.
12. Tip the dough onto the work surface again (probably no need to flour the work surface first) and briefly knock the ‘puffiness’ out of it.
13. Cut the dough in half and keep halving each piece, until you have ‘bun’ size pieces. (I ended up with 32 golf ball size pieces).
14. Roll each piece, briefly, in your hands and space out onto a lined baking tray.
15. Put the trays back into the warm place and allow them to rise for another 45 minutes or so.
16. Preheat the over to 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit).
17. Now for the crosses! Mix the flour and water into a paste and transfer into a piping bag.
18. Snip the end off the bag, remove the buns from the warm place. Stay calm! Pipe a big ‘X’ on top of each bun.
19. Bake for 15 minutes until they look nicely risen and slightly brown around the edges.
20. While the buns are baking, make a glaze by putting the sugar and water in a microwave-proof bowl and blasting briefly until the crystal dissolve on stirring.
21. Remove buns from the oven and quicky brush the glaze over them.
22. Allow to cool. If you can wait that long. But most of all enjoy!

HAPPY EASTER! XX

One of the loveliest weddings I had the pleasure of providing cake for this year was at the truly lovely Sheldon Manor in Wiltshire. Bride and groom, Claudia and Laurence, tasked wedding planner super-talent, Mrs White, of Whiter than White Weddings, with masterminding their special day. Believe me, there were wonderful things everywhere. And so, after setting up the cake I couldn’t resist a poke about with my camera. And really, if I knew which end of my camera was up, you could be scrolling through beautiful details all night. But sadly, I’m an appalling photographer and I only managed to come away with a handful of decent shots. (So, why not nip over to Mrs White’s site and have a gander at some of her projects photographed by proper professionals!)

Anyway, for the here and now you are stuck with me, ladies and gents, but luckily for all of us  there were so many lovely things to photograph that hopefully you will get the gist of it and the true loveliness of it all will shine through. (Professional photographers blush and cough into their sleeves, ‘hurghh–AMATEUR-urggh-hurgh!’).

Apparently, gorgeous sightlines are a thing at Sheldon Manor. Here’s a view through an arch. It doesn’t lean in real life:

And while passing through the arch, this:

Closer look, please…

How do they make them stand up? Then suddenly, we emerge in the gorgeous garden, blinking in the sunlight and surrounded by all twinkling hearts!

Straight ahead we have romantic chairs and tables with flowers from the Walled Garden at Mells. (I’ve been promising myself pizza from their authentic pizza oven. Next summer!)  And, if we look to our right:

I don’t know what they were serving — doubtless something delicious. But we need to press on, because this next thing will cause Daenerys Targaryen to lay waste to your village in a fit of rage and envy.

Shut up!

And I bet your are wondering about those little stars on the fabric. Well, let me rush forward with another decidedly average photograph of them which certainly doesn’t do them justice.

Weeell, you know what I mean. And inside the cutest marquee in the world, we have place settings:

Bravo, Walled Garden of Mells with your sexy flowers and pizza oven. Bravo!

It pains me to leave the Cutest Marquee in the World TM, but that cake is not going to (badly) photograph itself, you know…

On the way a gorgeous view to take in:

We’ll just quickly peep in here. Can you get married in here, I wonder?

AAAAAAAaaaand cake:

Cake pops, bravely withstanding the warm weather and staunchly refusing to slide down their sticks. Well done, lads!

Inside there was a gramophone, which was beautiful, and a very artistic table plan dressed with flowers which I failed to photograph, but I did manage this:

Goodbye, Sheldon Manor, with all your lovely things! And congratulations Claudia and Laurence on your very special day. Thank you for asking me to make your cake. The pleasure was all mine.

xx