Cakes for a birthday. I really like the effect of the different colours together - they're different flavours too underneath: these ones are strawberry, Oreo, vanilla and chocolate, delicious!

A cake from Wednesday's stall (taken with my phone and through cellophane which is why it's a little bit strange). I really like that type of decoration with the swirl going across instead of up - this is seriously cupcake nerd territory I realise :)

And the other picture is a whoopee pie which was very, very good.

I took some photos of the cakes I did for Wednesday's stall and, I have to say, they were some of the best cupcakes I've done. I was soo pleased with icing and the decorations. I came home in the evening to put the photos onto the computer and discovered I'd been using the camera without a memory stick in!! My daughter says I should have checked through the photos as I was doing it to see if the lighting is right (which is all a bit too David Bailey for me) but when you are taking photos at 7 after being up since 5 that's a lot to ask.. Anyway, I have recreated one of the types of cupcake I did for my 19 year old's last day in his Spanish class so here is the photo :))

The other photo is of cupcakes I did for a friend's son's 7th birthday. They were having a party by the river so I went for a watery type theme..

Tomorrow's cupcakes:

Pink strawberry lemonade cupcakes!

Caramel with a chocolate toffee filling and either crushed biscuits and marshmallows on top or caramel buttercream with a flower :)

Strawberry with strawberry filling and vanilla frosting

And yummy chocolate with chocolate filling.. delicious!

Photos to follow..

Here are some of the cakes, including the delicious marmalade and orange cupcakes with mascarpone and orange filling! They are the ones with the gingerbread man on - I love the photos that my daughter took of them, especially the one with the shaded background where the gingerbread man looks slightly sinister ooo...

As for cafewatch the news is slightly depressing:

unfortunately we live in a town where everything is owned by the colleges and they can afford to keep the properties empty until the next enormous, bland corporation comes along who can afford the rents and opens a cafe aargh.. Cambridge has the least number of interesting, independent cafes and restaurants of any town I've visited from Tavistock to Inverness which makes for unappealing eating out. I like the Jamie's restau (well, I've only been once!) but it would be nice to have streets like the ones in Brighton, London or any other town big or small filled with lovely little places where the owners make their own food so you get a huge range of delicious (cheap!) dishes which you really feel have been made with some feeling for the food.

I recently went to a little cafe near to my eldest son's uni house - my youngest daughter was with us too - we had 2 gozleme (handmade flatbreads, filled with cheese and spinach which you could see the woman making in the shop window), a cup of tea, a huge mushroom omlette and chips, a coke and a juice. It was all made in front of us in a funny looking little, very clean cafe with a fountain in the corner - don't know why but it sounded good! - and came to less than £10!

So the search continues for a location to open a lovely little cafe selling homemade food - the revolution starts here!

Happier news is that next week I shall have baked raspberry cheesecake on the stall :))

These are the cupcakes for tomorrow:

Strawberry with a strawberry meringue filling (made with homemade strawberry jam and homemade meringue!)

Orange and maramalade cupcakes with orange curd cream filling

Chocolate with chocolate sauce filling

Banana and chocolate chunk cupcakes

Lemon with lemon curd filling and meringue frosting,

Pictures will follow tomorrow :))

Haven't posted for a week as it was my birthday last week - I'm now officially very ancient - and then my youngest daughter's 4 days later so I was baking even more cakes than usual. I made a cake and some whoopee pies to deliver to a couple in a lovely little village near Cambridge; I wrapped each whoopee in a square of tissue and put them in a box and then took some photos but the camera didn't have the memory card in, double aargh!! So I'll have to recreate the scene and do it again :)

For the stall this week I'm making some rose meringues, more whoopees and a lemon poppy seed cake using a Hugh FW recipe which has about 8 stages and uses 5 bowls but it's worth it in the end, we hope... And lots of cupcakes of course as reports of the demise of the cupcake have been exaggerated, they are still the nicest way to have a little treat of lovely sponge I think (I would say that of course..)

And then i'll put the memory card back in the camera to take some photos of all the above yumminess