Catching Up! -Cont: Happy Birthday Fairy Cakes.

Hi Everyone!!!

I figured my last 2 posts were long so I waited a couple of days before I posted so you can take a break from reading :)

Today, I am going to tell you a bit about September 2012. It was interesting. In a good way.
First of all, September 3rd, is Fairy Cakes' Birthday!! We turned 1 Year Old! Yeih!!!
In the 1 year I've been baking as Fairy Cakes, I took on more than 170 orders!

(A little birthday Clip Art won't hurt to set up the mood...even if it's been over a month since we celebrated!)
Also, I realized, that the best selling cake for my business is my Carrot Cake. I call it "The BEST Carrot Cake." If you live in Cyprus, you MUST try it! If you don't, then sorry, but how am I going to send it to you? It's a good enough excuse though to visit Cyprus. It's a beautiful island...with a great tasting Carrot Cake ;)
You can see pictures of it at this post: More Cakes Coming Up.
So because of the birthday AND realizing which cake is the top selling one, one thought came to mind: Promote my Hummingbird Cake (for those that don't know, it like a Carrot Cake, really, but instead of carrots, it has bananas). For those who like bananas, it's a very similar cake to the carrot one, with the same frosting. So I posted the following picture on my Facebook Page and asked people to try and GUESS what it is. The ones who guessed right would be in a draw to win a FREE Hummingbird Cake.

 

 

 

Just to help everyone out a bit, I clearly said it wasn't a Carrot Cake. I had a guess of a Walnut Cake (which put me into thinking...hmm... Walnut Cake, I should try to bake one of those), I did have a guess of Carrot Cake, but mostly, people called and asked because they didn't want to be "wrong." I even hinted that it was one of the new entries in my latest menu. I had one right guess, and that's where the cake will go. Yes, WILL go, because the girly who won is a student in England, and I have the same deal as the Carrot Cake. SENDING it is NOT an option! So I will wait until she returns for Christmas so I can bake it for her. She was actually one of the first people who tried my Banana Pudding.

 

 

But anyway, the BEST present I have to my Fairy Cakes, is a LOGO!!!!! I was looking around for one for so long, and I was always picky with it. I found this girly, by mistake of course, just browsing on Facebook. She is Purple Scrunch, and she doesn't charge an arm and a leg for doing your logo. I picked something I could build on later. For now, I just wanted something to go on my menu and my stickers and bozes and such.

 

 

What do you think? I love it!! Thank you Laura! I especially like the little wings on the cupcake!

I will leave you with my lovely logo for now, and I will tell you about some pirates on my next blog post :)

Thank you for reading, and please, like my page on Facebook. Fairy Cakes

 

Catching Up! -Continued: My Unsuccessful Birthday Cake

Hi Everyone!

I hope I didn't bore you yesterday! I just realized that yesterday's post was longer than what I thought 24 hours ago.. and 24 hours ago? I thought it was loooong! *yikes*

So, where was I? Oh yes, meal planning. I love it! Can't wait to get back on it!
Meanwhile, I got sick during the last week of August. I had a terrible, over-a-week-long migraine. It caused me to burn some brownies for the first time EVER, AND pur baking soda instead of powder. The thing was...they were for a customer. So even though I was feeling horrible, I baked the order again! I was too sick to even think of taking a picture of the brownies so we can all laugh about it now. I left them on the table, delivered the brownies, and got home to a further disappointment: my dog, Yellow, ate ALL OF THEM! She didn't even leave the crumbs! This is another something (along with the burning of the brownies) that had never happened before. No matter what, she NEVER grabs anything off of the table. I guess she knew they were going to waste. At least I felt that my brownies weren't THAT bad burnt! (Yellow tends to be picky with her food!) I'm just glad the animal protection unit didn't come to arrest me!

Then my birthday came along. It's on the 27th of August. The same week i was sick. Whoever called to wish me "Happy Birthday" I automatically said "come over for cake tonight." Only thing was, I only prepared 1 cake. A Maltesers Ice Cream Cake. So I whipped up a Carrot Cake, and I had some Peanut Butter Cookies I treated everyone on at work for my birthday, but still felt out of it.
So before serving the birthday cake, which was the Maltesers Cake, I put some chocolate ganache, let it freeze and then added some whipped heavy cream to decorate it with some maltesers. By the time I went from the kitchen to the table on the porch where 12 people were sitting (yeah.. I thought only 4 were going to show) the top layer with the ganache and the candles went flying off! We saved it before it fell on the floor so we could scoop it into peoples' plates.
Needless to say, people prefered the Carrot Cake.
These are the Peanut Butter Cookies I made this year, something I also made last year and people went crazy over.

Coming up soon: The Logo I promised, some lowered calorie stuff, and the Blog's Birthday! Hooray!!

Catching Up!

Goodmorning Everyone!!

I know...I haven't been here for-EVER! Instead of telling you all these excuses for why I haven't posted in sooooo long, I decided I was going to tell you what's been going on in my life since my last post, which was late June.

Those of you that know me, also know that I am getting married this coming November.
I had posted it here along with my New Years Resolutions (yes...more than one!). #5 was "eating healthier" because I wanted to be healthy and also lose 25 pounds for the wedding. I am happy to anounce that I lost 30+ pounds!!! I am ready to be a bride! [Staying away from all those sweets I was making wasn't as easy as I thought, but I managed!]

If you live in Cyprus, or know someone from here, then you know how HUGE weddings here are. Mine is going to be relatively "small" with only about 1000 people invited (no.. I didn't accidentally add a 3rd zero... I meant one THOUSAND). It's tradition..I wanted to avoid it and have a smaller wedding, but I couldn't. So preparations for such big event start early on.

In July, I ordered my wedding dress. I am not saying anything more than that because we wouldn't want my fiance what it looks like - I promise pictures AFTER the wedding!

Around the same time, we started to design the renovation of the house. We had real bad luck with that, but without getting into any details, I will let you know that you should ALWAYS hire someone with the proper degree (don't be embarassed to ask to see it, it's their proof that they are good enough for the job you need done) and also, ask around for prices! I found an architect for 5000 euro CHEAPER than the designer we hired at the beginning who lied and said she could do the architectural plans for us. But as I said, I'm not going into details. Let's just leave it at that (the whole thing gets me really angry!). Regardless, it took a few months of running around and making appointments with civil engineers and the designer and contractors...we decided to leave this for AFTER the wedding. Good things come to those who wait, right?

Even though this blog is about my passion for baking, I also LOVE to cook. After I finished my diet (which had a set menu for about 6 months) I started my stabilizing. It's for another 4 months and you try to keep your weight stable so you don't gain everything back on (which happens most of the time once you finish a diet... I know, it happened to me, too!).
So the fun part was that I got to create my own menu, but follow some basil rules (that are harder to keep than I thought) and also have a complete FREE day! That's when I started to do Menu Planning.
I was really excited at first, keeping up with all the grocery shopping and recipes, but at some point, the wedding took the best of me. Because remember those 1000 people I mentioned above? Well, someone has to invite them! Meaning that me and my fiance go to some of these peoples' houses, and being a hospitable people in general, we are always invited for a cup of coffee and some cake or sweets or whatever else these people have to offer...unfortunatelly for me, no seems too rude, not finishing your cake ALSO rude.. so I end up drinking too much coffee and too much sugar with no nutrients coming my way. AGRRRR!!! Only one week to go and then I am back to my menu planning (which I looooove!!)

Following my menu planning, I also created a great recipe folder. I don't have a picture of it, but I should tell you what I did in a later post (or this one will be miles long!) I did a binder for food, and I am going to be making one for desserts AFTER the wedding.

During my menu planning time though, I made some desserts I had never made before so I can try new things.
I had some extra Macadamia nuts at home, and I decided to make Key Lime Bars with them because my cousin visited from England, who LOVES sour things. I mean, if you see how many lemons he uses for each piece of chicken he eats, you'll think he's having a slice of chicken with his lemonade!
I thought I had a picture of them, but I can't find it anywhere to show you. They didn't look like anything special, but they tasted real good.

I also saw a recipe on the cover of a GoodFood magazine that I tried. Now that one I loved! AND I have a picture!
Peach Melba Cheesecake (no-bake).

I also made some Chocolate Cherry Tart. It was also really yummy.

Wow this IS a really loooong post. I guess there is a lot of catching up to do! I will leave it off here and continue tomorrow. I have exciting things to share, like a logo (I KNOW!) and a competition, and some Pirate Cupcakes! All in good time!


-xoxo-