Handmade christmas - baking cakes

This year I attended a cupcake decorating workshop at the The Make Lounge (I blogged about it here, and there are some yummy cake pics to look at!).
I don't tend to make cupcakes much, it's quite a lot of effort if there's just two of you, but I do enjoy baking. So I decided to make some cakes for my colleagues in three offices at work instead of sending christmas cards.
I made them on Sunday so they would be as fresh as possible for Monday. It turned out to be a bit of a mission! I had wanted to make some chocolate cakes and some vanilla cakes but unfortunately, when I had just finished baking the chocolate cakes the oven door fell off! It wasn't a big shock because it's been on it's last legs for a while but it did mean I couldn't make the vanilla cakes (although Gary has now fixed the oven door so that it does still function for a bit longer!). Luckily my recipe made 37 cakes which is still quite a lot! (But I had two myself, just to quality check them you understand!).
I made up two lots of icing and did pink, blue, green and white cakes, topped with edible cake glitter (holographic white looks great on all colours of icing so should be the cake glitter of choice!).
I had already bought cake boxes from CupCake Boxes UK who were very reliable and great quality and make the cakes look very professional. Not to mention that they ensure that they don't all fall over when you're transporting them. Then I realised that I had three large boxes of 12 cupcakes to take on the tube in rush hour! Not ideal as they have to be kept flat.
Of course I managed it and I've had lots of lovely comments from my friends who thought they tasted great and looked professional. I'm sure that giving cake is much more memorable than sending christmas cards and I do feel a warm glow from all their kind comments.
Gary and I have handmade some other gifts for people but I can't blog about them just yet!

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