2011: iced

For the last 10 months all my free time has been taken over by a culinary challenge I set on 6th July last year in which I gave myself exactly 1 year to cook my way through the letters of the alphabet. You can check it out here. I'd love to hear your thoughts. James Ramsden, who came to T night on Saturday, wrote a lovely review of his experience here and if you still want to read more after that, Dolly Alderton wrote a brilliant blog about her time at the letter O here.

I'm now coming to the end of Alphabet Soup, with only a few more weeks until the letter Z will be dished up and digested. It's been wonderful, it's been exhausting, it's made my clothes feel tighter and it's made my face wobble slightly more than it used to when I run in high heels,  but more than anything else, it has definitely made me a better cook.  On top of all of this, Alphabet Soup has also been almost entirely responsible for my shameful neglect of this cake blog.  To bring cakes back to the fore for a little while,  I thought I'd share with you some photos of a few of Victoria's Cake Boutique cakes commissioned in 2011.

5 tier chocolate plastique covered chocolate and Guinness and passion fruit layer cake decorated with pink and shimmering oyster blossoms

3 tiered white and dark chocolate plastique cake with chocolate roses and calla lilies

A tower of chocolate scroll dessert cakes topped with fresh red rose petals

White iced creme egg flavoured 3 tiered cake with piping details, white blossom and dusky pink sugar roses

3 tiered white chocolate scroll cake dressed with fresh red rose petals

3 tiered white iced summer garden cake with sugar roses, bumble bees, forget-me-nots and daisies

4 tiered iced and chocolate plastique cake dressed with dusky pink chocolate roses with sage green beading. This cake was collected in pieces and stacked in Devon (we didn't assemble the tiers, but whoever did made rather a wonky job of it. Still, Kirsten and Mark were very happy)

3 tiered buttercream topped rustic cake for a bride who wanted her cake to look like a cake and who had a severe aversion to fondant icing

This stack of books cake was commissioned to celebrate a group of women who had completed an OU English degree

This "trifle" cake was commissioned to celebrate the 60th birthday of a woman who has a huge passion for traditional trifle

This penguin cake was commissioned to celebrate 2 year old Madison's birthday. Her mother hates fondant icing, so this snow scene was created with desiccated coconut

This cat cake was commissioned to celebrate to marriage of  a couple who wanted their pet cat on top bearing their wedding rings

A cake commissioned to celebrate the 5th birthday of Your Golf Travel. Their party was held at the top of the Gherkin