Earl Grey Blue Lady Cake

Here's our cake of the week. It's made with an amazing tea, Earl Grey Blue Lady that has beautiful little cornflowers in it. The smell is absolutely gorgeous... in fact we thought good enough to eat! So we steeped some fruit in it and made a light fruit cake topped with a butter cream. Fancy a slice? Well it's this week's "Surprise Me" but better still you can come into our shop where you can buy the tea too!

Thats right... We're Opening!

Fruit!

With such an abundance of fruit this year, I decided to make some cordial. It's easy and tastes lovely. Personally I find shop bought cordial a little too sweet.

Here's my recipe

500g soft fruit (red currant, black currants, etc)
275g sugar
250ml water

1. simmer it all for 5 minutes
2. give it a mash
3. simmer for 2 more minutes
4. strain through a sieve
5. dilute to taste
6. Enjoy!

Win Tickets to the Bakewell Baking Festival!

Next month it is the first ever Bakewell Baking Festival, celebrating and devoted to the wonderful world of baking at the home of the Bakewell Pudding. We met the organisers at the Cake and Bake Show recently and were wowed by what they had arranged. We are going along with our kids as it looks like an amazing day out for all.

What's On:-

• Star Bakers, including Edd Kimber and Stacie Stewart
• Baking Demonstrations 
• Competitions 
• Raw Baking 
• Mad Hatter's Tea Party 
• Children's Zone 
• Artisan Bread Making 
• Healthy Baking with Edwina Currie 
• Fanny & Jonny Craddock 
• Tea Appreciation 
• Vintage Market 
• Vintage Bus Rides 
• Mr Darcy Custard Pie Fight and lots more all included in the ticket price!

Better still if you hop over to our Facebook page you will see we have a competition to win two adult tickets for the day! Best be quick though it closes on 25th May 2013.

Broken Glass Cake!

I can't help it, I see a wacky recipe and begin to look for an excuse to bake it... except this time there was no baking involved! A refreshing summer pudding and the perfect party alternative to jelly and ice-cream (a lot more grown up). The recipe itself is one that was run on the back of Jello packets in America in 1950s. It's easy to make but takes time to set so make a day ahead.

Recipe

2 packets of jelly (4 half packets for lots of colour really) choose your favourites
300ml whipping cream
100ml pineapple juice
1/2tsp powdered gelatine
1/2tsp vanilla extract

• Make the jelly up as per the packet instructions and chill until set
• Put the pineapple juice in a sauce pan and sprinkle with gelatine, allow to dissolve
• Heat this gently until melted, remove from heat and add 50ml of cold water, leave to cool (not set)
• Whip the cream and vanilla until stiff peaks are formed.
• Whisk in the pineapple mixture.
• Chop the jelly into cubes
• Add to cream but DO NOT mix as this will cause your jelly to break up
• Pour into a lined 6" cake tin and leave to set preferably overnight but at least for 3 hours 

This really is a delightful pudding. One which I think will be a big hit with the kids tonight and possibly a big hit with the adults! So here's to summer, get the BBQ going and have yourself a broken glass cake for dessert!

A Merry Unbirthday!

Today we have a guest blog from Colin Shelbourn. The wonderful illustrator who designs all our cartoons, including the lovely cake lady herself and our new Limited Edition Cake Cards. Here he is to tell you more about how it came about!

When an illustrator receives a commission, the client usually has a specific remit in mind. Sometimes too specific and the illustrator becomes a hired pencil. Cartoonists don’t respond well to that. You hire me, you get the ideas as well as the pencil (or brush pen and Wacom tablet, in my case). 

By contrast, a Twitter conversation with Abi at The Cake Nest sparked the faintest of faint notions and I immediately knew this was going to be a fun project. No brief, no deadline, just a generous “what if?” commission. What if people had something to celebrate on the days when they didn’t have a birthday?

I’m often commissioned to draw postcards - you can see some of them here (http://www.shelbourn.com/xhols) - but have been thinking for a while that a range of my own greeting cards would be fun to try in my online shop. And Abi was after something unusual for The Cake Nest, so … a couple of days later, the first of the Un-Birthday card designs appeared. 

It’s a rolling commission so watch out for new designs over the coming weeks. They’ll be on sale as cake cards to begin with - Abi sparked the idea off, after all - and then later as greetings cards over at Radiocartoonist.com 

Either way, we hope you’ll find them delicious.

Foodie Festival Competition

Foodies will be showing off the best of Cheshire and beyond for the third year running in the beautiful grounds of Tatton Park on May 17th, 18th & 19th 2013.

Restaurants will be taking centre stage at this year's event with the hugely successful Chaophraya, The Lord Binning and Stolen Lamball running pop-up eateries at the event.

Chefs Theatre and Childrens Cookery Theatre 2013 timetables now available! Timetables for some of this year’s features are not yet available but for an idea of what to expect please click the links below to see what delights we had on in 2012.

Fancy getting your hands on a pair of tickets to this? Well we may just be able to help 

We have three pairs of tickets to give away. All you have to do is tell us in no more than 140 characters (ie a text message or a tweet) why you would like go and who with, simples! Tweet, Facebook or email us your answer by Sunday 21st April for your chance to win.