Carrot Cake

It was recently my dad's birthday and him being a keen gardener I decided to make him a carrot-shaped carrot cake, complete with carrot root fly. My second ever attempt with fondant icing - which came out much better than my 1st go. I made the carrot cake using a muffin recipe from this Cupcakes & Muffins book, though minus the walnuts because they remind me of brains and I don't like the taste. While the cake was cooking I made a very easy version of fondant icing by chucking some icing sugar and egg whites in a bowl, mixing them together then adding some glycerin. To make the orange part I put Wilton Icing Color Orange in the icing and kneaded it in until I got the colour I wanted. For the green i used Wilton Leaf Green Colouring. - I like using the Wilton brand. It colours well and doesn't have a taste.
The first time I rolled out fondant icing it kept sticking to the rolling pin and the chopping board I was rolling it on. A friend suggested using clingfilm, I didn't have any to hand so used greaseproof paper with good results. After a bit of fiddling getting the fondant onto the cake, I used a baking wheel roller to make the leaf like fronds at the top of the carrot then dusted it with Rainbow Dust Metallic Paint Dark Gold. My skills don't yet extend to sculpting so I used this mold to make the fly out of white chocolate.
It ended up tasting really nice.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring is definitely here. Check out these gorgeous daffodils from my garden.

Playing With Fire

So i was reading Bob Flowerdew's Organic Gardening Bible and it says in there to get rid of weeds I should use a flamethrower. I figured a creme brulee torch was close enough. So if I set the entire garden on fire it's not my fault because Bob Flowerdew told me to do it!

Addendum:
A creme brulee torch is way too small. I spent about 20 minutes burning a foot length stretch of weeds along the bottom of a garden wall

Pancake Day!!

It's Shrove Tuesday, so I had healthy pancakes filled with fresh fruit