Celebrate with Cake!

It's time to celebrate!

And what better way to celebrate than with cake?!

This week I am super excited to be celebrating 6 months of my blogging life :-)  That is 6 months since I started this blog, writing weekly posts, sharing my projects at some amazing link parties, being featured on some incredible sites and really learning a LOT about the blogging world and how to do it better!

There are some things in particular I am really proud of and some projects that have had some really kind and positive feedback on and so I wanted to share my celebrations with some cake!

These are some cakes I have made (and eaten) recently and haven't had the chance to post about, so I thought - why not put them all together and have one big feast of 6 cakes for 6 months!

Today I'll be sharing a few more photos and info about the 6 cakes featured today in my celebration of cakes, and next week it'll be Celebrate with Cakes Part 2 - all about 6 months of blogging.  6 things I'm proud of or have learnt, and 6 aims and ideas I have for the next 6 months!

So here are the 6 cakes in a little more detail:

1.  Summer Cake ~  Lemon sponge cake, with a raspberry jam and butter cream filling, decorated with white fondant and buttercream piped grass, topped with fondant flowers and butterflies.

This was the second time I made a cake for my choir's silent auction.  We were raising funds for the choir to go to Festival 500 in Newfoundland - and they just got back!  Check out their flash mob in Avalon Mall - so fun...I was really sad to miss it!

I was super happy that the winning bid on the cake went to a choir member's Mum whose birthday it was the next day!  Ready made birthday cake :-)  I hope she enjoyed it!!

2.  Mini farm cupcakes ~  A lot of you have seen the Quiet Book I made for a special little 2 year old's birthday this year (click here if you haven't!), and these are the edible gift we took along as well!  She enjoyed a super fun morning at the farm - on a 'Rise and Shine' theme, with breakfast served for the guests in the barn - what an amazing idea!  Sadly I had to miss the party (REALLY SADLY as I LOVE the farm, like really love!) but we did get to spend the afternoon and evening with our friends, celebrating the birthday girl and hanging out in the sunshine!

Seeing as she enjoyed a farm party, I made some mini lemon cupcakes and frosted them with piped 'grass' buttercream.  The cupcake toppers were rolled out fondant which I cut out with my mini animal cookie cutters that I usually use for Easter!  A baby pig, bunny rabbit and chick, as well as some little flowers, and the same butterfly you also see on the Summer cake.

3.  Banana Loaf ~  This is the most recent of all of these cakes, having just been made this week!  A few bananas left over, and me missing baking (it had been at least 2 weeks of no baking!!!!!  VERY unusual) meant it was time to try something different.

Jonathan's family just returned from their 2 week vacation, so we bought them a few groceries and left them with this little homemade treat to welcome them home :-)

Oh yes of course there were a couple of cupcakes baked too, we couldn't give them the whole thing without trying it ourselves!  It was a recipe I hadn't tried before as well so it was good to check it out (hehe)...and confirmed...it was yummy!  Thank you Mary Berry via Queen of Everything for the recipe inspiration!

Something I had thought of when first thinking of making the banana loaf was the banana embellishment!  I sliced up the extra banana I had, and laid it on top of the batter just before putting it in the oven.  I was not sure how this would turn out, and about half way through cooking was worried they were sinking - but the batter rose, and pushed up the banana slices with it and it turned out almost perfectly!  Yey...and phew!

4.  Trio of mini cupcakes ~  Did anybody notice I like lemon?  Again these mini cupcakes were lemon, this time with a vanilla buttercream frosting, piped in a couple of different ways.

But why a trio?!  Well we had a trio of celebrations in June.

First of all we were invited to Jonathan's cousins' church for his little cousin's baptism, and a celebratory bbq at their place afterwards!  He got the blue cupcakes with white fondant stars!

That same Sunday also happened to be Father's Day!  Hence the tie on these ones, with a smart black and white cupcake wrapper.

And the third and final celebration that day was Jonathan's Great-Aunt's birthday!  Pretty spring cupcake wrapper with flowers for her :-)

Whilst the cupcakes were made specifically with those celebrating in mind, we did all get to share and eat them!

5.  Brown Sugar and Coffee Muffins ~ This is another set of mini cupcakes, but with a recipe that I have been meaning to try for a LONG time now!

I baked these cupcakes for a church lunch event, and figured, why not make mini ones, more cakes this way even if they were smaller.  But at these church events - desserts are not sparse!

I found this recipe on Pinterest a long time ago... I loved the sound of the brown sugar muffins, and the coffee/icing sugar glaze on top.  Here's where it originally came from (just click!), and oh how I wish my glaze looked as pretty as hers did!

6.  English Country Garden Cupcakes ~ Well I couldn't make a cake for my choir auction, without baking something for the choir to enjoy after the concert!  We had worked hard after all!?

I gave them a taste of what the silent auction cake was, with a lemon cupcake and the same grass buttercream, with flowers and butterflies to top them off.

We all enjoyed them at our post-concert dinner/pub trip ♫

So here it is, the start of my week of celebrating 6 months of blogging!

I hope you can join me next week and read all about the 6 things I have learnt and enjoyed in 6 months of blogging, as well as the next 6 aims I have for Sew Lah Tea Dough :-)  I'm excited for the next six months and what it will bring!!