Happy New Year?

Well... it's been a while hasn't it? At least this time I have a proper, legitimate excuse. My computer went to laptop heaven in February and it's been a long 10 months stranded without a computer. Thankfully, I must have been a very good girl as Santa brought me a lovely new sparkley laptop this Christmas. To say I'm happy is an understatement.

It's been a very busy 12 months, both in the kitchen and out. I started college in September which has taken up more time than I thought possible, although I am definitely enjoying it. College has taken away my ability to bake as often as I would like but I have been making every effort to bake as often as possible. I have a medly of new recipes to share with you in the new year, although I can't guarantee that you'll see them with any regularity.

Anyway, have a very happy new year and I hope that your 2014 is filled with happiness and joy. I have a feeling that 2014 is going to be a good year.

Happy New Year!

Cherry and Vanilla Cake

My sister loves cherries. No let me rephrase that, she adores cherries. So it was a simple process picking what I was going to make for my sisters Christmas present. I stumbled on this little beauty on Sprinklebakes, one of my favourite blogs, and knew that this was the one I had to make.

The cake it's self, while not complicated, was time consuming and made for an awful lot of washing up. But it paid off. I've had nothing but compliments from my sister. She's insisted that I make this for her for every Christmas and birthday. And she is not one to gush.

I was running drastically out of time, so instead of making the icing perfectly smooth as I planned, I went crazy with the icing bag. It was pretty OTT, but oh well. I piped a small amount of buttercream on top of the cake and then used a teaspoon to drag out the side of it. I did this all the way round. I did a shell-like border round the bottom and used a fork to mess the sides up.

The recipe is Cherry-Vanilla Layer Cake from the wonderful Sprinklebakes.

And the frosting is the Whipped Vanilla Frosting from this recipe.