Mini hits the shows

It's that time of year when I get to go to London fashion week and check out all the new Spring Summer offerings. Well this time Mini and Ottilie got to come too. 

First up was choosing their outfits from Alex and Alexa. Talk about choice. They have just about every hot kids designer, shoes and accessories on their site. But mini persevered and chose her and Ottilie matching outfits.

Wearing her new Stella Kids printed dress and star print tights. Mini chose a pair of paint splatter converse trainers and added a cool turquoise metallic pair of shwings
You can customise your laces with these fabric wings and Ottilie got these super cool lightening Nikes. She topped it all off with her customised monogrammed basket from Raefeather and a pop cutie necklace. 

It was then on to the shows to review them for her guest blog on Alex and Alexa.

For more insight into her mini musings check out her blog and click on here!

How to make a Peppa Pig Cake

Peppa is part of our family. She's probably part of most families, my two elder children were both utterly enamoured with her cheeky know-it-all commentary and blocked up nose chuckling. Was it her cute pinkness or her penchant for jumping up and down in muddy puddles? Who knows, but no 3 has caught the Peppa bug so when deciding what cake to make for her second birthday the first character that came to mind was Peppa Pig. I think I've made it twice already for Mini, so i felt confident doing it once again.
Each time birthday's come around my kids think up the most interesting of characters for me to transform into sugar frosting and sponge and I tend not to make them from a ready made cake form. Instead i use the round and square tins I already have at home and then carve them into suitable shapes. So I thought I'd snap a quick how to.

I first started by baking two pink sour cream sponges. I took the recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery cook book and used just one batch for both tins, adding pink gel food colouring into the cake mix.

I took the larger of the cakes and cut a curved section out of the top, in order to place the smaller cake within it.  Then I cut a rounded triangle shape out of the larger cake to create the shape of Peppa's dress.

Once the basic Peppa shape had been created, I took the off-cuts and cut the ear shapes and placed them at an angle off the face to make up Peppa's distinctive nose.

I then made up a batch of pink cream cheese frosting 

Added more pink to make the outline, which I piped around the form, adding her cheeks, smile and nostrils. The I added red food colouring to the mixture to colour the dress and piped red spots onto for detail. Finally I made up some very thick almost play dough in consistency fondant icing (just icing sugar and very little water) and formed the eyes, hands, tail and shoes. Peppa was complete and Ottilie was in heaven.