MIF09 ruins your life

Hi Tea Fans. If there are any of you left, you might be glad to know that I am actually still alive and kicking despite my complete lack of blogginess.

We are heading swiftly to the start of the festival which will be on 2 July - featuring Kraftwerk at the Velodrome with a few blissful surprises in store, Its gonna be like totally MEGA! Thank God, my lovely marketing director sorted out a ticket for Mr Tea Shop Diaries to-be. Otherwise I would have never lived down not being bothered about going when the tickets went for sale and them selling out whilst we thought about it. Oops. Anyway all is well that ends well as they say in Germany.

Other exciting things that are going to happen this week are: The Festival Pavilion is going up on Albert Square, Quay House is being trussed up like a Halloween haunted house for Adam Curtis and Punchdrunks It Felt Like a Kiss, and Rufus Wainwright and Jeremy Deller are milling about our office. A pretty exciting time to be in Manchester at the mo.

And I'm going to see my first opera as well. Eeek.
In the meantime here is the dressing for it at the Palace theatre, done by my own fair mouse hand.









See you on the other side. I'll try and blog my way through it, but to be honest, 12 programmes in 5 days does not a happy equation make, so there might be even less time this week!

Red nose cakes II

Red nose cakes II, originally uploaded by The Tea Shop Diaries.

And I gave them red nose face/noses this time....

Red nose cakes

Red nose cakes, originally uploaded by The Tea Shop Diaries.

Not sure if you have seen these, but these were the cakes I made for Emmas 'lets have it a month early' Red Nose Day. We ate them all, and then I made some more the month after at the correct time.

I'm back - from outer space (not really)

Well Tea fans, how sorry I am to have abandoned you for SO long. Apart from me having no camera to take pics of any of my amazing bake-ages, I haven't baked much at all, on account of me being so busy doing work for these people as well as doing all my normal work at night and at weekends.

Wedding plans are going well (thanks for asking) and the lovely Ruth at the fine cheese company in Bath, is helping us get the cheese cake we really want out of handmade artisan veggie cheeses they supply for weddings. Had the first fitting for my wedding dress with my mum, and its nearly there. Can't give away too much (anythingin fact) as Mr Tea Shop Diaries subscribes to this blog like a good supportive other half should.

And onto the cakes.

In order to ingratiate myself to my new colleagues (albethem short term contract ones)and also to bring some Monday cheer to the office, I promised them cakes. And cakes they shall get too. These beauties are not only lemon cakes, but they are lemon cakes, with crystallised ginger in them and a little blob of lemon curd in the middle. Topped with lemon buttercream with a mini jelly lemon and some lemon rind curls on the top, you can't get much lemony-er than them!!!

And, they all fit perfectly into my lovely new cake tin.

While I was at it, I threw together a quick tiffin, as its my speciality (apparently) but I buggered it up a bit and had to dry out the mix a bit with ground almonds as I ran out of digestives. Oh well we will see how nice it is in the morning when its chilled.

Till next time TeaFans, I bid you a goodnight, and hope I see you quicker than I did last time.

Apparently...

my cakes are the reason that Darren has put on half a stone since I started going into their office. Well, even though I am glad that he likes my cakes so much I will not take responsibility for this.

No pics for a while now folks as my camera is still being 'fixed' at COMET. DON'T ASK!!!

The competition

Popped into the (not) new (as its been open ages) cupcakery in Chorlton to sample some of their delights seeing as we never seem to be around when it's open. As it was a) Mothers Day and b) Sunday late afternoon, there was not the usual amount of cupcakes to select from, but also seeing as we had never had any before, it didn;t really matter.

They all looked fab, but we opted in the end for a Betty Page (chocolate and coffee), and a Mint Royale (chocolate and mint).

The presentation could not be faulted, beautifully crafted dollops of cream cheese icing decorated with glitter and chocs.

The sponge was fabulously light and the icing, just the right consistency to be melt in the mouth, but still hold its shape. No mean feat I will add as my last cream cheese icing slipped sideways off most of the cakes.

We were a little disappointed that the actual cake bit didn't reflect the nature of the cake a little more ie. coffee and mint in the chocolate cake, but we put this down to the logisitics of actually running a business as oppose to making cakes in your kitchen for your mates.

Anyway, all in all, a lovely Sunday afternoon treat in the guise of research.

Must write more blogs. Its been far too long Tea-fans.

More soon...

Fame at Last

Check out my cupcakes and current status as 'baking goddess' on the Volcom site here