Updates

Long time no speak, happy summer folks. Things have been somewhat hectic; hence the lack of blog updates but my aim is to post more regularly and share some recipes, calligraphy and photo stories. 

Calligraphy wise I've been overwhelmed with the interest in modern calligraphy here in Scotland. I held my first modern calligraphy summer workshop in July which proved really popular. We started the day with pointed pen techniques then moved on to experiment with brush and watercolour lettering with a break in between for a lovely afternoon tea. 

Going forward I'll be scheduling workshops in a variety of different forms and co-hosting with some other lovely suppliers so check out the workshops page for updates. Slots seem to be selling super quick on all classes so feel free to register your interest to hear about upcoming dates so you can get in there first! 

I've been working on a variety of commissions lately including wedding invites and vows, calligraphy logo design and custom quotes. 

I was also lucky enough to take on a few fun food photography jobs over the summer including working with the lovely Laurianne of Laurianne's raw cakes taking styled shoots of her gorgeous and healthy cakes and some portrait shots. Our little collaboration has prompted us to join forces to host a raw desserts and calligraphy workshop - full details on the workshop page. 

Heading into Autumn I have some exciting projects on the cards and hope to launch a collection of semi custom invites in the coming months along with a range of products including calligraphy kits and prints. So all in all exciting and busy times ahead and I'm totally loving the variation in the projects I'm working on so please do get in touch if you'd like to work together! 

Easter in Arran and salted caramel cornflake cakes

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to stay in such a beautiful location as Scotland. Its all to easy to wish you lived elsewhere and I've always hankered to live in the States. However, it doesn't take long for me to remember why I love my home country so much and despite the somewhat dreary weather at times (well a lot of the times), our landscape and scenery are truly stunning. 

My friends and I headed over to Arran on the Brodick ferry for a short weekend break and rented a house in Lochranza which accommodated the 12 of us (kids included). The area was quiet and peaceful and our house for the weekend Westwood was ideal and cosy for a bit of escapism. 

Arran isn't particularly buzzing but we visited the brewery and distillery and despite the rain most of the weekend managed a few walks and a few shopping trips for gifts in Brodick. 

Easter wouldn't be Easter without chocolate and indeed cakes. Not the most exciting of cakes but I love Cornflake chocolate nest cakes, but when I spied a few recipes for salted caramel versions I knew I wanted to give them a try. 

Word of warning these cakes are extremely sweet and a little taste goes a long way. They went down well with the group but personally I do prefer the classic chocolate version. 

Recipe (makes about 12)

90g Butter, 2 1/2  tbsp Golden Syrup, 190g granulated sugar, 120ml double cream, 1 teaspoon salt, 170g cornflakes, 40g milk or dark chocolate

Heat the sugar in a medium saucepan over a medium heat continually stirring. Keep the heat constant and stir with a wooden sppon. The sugar will form clumps and bind to form a thick amber goo. Keep stirring. When the sugar has melted and becomes more liquid like, stir in the butter being very careful as it bubbles up and stir till melted. Slowly add the cream and boil for one minute. Remove from heat add the salt and golden syrup and stir to combine. Pour in the cornflakes and combine. Dollop into baking cases and top with a little egg ( I used galaxy golden eggs). Allow to set for 10 minutes or so then drizzle chocolate on top and pop in the fridge for about 40 mins to set. 

Eat in moderation these are sweet!

I also managed to get in a little bit of sneaky calligraphy just for fun. 

Braw Brides wedding workshop - Arta

Last weekend I was delighted to take part in my first wedding event as I joined my lovely Braw Brides in their annual workshop. Arta, Glasgow provided a beautiful setting for the event with the moody lighting and opulent decor, and I was really pleased at how my table turned out and indeed for the interest in my calligraphy and lettering. 

I teamed up with other Braw Brides members Suzanne Esper Cakes and Bonnie Bling for a fabulous cake topper corroboration which received huge compliments and will shortly be available for sale via Bonnie Bling. I also had the pleasure of doing some brush lettering on Suzannes biscuits which is another project I'm looking forward to as we launch a joint calligraphy and cake/biscuit class.

Throughout the afternoon, tea and cake were plentiful and the Photographers amongst our group, hosted a number of unique question and answer sessions; sharing their experiences and offering advice to our lovely couples.

I also showcased some of my new invite designs at the event and some unique items including modern calligraphy leaves and table runners. 

I also managed to take some pictures of the event and am already looking forward to working with couples to bring a touch of custom calligraphy to their wedding day. If you're looking to find a lovely bunch of truly unique wedding suppliers check out the Braw Brides page for details of all the members. 

Mars chocolate memory cookies

I always hate starting on a down note but my lovely wee gran passed away on Boxing Day at the ripe age of 94. My gran was a fiesty wee soul and in her prime years her diet and indeed were perhaps a bit skewed but none the less kept her fit and well for the majority of her days. 

I remember going to my grans house for lunch and sleepovers and being somewhat baffled by the logic that Toblerones were in fact healthy because they had honey in them!

On one occasion I remember the delight at eating a Mars bar late at night with a copy of tea all warm by the fire in her wee cottage house, and these cookies which I made have delicious chunks of what is still one of my favourite chocolate bars.

The recipe is quick and easy and for the photo shoot I incorporated some lovely snapshots which we found in my grans house of my mum and aunt as youngsters feasting at the table. 

170g of butter, softened (3/4 cup)

150g of soft light brown sugar (3/4 cup packed)

50g of granulated sugar (1/4 cup)

1 large free range egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

280g of plain flour

2 tsp of corn flour (corn starch)

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

pinch of salt

2 (51g) Mars Bars, chilled and then chopped small (1 heaped cup, loosely piled in)

180g of semi sweet chocolate chips (1 cup)  

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F. gas mark 4.  Line two baking sheets with baking paper.   Set aside.

Cream the butter and both sugars together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the egg, vanilla and salt.  Sift together the flour, soda and corn flour.  Stir this into the creamed mixture to combine.  Stir in the chopped Mars Bars and the chocolate chips.  Scoop out and roll the dough into balls which are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place two inches apart on the baking sheets.  

Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, until nicely set and just turning golden brown at the edges. Let sit on the baking trays for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely - if you can wait that long!

Le Christmas Cake

This fruit cake has become something of a Christmas tradition. Not one for spending too long in the kitchen I found this fling it all in boiled fruit cake a number of years back and have stuck with it ever since. It doesn't contain alcohol although the fruit juice could easily be switched for whatever you like and the golden syrup is my own addition, but again this could be replaced with the same quantity of treacle. I like to think the golden syrup gives it an added gloriousness. 

Normally I decorate it with ready to roll fondant, but decided I wanted more of a rustic festive wonderland look so opted to cover with snowy royal icing peaks which proved pretty easy to execute. 

The benefit of this kind of cake is that you can make it very last minute as it doesn't require any proofing/ maturing time like a traditional fruit cake, however it does last for weeks and could easily be made weeks in advance and stored in a tin if desired.

Makes 1 x 20cm cake

150g plain flour, sifted
50g self-raising flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1tsp nutmeg
100g ground almonds
3 medium eggs lightly beaten

Fruit mix
mixed bag - seedless raisins, sultanas, mixed cut peel 500g
200g ready to eat stones dates chopped
150g - 175g butter chopped
200g dark muscovado sugar
1 tbsp black treacle
1 tbsp golden syrup
100ml orange juice or alcohol - brandy. whisky etc

Topping 
Marmalade warmed 
1 box of royal icing

1. Preheat oven to 150, fan 130.
2. For the fruit mix put all the ingredients into a pan and heat gently, stirring occassionally until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Increase te heat, bring to the boil , then set aside to cool for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with non stick baking paper. 
3. Put the flours, spices and ground almonds in a large bowl and stir in the cooled fruit mixture and eggs until combined. Tap the tin to remove any bubbles.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 2 hours or until golden and firm to the touch. To check if it's cooked insert a skewer to the centre. ( I found my cake took about 2 hours 25 minutes keeping a carefully eye on it!)
5. Turn the cake onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely before removing from tin.
6. At this stage you can ice/ decorate when the cake is completely cool or I left it till the following day.
7. Heat some marmalade and spread lightly over cake. I actually slightly levelled the cake to give a smooth finish. 
8. Make up the royal icing as per pack instructions - by adding water and whipping to snowy peaks. 
9. Spread a large dollop of the icing on the centre of the cake and working quickly smooth over the top and down the sides.
10. Taking your palette knife go round the outside of the cake smoothing as  you go. For the peaks add a bit more icing on top then pat and drag the palette knife upwards to create a mountain of trees. 

Add a selection of dried fruits or other decor as desired. I love my little bambi cake topper but some candied oranges and rosemary looked a lot nicer in the images. 

Apple, blackberry and blueberry crumble cake

For my friends birthday I decided I wanted to make an autumnal cake of some sort, and steer clear of anything chocolate related for a change... although more chocolate related goodness coming soon. 

I also wanted to do some styled food shoots, so the colours and textures of this apple and blackberry crumble cake were perfect. The cake is really easy to make and reminiscent of the beloved apple crumbles I used to love having for Sunday dessert yet is more transportable and easier to serve at a party than apple crumble!

I think the pictures turned out pretty well even with the minimal and dreary Scottish light, and the cake was a hit and proclaimed delicious. 

2 eggs, 85g Caster Sugar, 85g flour, 85g butter

Mixture of fruits strawberries, apples, rhubarb, blackberries work well (about 400g)

Topping – makes enough for a cake with some leftover

4oz (115g) flour, 2 oz butter (50g), 2 oz sugar (50g) I used a mix of light muscovado and caster

Preheat oven to 160° oven (fan). Cream the butter and the sugar . Add the eggs then fold in the flour and a pinch of salt – add some milk if needs be to make a dropping consistency. Put into a 20cm sandwich or cake tin ( loose bottomed helps).

Cut the apples into wedges , slice blackberries/ blueberries. Mix the fruit with a bit of sugar about 1tbsp of caster or light muscovado sugar. Lay over sponge mix. 

Make crumble topping then place on top of cake and finish with a last sprinkling of sugar. Cook in the oven middle shelf for about an hour. Leave in tin to cool for 10 minutes. Remove from cake and allow to cool on wire rack. The cake tastes lovely slightly warm from the oven but left to cool will firm up nicely and goes lovely with some tea. I also think a nice salted caramel sauce would work well - cause doesn't that go with everything !

I'm entering this to Kerry Cooks Christmas Cake Challenge. I think the fruit may make a nice change from too much chocolate! 

Moving forward...

So I figured I might try to actually write some blog posts about where I'm at with things, and what I'm working on and inspired by.

The modern calligraphy classes have been going really well, and I'm looking forward to the Christmas classes on the 3rd and the 10th of December, which should be a fairly cosy affair in Cushion and Cake complete with festive treats and tunes. 

I'm resisting the urge to think about Christmas too much at this stage. Its been a difficult few months what with some family ill health and I think Christmas will be tinged with mixed emotions (as I often find it is).

As much as I love the festive season and enjoy creating and giving gifts, and celebrating with loved ones, I think there's often a slight feeling of "whats this all about" and its important to realise that in reality not everyones Christmas is picture perfect, complete with heaps of kids running around in a gorgeous house dripping with Christmas decor. 

In these days of sharing everything on  Facebook / Instagram/ general social media,- its hard not to compare yourself to others. But rest assured no ones life is perfect - we all have our ups and downs and the important thing I try to remember is above all else try and be nice to other people, but indeed also to yourself.  For me personally, I finally feel I'm coming into my own with my calligraphy and photography. I might not live in a huge house with my gorgeous husband and 10 kids and cook vegan organic meals everynight, but I'm working full time, trying to establish a business for myself and say yes to as many opportunities as I can. 

Its a bit early to be setting New Years resolutions (and they're really not my style anyway), but moving forward I'm taking on more food and styling related photography projects, and hope to shoot at a few weddings in the near future. I also have some new plans for my classes including a love letters/ letters of love inspired class in the lead up to Valentines Day. I have some exciting projects coming up including development of some calligraphy prints and stationery and I'm so chuffed to have found the lovely Braw Brides and so pleased they've asked me to join their group.

With all that in mind I want to give myself a pat on the back - (just a little one mind you - I am Scottish). I've finally found through my calligraphy and photography a way to express myself and work creatively. My approach and style is ever evolving and I'm as ever always keen to learn and challenge myself so watch out for some veggie inspired meals coming soon!

I'd love it if you'd follow me on Bloglovin by clicking on the little phrase below :) 

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Halloween Sugar Cookies

Halloween has become huge over the last couple of years, and I've always liked the occasion. Autumn is my favourite season and it brings back happy memories of making Halloween costumes, and digging out my favourite winter jumpers and hats. 

I'm pretty Pinterest crazy, and some of the Halloween inspired bakes and ideas are amazing. Initially, I had my heart set on making an elaborate orange and purple chocolate Halloween drippy cake (you know the kind I mean), but when my friend decided to host a Halloween party at her house for the kids within our group, I knew that she would have the catering sorted, and that a cake would probably not be needed.

I'm keen to set myself more food photo projects but don't want to be spending hours in the kitchen at at time, and whilst quite frankly I love reading all the veggie/ artistic food blogs out there that show what people really eat for their dinner, by the time I get in from work its dark and my meals are pretty flung together and definitely not particularly photo worthy (although mmm perhaps I could be onto something there - everyday flung together meal photos :) ).

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, but for Halloween I decided to try and incorporate some lettering into my bakes, so these chalkboard cookies seemed liked a good idea. The recipe is  a simple vanilla shortbread cookie recipe with rolled black fondant on top. The chalkboard effect writing is made with a little royal icing applied with a brush. Now whilst I love looking at decorated / flooded sugar cookies I really didn't have the time or indeed patience to go too detailed so I hastily wrote some lettering on each of the cookies which I must admit was a lot tricker than it seemed. I had visions of lovely modern calligraphy on my bakes with swooping swirls and spiky letters, but writing on a cookie is far harder than you would think. 

In the end these turned out not too bad though, and I had some fun styling a few photos. 

Vanilla sugar cookies

• 200g unsalted soft butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 400g plain flour, plus more for dusting
• Vanilla extract or pods


• Using an electric mixer with paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar and chosen flavouring until well mixed and just becoming creamy in texture. Don’t overwork, or the cookies will spread during baking.
• Beat in the egg until well combined. Add the flour and mix on low speed until a dough forms. Gather it into a ball, wrap it in cling film and chill it for at least 1 hour.
• Place the dough on a floured surface and knead it briefly. Using marzipan spacers, roll it out to an even thickness.
• Use cookie cutters to cut out the desired shapes and, using a palette knife, lay these on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. Chill again for about 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 180C/160Cfan/350F/gas 4.
• Bake for 6–10 minutes, depending on size, until golden brown at the edges. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Wrapped in foil or cling film, they will keep well in a cool dry place for up to a month.
  • Adapted from the Daily Mail online

Modern calligraphy class at Cushion and Cake Glasgow

I was so pleased to host my first calligraphy class at the delightful Cushion and Cake tearoom in Glasgow last month. 

A group of lovely folks were really enthusiastic to learn my approach to modern calligraphy and lettering, and I was mega impressed with how quickly they could master the basic principles of working with the pointed pen and nib. 

I started by showing the basic principles of how modern calligraphy differs from more traditional calligraphy practise and talked them through the packs I'd made up with lots of fab resources on modern calligraphy and plenty of sample alphabets to get them started.  I worked in lots of little demos throughout the night and the atmosphere was really chilled out, which was helped by some background music. A tea and cake break helped with the flow.... even when one lovely lady managed to mistake her water jar for ink cleaning with her teacup!

It was so nice to talk to people who, like me get rather excited by lovely letters and calligraphy and the group seemed confident that they'd keep up their calligraphy practise putting it to use in their own projects. 

With more classes coming up soon I'm looking forward to sharing my calligraphy experiences and tips and meeting all you lovely peeps. Check out my calligraphy class page for details or more course dates. 

Ombre rose cake

When my friend suggested making an Ombre rose buttercream cake, my first thought was mmm that sounds like hard work. In reality though, the sponge recipe is fairly easy to make adding some food gel colouring to each layer to get the fantastic colour contrasts.

For the buttercream, again its just a case of dividing up the mixture and adding some food colour (sparingly I might add!) and giving it a good mix. The buttercream roses can be a bit tricky, but with a few goes are easy enough to master. I'm sure you'll agree the end results look great and little Etta was well impressed :) 

This would make a great cake for a party and is definitely for those with a sweet tooth.

For the buttercream (make 2 lots of this to cover the whole cake in buttercream then to make the roses with the remainder)

Sponge cake (this makes 2 layers so we made 2 batches)

• 225g (8 oz) self-raising flour
• 225g (8 oz) butter, at room temperature
• 225g (8 oz) caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Method
Prep:20min  ›  Cook:25min  ›  Ready in:45min 

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C / gas mark 4.
2. Measure all the ingredients into a large bowl.
3. Mix all of the ingredients using a electric whisk. Add a few drops of food gel we used Wilton colourings.
4. Pour the mixture into 2 non-stick 7 inch (18cm) tins.
5. Place them in the oven till golden brown 15-25 minutes.
6. Cool on a wire rack before serving.

For the buttercream

250g unsalted butter, 500g icing sugar, food colouring/gels

Beat like fury.

Makes about 16 portions. 

Custom quotes

I can't seem to get enough of quotes these days and have been shipping out some lovey dovey ones which would make a great wedding gift. 

Hello

Woo hoo I have a proper website!

As I'm currently busy adding photies and splattering ink across the place I'll get round to writing a proper post soon. But just quickly I'm having a semi productive Sunday working on some new designs and taking lots of photos which I hope to share with you soon.