With the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations fast approaching, here’s a nice idea for those of you wanting to make your own party food.
Lakeland have a set of three crown shaped cookie cutters available that you can use to cut and make your own cookies and then decorate them in suitably regal colours. Or why not make your own Union Jack flag cookies?
The set of three crown cookie cutters are £2.99 and the flag cookie cutter (which could effectively be used for any flag design) costs £1.95.
Easy cake decoration
Looking for an easy way to decorate a cake? How about using stencils?
This cake stencils kit contains eight different plastic, cake-safe stencils that you can use to create an impressive design on a cake, but without the need for heaps of experience.
The stencils are suitable for use on both large cakes and small cupcakes and include a variety of designs suitable for various celebrations. The designs can be created in various ways, including using dusted sugar or cocoa, crushed nuts or sweets.
The kit also includes six useful recipes – two for cakes you can make and four featuring different types of icings.
The cake stencils kit costs £13.99 from Oliver Bonas.
Pink Artisan mixer
I love the Kitchen Aid Artisan mixers and am continually coveting one.
The choice of colour options in the range is already excellent, but here’s a special edition that is also helping raise money for charity.
The pale pink Breast Cancer Artisan mixer, which is made from lovely enamelled cast zinc, is doing what the name suggests and donating £50 from each sale to a breast cancer charity.
The mixer is available to buy from Selfridges.
Decorative bowl
Although the name sounds Christmassy, the design is definitely something you can enjoy all year round.
With its rich plum rim and gold detailing, this decorative pudding bowl is the perfect size for baking up a delicious pudding for dessert.
If you do want to embrace the theme of the design, then it would be ideal for using to make Christmas puddings in. We know it sounds early, but some people have started making theirs already!
The ceramic Partridge in a Pear Tree Pudding Basin is made by Mason Cash and available for £11.99 from Lakeland. A range of matching products are also available.
Rabbit mould
Magpie Living is an online boutique specialising in selling vintage, recycled and handmade homeware items. One of the lovely vintage items they’ve currently got in stock is this rabbit jelly mould.
The shiny metal jelly mould is an original vintage piece, so does show some inevitable signs of wear and tear. But it’s still got plenty of life left in it, so whether you fancy making a rabbit shaped jelly or mousse, this is the ideal way of achieving it.
When not in use, it’s a nice addition to have on display on an open kitchen shelf, or in a glass fronted cabinet.
The rabbit jelly mould is £16.50 from Magpie Living.
They also have a nice set of two glass shaped jelly moulds available for £24.50.
Confession time: I love cheese. I adore baked and melted Camembert.
Whilst I normally bake it in the oven, I can’t resist the look of this Camembert cheese roaster, which can be used on an open fire, on the top plate of an Aga, or in an oven. The open fire option appeals greatly, even though I have no open fire at home (might have to go and stay somewhere that does, just to try it out).
To use the roaster, you unwrap the Camembert as normal, then place it back in the wooden box. The box then goes in the bottom of the roaster pan. Pop the pan over the fire/on the AGA/in the oven (with the door open) and wait for the cheese to melt gloriously.
Once melted, remove the pan and dip crusty bread or crudites into it and enjoy. The melted Camembert can be eaten from the roaster if you wish.
As well as using the roasting pan to melt Camembert to perfection, it also doubles up as a useful chestnut roaster pan too, so you can have chestnuts roasting on an open fire at Christmas. When not in use, it can be hung in your kitchen or around the fireplace in a rustic fashion.
The Camembert roaster is handmade from burnished steel at the Moore Designs forge in rural Sussex. It costs £58 to buy from their store on Not On The High Street.
Paper doilies
They may have gone out of fashion for a while, but this retro beauty – the wondrous doily – is back!
Designed to jazz up even the oldest, most worn plates and give them a real ‘dainty tea party’ feel, the humble doily does its best when it’s under a cake.
This pack of 30 delectable paper doilies, which come in three different sizes and colours (you get 10 of each), have all the delicate, lacy effects that we love so much. They’re £5.50 per pack.
Your cakes need them!
Make heart shaped muffins
This nifty silicone baking baking tray comes in the shape of a heart with six mini heart shapes inside, so you can bake your own heart shaped muffins or cakes.
In theory, when you’re using silicone baking trays, your freshly baked muffins should be easy to release and remove and the tray is safe for use at high oven temperatures.
The red silicone heart muffin tray is £7.50 from Marks and Spencer.
Make angel wing cookies!
We love making homemade cookies and biscuits and enjoy something a bit different. So it’s no surprise that these fun and quirky cookie cutters caught our eye.
They’re angel wings! And they’re designed to sit on the side of a mug, like wings! How cool is that?
You get a pair of angel wing cookie cutters and they come boxed, together with recipes, so that you can start making and baking straight away.
The angel wing cookie cutters cost £10 from Bob by Post.
Mixing bowls are on my mind at the moment, as I need to get making my Christmas cake this week – have you made yours yet? The flour section of the baking aisle in Sainsbury’s was looking decidedly depleted at the weekend, so I suspect Christmas cake baking may have been the cause for the rush on flour!
The large bowl I tend to use for mixing up my Christmas cake is big and heavy, so I really like the look of these Nigella Lawson mixing bowls which are made of melamine and are no doubt lighter. I love the fluid shape of them too.
The largest bowl is 32cm by 26cm by 11cm, so a decent size – there are four bowls in total and they graduate down in size to 15x12x6cm for the smallest bowl.
With the four different sizes, you’ll be well equipped for all your baking needs. The BlissHome Nigella Lawson living kitchen melamine mixing bowls are £41.40 from Amazon.
As well as the classic cream colour, they’re also available in blue (£46.84), black (£38.68), red (£38.68) or a colourful mix of red, green and white (£41.40).
